At one point in the day, you begin to wonder if they believe you are Jewish and are accommodating your sitting shiva, this is how long and how often you must wait.

To be fair, their wifi has slowed to a speed reminiscent of dial-up, and you all did only call them that morning, the day after the death, to arrange a funeral for that week. Still, you must consider work schedules and school schedule of the mourners. Death arrives inconveniently and, even in sympathy, our culture considers death rude.

The receptionist stalls by giving you a tour. A chapel, a room for catering, a room to sit. The chapel looks like a church. A reddish pink light illuminates a cross on the wall above a space reserved for a coffin. You persist in thinking of that space as an altar. The light makes you think of a bordello. The space for the catering reminds you of the later seasons of Six Feet Under.

The whole place reminds you of Six Feet Under, or rather the corporatization that Six Feet Under criticized. You chastise yourself for meanness. No one here tries to upsell you or exploit your loss to increase their profit. Still, you mention the reference to your aunt and brother. Your mother never watched the show. You and your aunt laugh about the pilot, Dave consoling the man who responds, “She’s shoveling shit in hell if there’s any justice in this world.”

A fade. You all sit at the four corners of the table in the waiting area, staring in the mid-distance. Another family shambles out of the sitting room, silent. You want to catch their eye, let them know that you know, but they move toward the door as if blown. The receptionist brings you to the sitting room in their place, offers you snacks from a basket on the table. You vaguely think that some version of yourself might have found solace in losing her appetite and thus some weight. You slap that version of yourself.  The funeral director arrives.

So many decisions to be made still, although your parents have made many of the worst of them for you. You note your father’s age on the paperwork. Three years ago, when he had that first, awful infection and everyone got so angry. The first stage of grief, of saying goodbye, did you know? Of course you did. That was the reason you were so angry. You recovered, did not send your angriest e-mail to him, but you still feel guilty. They did not know about the cancer then, but they knew about the mortality. So did you. You feel guilty for not facing it better, stronger. You hoped there would be more time. You ask yourself who you are fooling.

The worst decisions involve his body. He and your mother wanted to be cremated. As the funeral director explains the arrangement of the altar — the thing you call the altar — she mentions the placement of the urn. Your father did not choose an urn. He found the cheapest, most basic box in the catalog.

Later, you and your brother share a laugh about the box. “That’s so Dad,” your brother says. “None of this bullshit, just a box.” Your mother went up a notch and chose a pretty box. Neither wanted to be displayed nor to display the other on a mantle or shelf. They want their ashes mixed together and to be spread over LSU — or the ocean, your mother pipes in. Disagreement even in the afterlife. “That’s so them,” you think. You will do both when the time comes, even if the LSU part is illegal.

In discussing the box, the funeral director choses her words carefully, respectfully. You can tell which types of questions she has answered in the ways that she anticipates your family’s. Clearly, people worry that the crematorium has not been cleaned of others. Clearly, people worry that they do not receive the correct ashes. With every word, you watch your brother, your mother, your aunt, flinch. You feel your own self flinch.

You wonder if he is somewhere in the building. You wish you did not because you would want to see him, and you don’t really want to see him, and now your mind drifts down that road, and cremation feels so final.

A week later, as you write this, you can write this. You can put down the word, “cremation,” and not feel revulsion nor the sense of being slammed against a wall. You don’t hear the slam of a closed gate. It is over.

You haven’t seen the box, it wasn’t at the funeral, you haven’t asked about it because that seems too personal. Yet, it also seems pointless. Ashes are ashes. They aren’t even his body. They aren’t even his bones. He is gone.

The decisions go on, dragging through half-hour long pauses, forty-five minute long pauses. A video runs on a flatscreen in the background showing an ad for the home’s services and samples of the types of videos that they show during the visitation or reception. The music is exactly what you would expect of a funeral, maudlin yet upbeat. Sad, but not too sad. It says, “we are sad, but let’s celebrate.” That is the message of funerals in our culture. It does not have the same mix as at a jazz funeral, which separates the two feelings, but attempts to force the one over the other. “Dad would have died if we used this,” we say, at first realizing our slip, then embracing it.  Your brother finds the volume and turns it off. He also finds the thermostat and makes the room less of a freezer.

What stationary? What poem for the “keepsake” card made from the stationary? What deadline for the obituary? What cost for the obituary? What newspapers? What pictures? What flowers? Your aunt has definite opinions on that. She’s good. What minister? What catering option? “He would have liked, he liked, he would have hated” all figure into these decisions. On the one hand, a funeral is for the survivors. On the other, it commemorates the dead. You realize how much like a wedding a funeral can be, but how much less planning goes into it, really. People actively plan a wedding for a year, perhaps fantasize longer. Very few people want to think of their funeral.

Four hours later you leave with a list of things you must do. Songs for the service. Songs for the video. Pictures for the video. Short obituary. Long obituary. Eulogy. You have done so little this day, and yet you feel as if you have been beaten.  You can’t even think to want anything or not want anything.

You realize that rituals for death do exist. You hear Joan Didion’s words from A Year of Magical Thinking, “there are things that must be done.” That is the ritual. The things that must be done.  Each thing hurts because it reinvigorates the loss, revives its realness, and takes you further away from him. Each thing in service to the dead person, to his memory, to your grief, to your survival.

Today is over. This thing is done.