The Truth About Death by Robert Hellenga Page B

brought packets of Kleenex. They took turns crying, softly, discreetly. The plane climbed over a storm; Simon could see flashes of lightning below them, fierce and beautiful, and wouldn’t have minded if the plane had gone down over the Atlantic, and he didn’t like keeping his seat belt fastened.
    This was grief from the inside. What defenses did Simonhave? He held Elizabeth’s hand. Interrogated it. What will become of us now? he asked her hand. His own advice, the advice he gave to people in great distress—take it one day at a time; write down your feelings in a journal; take care of yourself physically; get plenty of sleep—was good advice, but he didn’t think it applied in his case. He thought of a line from Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur , which he’d read in a “boy’s” version. The Boy’s King Arthur. He thought, at the time, that the “boys” were the Knights of the Round Table, and he imagined that he was one of them, but then at the end it all comes apart: “Comfort thyself,” the king says to Sir Bedivere, “and do as well as thou mayest, for in me is no trust for to trust in.”
    Elizabeth was asleep.

    At the hotel—Hotel Antico Borgo in Trastevere—Elizabeth lay down on the double bed. She was the one who knew Italian, but she was going to stay and make phone contact with Simon’s mother and with Hildi’s brother, who were coming the next day. Simon took a taxi to the American consulate on Via Vittorio Veneto. He had trouble getting past security and had to leave his cell phone in a locker, and then he had a lot of paperwork to deal with. He knew the drill, but in reverse. He spoke not with the person who had called him on the phone but with a young woman, not much older than Hildi. She could not recommend anyone in particular, she said, but she steered him to a funeral director in Trastevere, not too far from the hotel.
    The undertaker—Simon preferred the old word, at least in the privacy of his own mind—picked him up at the consulate. He wore a dark suit; his shirt was open at the collar; he had a GPS in the car but didn’t look at it; he drove sensibly and didn’t try to get Simon to talk.
    “This is it,” he said. “It” was an office. The sign over the door said IMPRESA FUNEBRE . Inside, the office was furnished with catalogs from which you could chose a hearse, a casket, flowers, and wreaths. Whatever you wanted.
    Simon sat at a desk across from the undertaker, whose name was Guido. Simon understood that the man had to maintain a certain tone. You don’t want your undertaker breaking down in tears for the same reason you don’t want a bomber pilot to burst into tears as he releases his load of bombs. Or maybe you do.
    There were lots of decisions to be made: cremation or burial or shipping the body home? Burial in an Italian cemetery? Guido could arrange whatever Simon wanted.
    Simon hadn’t thought it through. He was nervous, upset, bewildered by the catalogs, too many choices. And at the same time he experienced what he thought of as a kind of priestly fellowship, or undertaker fellowship—two men who understood and appreciated each other’s work.
    The impresario —Guido Fioravanti—reached across his desk and touched him, surprising him. He spoke pretty good English.
    “This is it?” Simon asked.
    Guido explained. There were no funeral homes in Italy, as in the United States. Well, maybe four or five. Guido was interested in Simon’s business. The problem in Italy was space. There was no room. No parking. Embalming was not done, though it could be, but probably only if the body was going to be shipped back to the United States. Then it would have to be specially embalmed.
    Simon wanted to talk to Elizabeth but couldn’t reach her on her cell phone. She was talking to Louisa or to Jack. Coordinating.
    A requiem mass? Probably not.
    Cremation? Probably. But some kind of service? It was hard to know what to do.
    “My daughter was planning to go into business