His cremation ashes will not be any different because I gave my dad a shave before the funeral home took his body from the house he’d lived in for 47 years.
On the surface, logic says a shave before cremation is about as silly as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I’m a logical person. So why did I feel so strongly compelled to give my dad a final shave?
Dad, a stringent Southern Baptist, never smoked and was a strict teetotaler. Despite that, less than two months from turning 85 and just three months after his diagnosis with liver and pancreatic cancer, he looked like a mendicant alcoholic. He had a scraggly three-day beard and his ravaged body’s thighs were hardly the circumference of my own skinny calves.
Brad Bull
A shave was not going to significantly improve his appearance.
Yet, I shaved him. And I will forever treasure the experience of that painstaking endeavor.
It was around 6 p.m., almost two hours after his last breath. My mother, two sisters and I were all exhausted. The two nights before — especially the last one — had been among the worst in my life. Let’s just say that despite powerful medicines from a caring hospice nurse, there were a lot of bodily expulsions and lots of soiled laundry. We had witnessed Dad’s near-constant moaning, crying and derelict pleas of “Help me!”
After hours of unconsciousness and labored gasping, and after hearing recordings of my son and daughter singing, Dad breathed his last. Mom, my two sisters and I kept our hands on Dad for several minutes as we cried, each of us adrift in memories of the man born in 1941 to a recently widowed mother of eight other sons.
After our tearful goodbyes, relieved for Dad’s peace, we wound up on the front porch, facing the setting sun with its Southern-summer broiling heat. A slight breeze caressed only mild relief. Decompressing, we awaited the arrival of the hearse that would bear Dad away forever.
“Knowing the hearse would arrive any minute, I contemplated a tension.”
Eventually, I went back to the bedroom to spend a few moments alone with him. As soon as I saw his face, I remembered that two days before, Mom had asked me to shave Dad, but I had not been able to because of his fitful agony. Knowing the hearse would arrive any minute, I contemplated a tension. It seemed silly to shave someone who was about to be cremated. On the other hand, it felt special, and if I were going to do it, I needed to hurry.
I raced to the bathroom. I saw a can of shaving foam, but I also spied something else up on a shelf: his old shaving mug and the brush that, when I was a boy, he would dab on my nose. When he wasn’t around, I would use the brush to apply lather to my own face and practice shaving, longing to be a man. Now, 60 years old with a longing to stay young, I quickly turned on the sink’s hot tap to fulfill all that childhood practice, but with a twist. I grabbed the mug, brush, a twin-bladed razor, and a wash rag that I soaked — along with the shaving brush — in steaming water.
Back at his hospital bed in my sister’s old room, looking at his face, I realized Mom’s last kiss had been on Dad’s scruffy face she’d asked me to shave. I would provide her a final smooth-cheeked kiss before he left. Still, as I draped the warm cloth over his face, I became aware this wasn’t about mere aesthetics. It was about respect. It was about saying goodbye through one last sensory experience with Dad.
Excited by new layers of purpose, I spun the wet shaving brush on the ring of soap in the mug. I eyed Dad’s features, then lathered his face and neck. Steadying his chin with my left hand, my fingertips ran across my father’s soapy skin, soft like cappuccino foam. I easily ignored the fragrance of death rising from his throat.
“I realized Mom’s last kiss had been on Dad’s scruffy face she’d asked me to shave.”
I was only half finished when I saw the hearse arrive. The attendant came in the room. I asked for more time. He graciously left. With a twin blade, the upper lip around his nose was particularly painstaking, but I finally got his face and neck smooth like porcelain.
I took the now-cool damp cloth and cleaned his face. A fingertip noticed how cold his skin already had become. I made a plan.
I tidied the area and then carried the washcloth with me as I went to get Mom. Passing the hallway bathroom, I tossed the cloth in the sink, turned on the hot water, then went to the porch.
Mom said, “Your sister told me she found you shaving your Dad.”
I told her, “Yes, I wanted you to be able to kiss him goodbye cleanshaven.”
She smiled. I said, “Give me a head start, and then come join me.”
I returned to the bathroom, turned off the tap and wrang out the hot cloth. Then I once again draped it over Dad’s face so that his skin would be warm to Mother’s fingers and lips.
Just in time, I heard Mom’s footfalls arriving. I removed the cloth and nodded at her as she entered, smiling. I exited, shutting the door behind me, leaving her to say goodbye to her husband of 63 years. I caught a glimpse of her hands cradling his face. She addressed him with words too sacred to repeat.
The fire of love engulfed the room.
Brad Bull has served as a hospital chaplain, pastor and professor. He now works as a therapist and freelance writer and speaker. He can be reached at his website DrBradBull.com