A Grave Consultation (Rose)

[The Exodus]

OOC: Rose and Tristan… who is actually doing his job?! BIC:

Tristan Vidal

Sometimes, Tristan would swear that this industry was killing him inside out. He didn’t feel particularly bad. He didn’t feel sick or sad or depressed. He felt a little blank. Almost out-of-body, really, as he prepared for the consultation for the Hepworth funeral. A mother was burying a child roughly Tristan’s own age and while it was sad in a remote sort of way, Tristan couldn’t bring himself to actually feel sad. If he broke down over every dead twenty-something to pass through his funeral home, Tristan would be ill-suited for his job.

Life was so short, so precious, that when he was dealing with funerals like this he took an extra five minutes to text Gwen a “thank you” or snuck a hug or kiss from Solange when he passed her in the hall. The life he lived was filled with people and things to be grateful for. It wasn’t perfect, but it was his. He’d even bothered to call his uncle and schedule a dinner with him for the first time in nearly two months. That was how grateful Tristan was to be breathing and walking around this morning.

It was springtime in Paris: a truly spectacular sight. The city had thawed and flowers sprang up on every green patch of ground they could find. Tristan stared outside, admiring the nest a pair of swallows had crafted in the gable above his office window. The chirping had pissed him off yesterday. “I’ve gotta get rid of it,” he’d told Solange. “Before they lay their eggs, I’m gonna take a broom and just knock it down.” Today, he didn’t mind nearly as much. It wasn’t exactly ideal to have two birds twittering loudly while you were trying to make arrangements for body transport with the morgue. But it was a stupid thing to complain about when it was all just a part of the Circle of Life.

Tristan swiveled around in his seat and thumbed through the folder he’d compiled for Ms. Hepworth's mother when she arrived – a brochure of caskets, cremation plans, legal documents, her daughter’s official death certificate, among other things – and a small smile plucked at his lips. Everything was in order.

He was a tall man and thin, but to say that Tristan looked like a typical funeral director would be a lie. His long brown hair and round, but pronounced cheekbones made him look younger and more like he should be sitting in the back of a college classroom than running his own business. He couldn’t control that, per se, but Tristan would be damned if anyone mistook him for unprofessional. There was coffee brewing on a side table behind the desk, almost ready to offer to clients, and the shelves were lined with impressively titled books. And that manila folder had everything the Hepworth family would need to have a smooth service.

Well, everything except Kleenex, anyways. Tristan stood and reached up into one of his cabinets to look for a spare box, just in case. In fact, he had just pulled out his last box of tissues when the door to his office creaked open. Tristan shut the cabinet and set the box of Kleenex down.

“Come in,” he said. Two women entered the room and neither was familiar. The older of the two was definitely Mademoiselle Hepworth's mother, however, since the woman with her looked as though she could only be a few years younger than Tristan. Immediately, he sobered up and his eyes softened. Tristan extended a hand to the older woman. "Tristan Vidal; we spoke on the phone. Please, have a seat. Both of you.”

He gestured to the leather seats opposite his desk before returning to sit across from them.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Tristan said softly. “I know that this is a difficult time for your family. And we’ll do everything in our power to ease your grieving process.”

[plantnerd92]

Rose Lee Peace

It had been a rough go for the loved ones of Linnea Hepworth. Particularly for Rose, though she was only her cousin through marriage, she had quickly befriended Linnea shortly after meeting her. And today, while being eight months pregnant, Rose was going to be arranging a funeral with Lin's divorced, bickering, grieving parents. Rough job for a hormonal pregnant lady who had lost a loved one. Still, she knew that it was even harder for Lin's parents and her boyfriend, Maksim, and so she decided to step up to the plate and be a source of strength and a peacemaker for her family during this time.

