By Bunny Beauregard -- 1/30/24
For most people, funerals don’t make for polite breakfast conversation, but for my mother if you weren’t talking about death you were wasting time. I got my first bra at 11 years old, but started thinking about making sure my undergarments matched long before I ever had any. Before she left our house my mother made sure everything matched, right down to her socks and earrings. If she hadn’t done laundry in a couple days and therefore didn’t have the properly striped panties, she’d tell me and my sister we better bring a change of underwear to the funeral home if she was to die doing the day’s errands.
I haven’t been to many funerals. There was one on my fourteenth birthday, some great aunt I’d never met. Our family packed in our old blue Chevy and headed north to Virginia. I don’t remember what I wore that day or if my bra matched my dress. I spent most of my day thinking about how that was the first time I’d ever heard my mom curse and how maybe if I’d eaten those “damn sandwiches” we were offered for lunch I wouldn’t have been so preoccupied with the color of the walls inside that great aunt’s house.
Making sure I matched became something of a habit for me after years of living with my mother left me hesitating around every corner waiting to meet my maker. When I got a bit older and maybe a smidge dumber I started planning past my funeral. After reading something, or maybe seeing it in a movie, that said the clothes you died in were the ones you’d wear well past the day they put you in the ground. If the way you left the world was violent or grim, chances are you’ll be coming back and you’ll be in the same jeans you were when you departed.
My mother doesn’t believe in ghosts, not the ones you can see wearing last season’s cashmere. She believes when she’s put into the ground wearing her matching bra and panties that’s the last of her you’ll ever see. I believe she has far too much baggage on this side of things to leave for good. Funerals don’t need to be discussed over lunch and undergarments don’t have to match before going out the door if you’ve got things all nice and tidy over here. After too many years fretting over not being able to find any underwear to match my favorite polkadot bra I decided going commando is a lot less stressful and has the added benefit of giving any paramedics that find my mangled body a good laugh.
-BB