During the services, I found myself drifting; thinking back to that one other funeral I had attended, so many years now gone. Being as young as I was at the time, I had not understood at all what was actually taking place. I had been informed that it was my mother and father lying there, sleeping in those funny looking, boxlike beds and that they were going to heaven and I would never see them again. But, I knew that was a lie. Those big, ugly dolls didn't even look like my parents (I learned much later that both of their faces had required quite a bit of cosmetic restoration to enable the open casket viewing). I was sure that my mother and father were just away on another of their frequent business trips and would be coming home any day now with presents for me, just as they had always done before.

I had been, for the most part, rather bored and sleepy during the service, wondering vaguely why so many people around me were silently crying. But, when I was taken forward by my paternal grandparents and told to kiss those dolls goodbye, with everyone watching me while looking so solemn and expectant, I became frightened. I was lifted up by my grandfather and he leaned me over the open casket so I could kiss this thing that he claimed was my father. I tried to grab onto the edge of the casket and push myself away from that horror, but my small hands slipped and I tipped forward, my head cracking into the face of the corpse.

In utter panic, I tried frantically to push myself away from the coffin. My hands landed on the head and chest of thing within, the body being hard in places and nauseatingly soft and yielding in others. As I pushed against its face, the lips were pulled back to reveal blackened gums surmounting broken and jagged teeth. I could see where the jaw had been wired shut to prevent it falling open at an inopportune moment and a foul, sickly sweet odor wafted up to me. I was screaming hysterically by this time, my fear being intensified by the fact that the face had partially caved in where my hands had pushed in the embalmer's putty, leaving ragged, bloodless gaps in the pale, powered flesh.

Finally, my dear grandmother--she who had been against my attending this funeral from the very beginning--managed to snatch me from the arms of my paternal grandfather and rushed me out of the church, while I sobbed brokenly against her breast. I experienced horrible nightmares for months following that incident, reliving in my dreams the entire episode--except in my dreams the corpses became animated, rising out of their coffins with spasmodic, jerking movements. Their bodies lurched to the floor and began to chase me through endless darkened corridors, my father's face misshapen and broken, with portions of his skull showing whitely through skin that had turned a sickly, leprous green.

I ran screaming through the corridors of my dreams, my short legs pumping madly, but seemingly moving me not at all. The bodies of my parents stayed close behind me, their rotting flesh dripping from their decomposing corpses in putrefying blobs with every step they took. I could smell the overpowering stench of their bodies becoming stronger as they closed the gap between us and just as I felt a claw like, bony hand grip my shoulder, I would wake up, crying in terror. That was the start of my grandmother's sitting up with me following my soon to be frequent nightmares, comforting and protecting me then, as she was to do for so many years to come.