The World According To Garp is my favorite book. I first read it when I was 15 and I've reread it about once a year since. Each time I revisit it different parts of it hit me or I discover something I had previously overlooked. I think because I'm getting older and some older family friends have passed away recently this particular passage jumped out to me. It's about death.
Garp, the titular character, has gone to the chapel where his father-in-law's service will be held in order to handle some of the arrangements. The patriarch of the Percy family(Fat Stew) who Garp was contentious with growing up has also died and he gets roped into being a pallbearer. He isn't recognized by the family and in order to avoid any conflict he provides a pseudonym- Jack Smoans.
“Mr. Smoans?” Midge nudged him.
“Uh,” Garp said.
“The coffin, Jack,” whispered the hearse driver. Stewie Two, bulging beside him, looked seriously toward the enormous casket that now housed the debris of his father.
“We need four,” the driver said. “At least four.”
“No, I can take one side myself,” Garp said.
“Mr. Smoans looks very strong,” Midge said. “Not very large , but strong.”
“Mother,” Stewie Two said.
“Yes, yes, Stewart,” she said.
“We need four. That's all there is to it,” the driver said.
Garp didn't believe it. He could lift it.
“You two on the other side,” he said, “and up she goes.”
A frail mutter reached Garp from the mourners at Fat Stew's funeral, aghast at the apparently unmovable casket. But Garp believed in himself. It was just death in there; of course it would be heavy—the weight of his mother, Jenny Fields, the weight of Ernie Holm, and of little Walt (who was the heaviest of all). God knows what they all weighed together, but Garp planted himself on one side of Fat Stew's gray gunboat of a coffin. He was ready.
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