No Embalming

My dad had a folder in his desk drawer labeled, in his own handwriting, WHEN I GO, and inside it, alongside the life insurance papers, was a single page requesting no embalming, a plain pine casket, and burial within three days, the way his own grandfather had been buried, no chemicals, nothing done to him he hadn't asked for.

My mother honored it without hesitation, because honoring it felt like the last thing she'd ever get to do for him, and Mr. Whitfield's funeral home kept the body refrigerated instead, standard practice for a request like that, viewing scheduled for the morning of day three.

Nobody in that arrangement was doing anything wrong. That's the part that still gets me. Every single choice, on its own, made sense.

It just meant that for three days, nobody opened a vein, ran a needle, or did any of the things that would have made the ER's mistake permanent and unfixable before anyone had a chance to notice it wasn't a mistake anyone had caught yet.