Dan’s beloved grandmother is dying. His mom flew back to Madison earlier this week. Last I heard, his mother and her sister-in-law were shopping for a dress.

“Does Mom need an outfit to wear to the funeral?”
I asked Dan.

“No, Grandma needs it.”

“Excuse me but isn’t Grandma going to be dead?”

“Yeah, she needs something to wear in the casket.”

“Oh.”

In my youth I thought that memorials were a waste of time because death wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. You just moved into a new body. That was when I was ten feet tall and immortal. Now that I’m shorter, older and closer to death, I have a compassionate appreciation for memorials of all kinds. I understand the need to eulogize a loved one, to mourn in public, to perform rituals such as purchasing a special dress, to keep remembrances close at hand. (I still have my late father’s tired black car-coat hanging in my closet.)

What is difficult for me to understand, however, is the attraction of burial. Cremation is so much neater, cleaner. I’d much rather have my body purified by fire instead of pickled and powdered.

Everyone has their own memorial style. When my brother and I divided up my father’s ashes, I ceremonially dispersed most of mine into a glorious lake, storing the remaining quarter-cup in an etched granite box on our dresser. On the other hand, my brother keeps Dad in the back of his refrigerator, stuffed into a round plastic Tupperware container with a fluted yellow top. “What if someone thinks there’s food in that container and opens it up?” I ask. “Not gonna happen,” he says. “No-one wants to go anywhere near the back of my refrigerator.”

I really like ashes. They’re appealing, like tiny pieces of seashell. I can touch them and feel close to my dad again. Best of all, I don’t need to visit a cemetery to see them.

My meditation buddy, Michael, died of stomach cancer a few years ago. I loved Michael and truly grieved his passing. To help honor and remember him, I wanted his ashes on my home altar next to Dad. During Michael’s Zen memorial service, I kept my eye on the urn perched next to a statue of the Buddha. After the ritual I sidled over to Buddha, checked left and right, and deftly scooped a handful of Michael from the urn into my coat pocket. Then I scooted back to Dan.

“Guess what?” I asked Dan.

“What?”

“Guess what I have in my pocket?”

“Whaaat?” He looked at me long and hard.

I leaned into him, whispering, “Michael.”

“Jesus, Dawn! Did anybody see you do it?” Dan glanced around the room.

“Nope.”

“Why didn’t you just ask his mother if you could take some of his cremains?”

I stepped back. “She doesn’t know me from Adam. It would seem ghoulish.”

“Oh and carrying his ashes in your coat pocket isn’t?

“Nope,” I smiled, running my fingers gently through the sandy contents. “It’s comforting.”

END

Our downstairs bedroom in Bellingham reeked from the day we first moved into the house. I mentioned it to my husband, Dan, when we started unpacking boxes.

“Dan, there’s a weird smell in here,” I said.

“This house is new,” Dan explained. “When a house is closed up tight for a period of time, it gets musty and needs to air out. Give it a few days.”

Two weeks passed and the bedroom smelled worse. When I said something about it to my friend, Colleen, she replied, “Oh, Dawn, that’s just what houses in the Northwest smell like. You’re from San Diego, what do you know about living in wet ecosystems?”

The smell waxed and waned for a year so we finally contacted the builder. He dutifully checked everything and found no dead animals, no gas leaks, no sewer problems, no moldy floorboards. Our crawlspace was fresh as a daisy. Besides, he didn’t think it smelled bad — maybe just a little woodsy.

After two years, the smell no longer waned; it was pervasive and foul. I was forced to keep the bedroom door closed to prevent odor from wafting throughout our home. I talked to two cleaning companies that specialized eradicating fire damage odors. They either couldn’t smell it (what is it with Washington State noses anyway?) or couldn’t locate it. Because Dan and I weren’t willing to rebuild the entire south side of the house, we did the next best thing: pretended the problem didn’t exist.

The following year our smelly room became famous online. It was home to the Spam Cam, a popular faux-science Web site dedicated to the decomposition of the Hormel canned meat product, Spam. What the hell, we thought, maybe one rank smell could cancel out another. Loaves of Spam festered alongside comparison foods such as potatoes, pizza and Twinkies. We uploaded photos and commentary to the Website on a daily basis. Dan had to do most of the dirty work — I couldn’t tolerate the aroma.

