“I don’t know...” I said. “It sounds kind of tacky.”
“Just give it a chance,” he said.
“Are you broke again or something?” I asked.
“I may have had some debts to pay with the Ocala money,” he said.
I took a bite of toast and chewed it slowly.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Great,” he said. “I made an appointment at Sunrise Commons in an hour.”
Sunrise Commons, as you might have guessed, was a new senior living place in the deep suburbs. And before we got there, we saw a billboard for it off the side of the highway: an enormous photo of a stylish older couple holding up sparkling wineglasses. Above them, a chandelier hung like an oversized halo. They looked like they were about to have athletic old-person sex any minute. And over their smiling faces in five-foot font, the board read:RETIRE... BUT NOT FROM LIFE!
“Damn,” I said. “There goes your sales pitch.”
When we actually got to the place, the grounds looked more like my old boarding school than a nursing home. It was all decorative cornices, porticoes, redbrick chimneys.Maybe, I thought, it was a way to bring the old back to their youth. And sure enough, just after we got there, we were almost mowed down by a golf cart full of giggling octogenarians.
Inside, we walked past a fireplace bursting with spring flowers. The rest of the room was just as ornamented. Arched doorways. Wainscoting. At the front counter was a petite birdlike woman with dyed blond hair, and the largest, whitest teeth I’ve seen.
“Welcome to Sunrise Commons,” she said. “How may I brighten your day?”
“We’re here to give the death talk,” I said.
The woman’s face fell like it had been hit with a tranquilizer dart.
“I’m sorry,” Dad said. “I’m Duncan Fowler. I’m giving the presentation about end-of-life care decisions. I believe it’s in the Vanderplank Room.”
The woman’s shrewd stare was still stuck on my face as she tapped something into a touch screen on her desk.
“Fowler you said?”
Dad nodded. More tapping.
“Okay. Right. Yes. I see.”
She examined both of us one more time and rose to her feet.
“Well, I guess you’d better come this way.”
She set off walking, and my dad gave me awhat-the-helllook. His manic energy had now been replaced by a Zen-like focus. We strolled through the main building of the commons, which was a maze of tiled hallways. Finally, we reached a wing in the back of the complex that actually looked and smelled like a real nursing home.
The decor was plain, and the scent of pureed food lingered in the air, melding with lemony disinfectant. When we stepped through the door of the common room, the assembled audience for Dad’s talk looked like it was composed of the oldest living humans on earth.
So this was where they kept them.
Most were in wheelchairs. Some were sitting on couches with throw blankets folded neatly across their laps. The man closest to me wore a pair of glasses with one eye blacked out. Another woman had hair so wispy and delicate it looked like dandelion fluff that might blow away in a strong breeze. Dad turned to his new congregation, cleared his throat, and pulled out a handful of lined yellow notecards.
“Good morning, everyone,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”
There were a few return blinks.
“My name is Duncan Fowler. Behind me is my daughter and business partner, Tess Fowler. We specialize in unconventional funerals. And today, I would like to talk to you about doing something truly spectacular with the end of your life.”
A man in a stocking cap sniffled.
“It may seem a little odd to you, but I’ve come to realize that I care a lot about death rituals. Rituals for grief are some of the most important ones we have. And I’m trying to find ways to broaden the conversation about them.”
