I spent my spring vacation in mourning.

My mother-in-law died. It was sad but not tragic. She was 88-years old. But the funeral was unsettling.

When my father died a couple of years ago, it was again sad but not tragic. He was 90. There was no long hospitalization. He died at home watching football on TV. His team was winning. They later lost, but he never knew that.

He had a proper Jewish funeral, with a closed coffin. He was buried in a plain pine box, wearing a simple white shroud.

But at my mother-in-law's great big Italian funeral she was laid out for all to see, dressed up and wearing a new hairdo and a polished pink coffin with big brass hardware. She looked better than she's looked for years.

For the two days she was on display, friends and relatives came to socialize. "Hello, how are you, what are you doing now?" They all caught up on old times, while the preserved body in the front of the room persevered, maintaining some sort of dignity.

Don't misunderstand. I loved my mother-in-law. She was a lot of fun. We'd play poker. Sometimes I'd win 40-cents from her at a time.

But seeing her dead body was too intimate, like seeing her go to the bathroom or something. I found myself averting my eyes, out of respect or embarresment.

She loved to gamble. She'd go to Atlantic City and stand at the craps table, leaning over the table as far as she could go and throwing the dice as hard as she could. So her grandchild placed in the coffin a pair of dice to see her to heaven. I can imagine an archaeologist thousands of years from now trying to puzzle out the religious significance of those spotted totems.

Her husband is old and confused. He told my wife that his wife's health started declining after she had her uterus removed. He told his daughter, "That was a long time ago, before you were born."
He said his wife started looking older after that. He said he first noticed it when she turned 85.

And I noticed for the first time how much my mother-in-law looks like my wife.

And I thought, "Now I know what my wife will look like when she's dead."