Twelve months later when the Spam Cam was laid to rest, brave Dan dragged an arsenal of cleaning products and equipment into the smelly room and shut the door behind him. By sunset he stumbled triumphant into the hallway. “I think I’ve done it, Dawn. Let’s give the room some time to vent.”

We waited. I entertained myself with visions of new paint, fresh flowers, maybe an office extension. Seven days later on a bright spring morning, I strode down the hallway, hesitated, and then swung the smelly room’s door wide open. For a moment it sparkled.

“Hey, Dawn,” Dan called from his reading chair. “Is the smell gone?” He looked up just in time to see me running into bathroom with a towel over my  nose.

“I take it that would be a No.”

Odorbusters in Seattle seemed like the answer to our prayers. Stanley (Mr. Odorbuster) said there were no guarantees but he was 98 percent sure he could locate the source of the smell and exorcise it. He bragged about being featured on the news with his odor-seeking dog, Buster. If we paid extra for time and trouble, he’d gladly trek north to help us out. “It’s worth it,” I said. “And bring Buster with you.”

At 8:30 on Saturday morning, Dan and I awakened to a sharp rapping on the front door. There stood Stanley, bright-eyed and ready to work. “Where’s the dog?” I asked. “Sorry,” he said. “Buster couldn’t make it today. But my nose is just as good.” Dan stood in the driveway staring at the bright green ODORBUSTERS lettering glowing against the side of Stanley’s white van. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” he muttered.

All morning, I heard Stanley tinkering, tapping, sniffing and snorting. The man was driven. At noon I checked on him.

“Making progress?” I asked.

He didn’t look happy. “I can’t seem to find the source,” he said. “I think the smell is in that outside wall but I need another opinion.” Stanley stepped back, studying me for a moment. “How’s your nose, Dawn?”

“Well, I can smell garlic in the next room.”

“Good enough!”

With Stanley’s guidance I snuffled every inch of the carpet and lower wallboard. “Don’t breathe so deep,” he coached. “Slow down. Take short sniffs. Think of it as wine tasting.”

I finally stood up and patted the wall under the window. “It’s coming from here,” I announced.

Stanley was proud. “You should work for me,” he said. “You have great nostrils.” Then he pressed his palms against the offending wall, silent.

Suddenly my mentor grabbed a saw from his toolbox and faced me.

“We need to operate,” he said.

I steadied the ladder as Stanley climbed above the window and looked down to me for final sanction. “You sure about this?” he asked, waving his saw in the air.

“Do it.”

Stanley sawed a 12-inch square hole over the windowsill and another near the floorboard, yanking out insulation along the way. A chemical odor poured into the room. “Pay dirt,” he grinned. “Now we find the source.” He grabbed two oversized clear plastic bags, dropping wallboard into one and insulation into the other. “We’ll cook these in the sun for a while and then check to see which one reeks the most. That’ll give us our answer.” Confidently, we both waited on the deck, downing Tylenol and tea.

An hour later we opened the bags. No bad smell from either of them. Stan scratched his scalp. “We know it’s in the wall but the parts don’t smell when isolated. I’m baffled. Gosh, Dawn, I guess you’re that rare 2% of clients that I can’t fix.”

The door to the smelly room was closed for another year.

One late autumn afternoon during year six, Dan and I chatted in our kitchen with Jim, a builder friend. As usual, I brought up the elusive odor problem. “Mind if I check outside for a minute?” Jim said. “Sure,” I replied, “But you won’t smell much. It’s inside the wall.” Five minutes later he returned. “You have Omniwood siding. Some of their siding has problems. Did you know there’s a class action lawsuit against them? You might have a case.”

Jim was right. A mammoth bacteria colony was happily oozing around our siding boards. In six short months we replaced all of the siding with an $11000.00 settlement check. When the carpenter hammered his last nail, Dan and I stood in the hallway outside the smelly room, ready for the big test. I tapped my fingers together and then stepped inside, closing the door behind me.

After about five minutes Dan couldn’t stand it any longer. “Dawn? You okay in there?” I swung the door open and breathed deeply.

“This. Room. Is. Clear.”

END