Daniel Hepworth had to take care of some things before he could be to the funeral home, so she walked in with Anna Smith, Linnea's mother. Every time Rose was around the both of them at the same time, she wanted to rattle their heads around until they gained some sense and started acting like mature adults. The bickering and nitpicking they did to each other, particularly from Anna drove her insane. As it would turn out, Rose would have to play the mother and sit between the two full-grown 'children' to help them behave. And along with that, Xavier had to work, so Rose had to brink her own children with her, her five year old Cally, and her two and a half year old Dimitri, who was deaf and only spoke sign language.

She came up to the door of the office with Anna and knocked quietly, the door creaking open just a little bit as she did.

"Come in," the soft, mild voice of the funeral director called from the inside. Rose gently urged Anna inside, before turning and speaking to her children while simultaneously signing with her hands for them to follow her as the director introduced himself and invited them to sit. Cally took her little brother's hand and lead him inside past her mother and went to sit down on the floor between them and color in her coloring book. Rose then waddled in behind them and sat on the other seat, and Dimitri toddled over to cuddle up against her swollen belly to press his ear to her stomach and feel the vibrations of her unborn daughter's heart beating inside her. Rose felt a little like she was running a circus instead of coming to arrange a funeral, but thankfully her children were behaving appropriately.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," Tristan told them softly. "I know that this is a difficult time for your family, and we'll do everything in our power to ease your grieving process."

Anna was beside herself, and wouldn't say anything for the fear of bursting into sobs, so Rose gently took over and spoke.

"Thank you, Monsieur Vidal. You have know idea how much that means to our family." She said graciously. Rose was no stranger to death. She had lost her mother to cancer when she was thirteen, and nearly died of the same cancer herself a little more than five years ago. Still, when it came to arranging funerals, Rose had no idea what she was doing, and needed all the help she could get.

"What do we need to do?" she asked, ready to buck up and get to work.

[The Exodus]

Tristan Vidal

It dawned on Tristan a moment too late that the younger of the two women was pregnant and had brought two children along with her. He contained his surprise. But he did consider phoning the front desk for a moment to ask Solange how it was that two children had gotten past her. The last kid they’d let this far into the funeral home had been Leopold. And while babysitting hadn’t been a total disaster, Tristan was about one-hundred and five percent sure children did not belong in a funeral home. He watched as the little girl contented herself with a coloring book and the little boy held much, much more still than Leopold ever did. Children were fascinating. They never seemed uncomfortable in the funeral home. Confused, sure. And curious, definitely. But never really creeped out or scared. Not until they were much older, not until they could grasp the ideas of zombies and ghosts coming back from the dead. The serenity of the two children in his office now told Tristan a lot about the family he was dealing with – or it would, if Tristan could figure out just who their mother was. Was she the deceased? Or was she the pregnant woman? And if she was the latter, how was she connected to Linnea Hepworth?

Tristan always saw snapshots of other people’s domestic lives. He was always left to piece them into a sort of scrapbook for his own posterity. He didn’t always get a chance to ask. But in this case, Tristan thought he just might have to. The pregnant woman didn’t quite look like the deceased. And if she wasn’t family, Tristan might have to ask her to allow the family their privacy. And yet, it was the young woman and not the deceased’s mother who spoke when Tristan talked.

"Thank you, Monsieur Vidal. You have no idea how much that means to our family," the young woman said. Tristan heard that a lot. He’d cared for hundreds of families in the last eight years. He knew what he was doing. But he didn’t know what it was to be a mourner. Not really. Not unless you counted Jacqui’s funeral. That was nearly a year ago now. Or unless you counted the service he’d performed for Gwen and Torben mere months ago. But somehow, it wasn’t the same. Tristan was an observer to death. He hoped he always would be and that he’d never know what it was like to lose someone he loved. A stupid thing to hope. Pointless. Everyone died someday. And you never knew when it would happen to you or to someone you knew. Someone you loved.

Maybe the pregnant woman was Mademoiselle Hepworth’s sister.

"What do we need to do?" the young woman asked.

Tristan offered her the folder.

“We’ll need to discuss the deceased’s – that is Linnea’s – last wishes or, if she didn’t leave any, what sort of interment you would like to have for her. Are we talking burial… cremation… entombment?”