I loved watching the new show on Netflix this month called The Four Seasons. I love the cast but the whole show is a throwback to Alan Alda’s movie back in the olden days. I don’t know how old you are but I am M.A.S.H old and my mother was in love with Alan Alda. So that is the vibe with Tina Fey and Steve Carell and my fave Colman Domingo. I don’t want to spoil it for you, especially those that have no idea who Alan Alda is because you were born in the 90’s. 

I want to point out that even a Netflix show can be part of your healing and recovery from hard things. It’s not all expensive therapy and meditation guys. Sometimes it is a hilarious scene about planning a funeral that can right side your ship. If you know me at all, humor is my love language. But humor can also serve as my protective shield that can turn me into a sarcastic asshole real quick if I am not careful. 

This episode of The Four Seasons show validated my whole experience with the funeral planning scene. It made it a universal experience and I cannot stop giggling about how it played out in my own 3 recent funerals. I hope it makes you giggle too. Hard things can be pretty funny sometimes when they aren’t doing their hard things part.

My sister and I knew my Dad was going to die soon back in January of 2021 after a battle with COVID hit his already fragile health hard. We literally stole him from his memory care facility one day and never brought him back so he could hospice at my sister’s house with us, the way he deserved. This was our first experience with the funeral home. My Dad was a Navy veteran and a pomp and circumstance kind of man. He did not want to sit in an urn on the fireplace next to a faux fern. Gene wanted and needed a place of honorable permanence. 

So we set out to find the perfect spot! Imagine me and my sister hanging onto the back of a golf cart with my elderly mother in the front seat. Our lovely salesman Stephen, was driving us all over the cemetery highlighting what our money could buy. I gave us a pep talk beforehand like you would before you go car shopping, “no one agrees to anything.” But by the end of that ride, we bought perpetuity. 

That’s right, for a small fortune, your loved one can stay there in perpetuity. For eternity in heaven and in perpetuity here in our cemetery. My sister made fun of me for drinking the kool aid and we had the biggest sister fight since we were in middle school beating each other with the telephone. That’s right kids…only one person at a time could use the telephone back in ancient times. So you had to beat them to it or beat them up with it to talk to your friends.

While I knew immediately that the perpetuity package was what our Dad would want, my sister was leaning more towards keeping him by the fern with her cremated dogs and using that money to pay for my kids’ college. She was probably wiser, but the perpetuity package also came with slider sandwiches at the visitation and bookmarks and a photo album keepsake #winning.What we didn’t know that day, whirling around the cemetery with my mom, is that she would be laid to rest there in just 4 months after her own short battle with COVID illness on top of years of battling pancreatic cancer disease. 

Back to the golf cart day for my Dad, Mags (our mom) couldn’t hear anything we were saying but kept joking with Stephen, “let’s pay for the 2-for-1 and hold my spot too.” My mom was a Boston yankee so phonetically spelled out that was a “too-fuh” as she called it. So when she died, we already knew which slider sandwiches we preferred with our package. But this time, we threw in the fingerprint necklaces because we didn’t get jewelry out of Dad’s package. And somehow in our startled state of unexpected loss, we thought wearing our mom’s thumbprint around our neck would ease the pain. We also added the dessert package because Mags loved a sweet treat and I think Stephen threw those in for free since we were repeat customers. 

Just two short years later, we would find ourselves around the table with Stephen for the powerpoint presentation again when my husband died in 2023. Obviously, with suicide the sales pitch was much more somber and delicate. And this time it was the entire family around the table plus our family friend who is an EMT in real life and also kind of a bodyguard for us when necessary. She is a badass that way. Apparently she was called in because no one trusted myself or my sister with the perpetuity package this time. Someone had to say “no, we do not want the Lamborghini” for Erik. 

At that time, I didn’t want to think about where his ashes would be. I just wanted to go home because this was a surreal kind of cruelty. So no sliders were necessary at this point. We were all in shock. We knew we couldn’t emotionally pull off a service and we also knew our humble introvert probably didn’t expect one. But we did end up with a necklace, two bracelets, and a paperweight filled with particles of Erik. 

I laugh every time I think of explaining to my sweet husband, who also shared my love language of humor, that we made an orange glass blown paperweight out of his ashes for Owen because he didn’t want jewelry. We felt we needed something Denver Broncos orange for him so he didn’t regret the bracelet decision later in life. That’s right, honey, we made an orange glass ball that even lights up when you sit on the portable light it came with. What the actual hell? I am surprised Erik is not full out haunting me for that right now.

We waited a year with Erik’s urn being moved from room to room at our house. No one felt comfortable with Dad on the desk or the fireplace or the shelf. We knew Erik deserved perpetuity so we went back to our old pal Stephen and found a spot where we can always go to see him.

We also kept some small bags of his ashes so they kids can sprinkle him in legal doses in special places as they go through life. Owen sprinkled his on the front row of Red Rocks amphitheater in Denver so Erik will always have front row seats to all the concerts. I sent each of Erik’s siblings their own little bag too so they could leave him somewhere special or hold him close.

That 3rd perpetuity package gave us an opportunity at the one year mark this past December to honor Erik with a memorial service. Everyone needed it, especially my kids who wanted the world to remember how Erik lived and not how he died. It was a love-filled kind of day for our loving man.

I hope I don’t have to meet with Stephen anytime soon, although we still text and discuss the GA Bulldogs from time to time. I am so grateful for his guidance and support. But I think he should have stopped me at the glass paperweight, just sayin! So now I am in my own “Four Seasons” series and I hope to laugh my way through it more than I cry. And if you are looking for a great deal on perpetuity, I know a guy.