BURYING GRANDPA IN WALT DISNEY WORLD
PART I: Grandpa
Our Grandpa Theodore always loved his trips to Disney parks. Ever since his first drive to Anaheim with four kids in the back of our industrial beige 1956 four-door Chevy Bel-Air, he couldn't wait to take us back to
Disneyland and, later, Walt Disney World. Invariably, each time we visited brought us new wonders: Pirates of the Caribbean in the late 60's, in 1982 Epcot (then spelled in all capital letters EPCOT when Disney learned that acronyms could not be trademarked), Animal Kingdom in 1998. His and Grandma's home were filled with memorabilia while holiday dinners were shared over conversations intent on his regaling us with talk of this new park attraction or that vague rumor skimmed off some small tributary of the Internet devoted to Disney fandom.
So when Grandpa's health began to fail and his trips to Orlando or Southern California became more cerebral than actual, some whispered conversations among us tended toward what would happen when he was no longer with us. What he would leave us and our mother was less consequential than how he would leave us and, subsequently, how we would leave him. Early in his life he had bought burial plots in Rose City Cemetery. ("Land values never decrease," he'd prophesied incorrectly.) But in his later years, he'd mentioned a desire to just being cremated with his ashes scattered who knows where.
But he liked to share his gallows humor. On one Thanksgiving while consuming platefuls of turkey and trimmings, he had joked about Walt Disney's fate after his death in 1966.
"You know, there is a rumor that old Walt's head is cryogenically preserved in Disneyland," he told us. "This is not true. He is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles. There may be some truth, however," he then intoned with a whisper that would fail to extinguish a candle flame an inch away, "that his gall bladder is in the Magic Kingdom in Florida."
He smiled at us all as our eyes widened. Grandpa could be very serious about Disney stuff. But, like the politician and his politics once described by William F. Buckley Jr., Grandpa was as serious about Disney as a flagpole-sitter is serious about flagpoles.
Coincidentally, like both Walt Disney, his brother Roy, and nephew Roy Jr., Grandpa passed on in December. This was a few years back. Grandma let us take care of the funeral arrangements and did not express reservations about his cremation telling us that the plots in Portland could be used by anyone in the family if necessary. Her own health was frail and by the next summer she was gone, too.
At three garage sales and several family meetings we children and grandchildren picked over the remaining furniture, knickknacks, pots, pans, and portable kitchen electrical appliances. Grandma and Grandpa's remains sat silent witnesses in their brass urns on a high shelf in the living room. My older sister volunteered to store the urns and, because our minds were distracted by the need to empty the house already sold, she assumed that no reply provided tacit consent.
A few weeks passed when, while sorting through a typical Monday's email, I took more than a cursory note of a travel advertisement featuring Fall bargains at Walt Disney World. The shoulder season always provided wonderful travel bargains; we'd seen China and Tibet in October once and Venice in September. There were views and values to match. I printed out the email intending to discuss it with my wife, Donna, later.
My plan to bury Grandpa's remains in Walt Disney World arrived like Athena emerging from Zeus's brow with little advance warning or fanfare. "Why not bury him there?" I thought driving home from Home Depot with a newly purchased Price-Pfister kitchen faucet. This topic provided a significant amount of discussion with my wife as I struggled to repair my plumbing.
"Jail....that's where you will end up!" my wife breathlessly informed me. The thought of being incarcerated in a Central Florida correctional facility and becoming Big Esteban's girlfriend did scare me some. But I argued that there were too many people bustling around in the parks for anyone to notice. And besides, we'd keep the urn at home and use a.... Well, we'd find something.
"Your father as fertilizer! What an end. Did you hate him?!" My wife's voice became sharp. My right eye twitched. Nevertheless, I pressed on.
"Remember your sister? She took her father-in-law's ashes up to Alaska to spread them over Mount McKinley from a plane."
"And as I recall what was left of him ended up in the back seat of a Cessna 150 when the air currents shifted," Donna reminded me.
I conceded silently that I would not try the plane route. The subject was dropped for a time.
But not the Fall trip to Walt Disney World.
Coming Soon:
BURYING GRANDPA IN WALT DISNEY WORLD PART II: Dark Plans