My parents introduced me to my first dead body when I was six.
It was a big decision for them, discussed with the relatives: Should a child go to a funeral? They were afraid I wouldn't understand. Why isn't that man breathing? But I could see their pride, too. Tommy's first funeral. A social occasion. How would he act? In a large Scotch-Irish family, dead people in open caskets were no surprise. The oldest generation went, like a worn edge against a grinding wheel. The young had accidents. You behaved a certain way. Childishness was unwelcome.
I don't even remember which of my countless aunts or uncles it was who'd stumbled into the afterlife. But children have the curiosity of Elizabethans. I was excited, if in murmurs. I tiptoed up, at my father's urging. I kept my eyes fixed on the puckered taffeta lining of the lifted lid. I'd wondered about the smell. Bouquets cloyed the air; otherwise nothing. And then I looked down. The corpse's eyelids were shut. The face looked vaguely familiar. Very wrinkled. Very powdered. Very settled. A face so still it vibrated; maybe it was the molecules.
Now I knew.
Something. I wasn't sure then. Now I know: I'd been shown the end. A voice could have whispered into my waxy ear: "You have now, my fragile little nudgkin. This time you're standing in. And then you'll have this, three showings to anyone who remembers you exist. And between those two points in time you will have to fit in anything you want to do, anything you want to accomplish, anything you want to savor, anything you want to say. We pray it's for good, but that's not truly a requirement."