Easter ain’t a bad time of year.
It ain’t hurricane season yet. And Lent’s over. So everybody in the Gunch family is furiously smoking or drinking or eating chocolate eggs, according to what they gave up for Lent. Some are trying to do all three at the same time. They’ll be calling in sick for work on Easter Monday.
But today, Gunch kids are running around their grandma’s yard looking for Easter eggs. My mother-in-law Ms. Larda, she leans out the back door and advises them not to pick up any brown squooshy unwrapped ones because that’s not chocolate.
“There are a few problems with having a dog,” Ms. Larda says to the rest of us, who are sitting around stuffing our faces. “That reminds me of old Aunt Gracie.” All the Gunches remember her. Even I know all about Aunt Gracie and I am just an in-law.
Aunt Gracie was the good aunt— the one who always had popsicles in the freezer for the kids.
She also had this dog named Booboo. Booboo was a little thing, part dachshund and part chihuahua. But he had no use for kids. He would always yap and growl and show his little razor-sharp teeth whenever they came around.
Aunt Gracie would sweetly say, “Now, behave, Booboo,” and carry him into her bedroom and put him on his special little pillow, and leave him to chew furiously on his little stuffed squirrel.
Aunt Gracie was so crazy about Booboo that she wrote in her will that she wanted to be buried with him. In the same coffin.
This made things complicated. First off, nobody knew who would die first. If Aunt Gracie did, was somebody going to have to chase down Booboo and off him? (They wouldn’t have had no problem finding a volunteer to do this, but still…)
Of course, Aunt Gracie said absolutely not. They would have to wait until Booboo died of natural causes. Then they could exhume her coffin, hold their noses and stick Booboo in. She left a special dog-burying fund for that.
But Booboo went first. He was getting old in dog years and finally went to doggie heaven, probably leaving squooshy lumps that were not chocolate all along the rainbow bridge. He was that kind of dog.
So she put him in her upright freezer. She wrapped him in waxed paper, with just his little head sticking out, face in its usual snarl, right above the Popsicles and next to the Dixie ice cream cups.
And for years, when the kids wanted a treat, they played “Rock, Paper, Scissors” to decide who had to go to the freezer and face off with Booboo.
When Aunt Gracie finally died, 10 years later, the grown-up Gunch kids had to do “rock, paper, scissors” to decide who had to sneak Booboo into the coffin.
My sister-in-law Larva got the job.
So she called the funeral home and asked if she could put something sentimental in the coffin. The receptionist said yes, people sometimes slip the Bible or a stuffed animal in with the loved one. She didn’t say nothing about a deceased frozen dog. And Larva was afraid to ask.
She made a plan. She unwedged Booboo from the freezer for the final time; plunked him into a big plastic tote bag with a picture of Snoopy on it; and got to the wake real early and told the funeral director she had promised to put a very special teddy bear in the coffin. So he escorted her into “Slumber Room #3” and opened the casket. And stood there, watching. Ugh. Booboo couldn’t pass for no teddy bear. Larva stalled. “I got to say the rosary first,” she said, and pulled a string of beads out her purse. They happened to be Mardi Gras beads, so she hoped he wasn’t Catholic.
The rosary takes a pretty long time to recite, plus she threw in some extra prayers and was desperately mumbling a commercial for Crest toothpaste before he finally left to tend to something. She quickly shoved Booboo in the bottom half of the coffin, out of sight.
Gone. But never forgotten.
I believe I’ll swear off chocolate eggs.
Easter ain’t a bad time of year.
It ain’t hurricane season yet. And Lent’s over. So everybody in the Gunch family is furiously smoking or drinking or eating chocolate eggs, according to what they gave up for Lent. Some are trying to do all three at the same time. They’ll be calling in sick for work on Easter Monday.