The song fits the motif, but I never owned a Jim Carroll Band tape. Is this subtle foreshadowing/you admitting to something?

A liar of a cloudless blue sky pushed the temperature into the seventies, and thanks to the Datsun’s blasting heat I was already sweating through my pallbearer garb before stepping onto the sprinkler-wet cemetery grass. Mercy told me to take off my blazer, but ever the professional, I endured.

The dead grandmother’s final journey was a short one, and the club shepherded her casket ten steps from the hearse to her resting place. A stainless-steel (according to Mr. Stephens, who never missed an opportunity to fill in the details, perhaps hoping one of the club members would pursue the funerary arts as a career) lowering device framed the rectangular grave. We stepped onto a mat of artificial grass, and beneath the green carpet some sort of planking wobbled under my feet. I avoided looking into the grave because if I didn’t look at it, I wouldn’t get sucked in.

With the casket cradled between two horizontal straps attached to the shiny arms of the lowering device, the club retreated behind the grandson, Father W., and the hearse driver. Aside from funeral home employees and us volunteers, there were no other attendees. I hoped that my presence counted for something in someone’s ledger, but I worried it was a selfish hope, so I did my best to honor the woman and her grandson by standing as reverently as a sweaty humpbacked boy could.

After the brief, impersonal ceremony comprised of a few biblical readings, the grandson placed flowers on the casket. Mr. Stephens released the device’s hand brake, and the casket sank into the grave. (Note: I wanted to write “yawning pit” but that’s a bit of a melodramatic cliché, and if taken literally, implies the grave was expanding, which it was not.)

The moment the ceremony ended, Mercy dashed to the Datsun, leaving me trapped with Mr. Stephens and Father W. Mr. Stephens explained how the casket rested on bumpers a few inches above the earthen bottom, which allowed them to easily retrieve the lowering straps. When he paused to breathe between sentences, Father W. jumped in, asking if my parents were Catholic. They were, sort of. Sort of because they were lapsed Catholics. Before the full family lapsing began in earnest, I’d made it to my first confession in second grade. Unsurprisingly, my first and only confession did not go well, as I lied about lying to a teacher who had accused me of purposefully spilling hand soap on the boys’ room floor. I didn’t spill the soap on the floor, although, apparently, in the eyes of my teacher, I acted guilty and embarrassed as though I did, so it became this paradox of lies that neither me nor the confessional priest could follow, and I was eventually absolved of my sin(s) by his exhaustion.