Wendi Rank – October 2026
My mom passed away over the summer. I can hear your gasp, feel your condolences. And I thank you.
But we’ve always kept our time together light. Today will be no different. Because when someone dies, some of the decisions those of us left behind must make are, well, laughable. Should we be laughing at a time like this?
My friends, yes. Sometimes, when your world’s orbit has been set tumbling like that weird glass pane imprisoning General Zod and crew in 1978’s Superman, humor is the only thing keeping us going. Well, humor and chocolate. And General Zod. That dude has got to be an interesting hang.
When my dad passed away, the funeral home asked if he should be buried with the flashlight he arrived with to the funeral home. I’ve seen enough horror movies for my answer to be a hard “no.”
Never, ever give the dead tools to facilitate their resurgence.
When my grandmother died, my mom and aunt debated whether she should be buried with her artificial leg. After hours of discussion, the seventeen-year-old me couldn’t take it anymore. “You do realize,” I said, “that Mom-Mom will haunt you if you bury her without her leg. Haunt you. You have to bury her with her leg. Her wig, too. And her opal necklace. You know she said it was bad luck for any of us to wear it.” My mom and aunt stopped and stared, like I’d slapped them à la Cher and Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck. “You’re right,” my mom said, dazed. “You’re right.” As usual. Ahem.
When my mom died, I packed up her makeup for the funeral home. The Clinique blush in its green case, the Cover Girl compact. Her foundation bore her fingerprints on its black lid. The brow pencil was never opened, dementia stealing her ability to negotiate it. Despite a thorough search, I couldn’t find her lipstick. And like her mother before her, she’d haunt the kid that put her in the ground without a swipe of coral pink on her lips. “People think I’m an autumn, but I’m actually a summer,” she always said, after having her colors done in the late eighties.
Hanna Flanagan, writing for The Cut, explains color analyses identify the color palette most flattering for an individual. A summer palette, she continues, often looks best on those with fair hair and eyes, and cool skin tones. She also says color analysis is en vogue, with some heading to the global color experts in South Korea, others preferring consultations with New York studios. For $299.
For the record, I am almost certain my mom did not go to either South Korea or New York for her 1988 color consultation.
She did, however, spend her life in coral lipstick tones. Unable to find a tube in her apartment, I ran to Target, hoping to find a lipstick reflective of my mom’s summer color palette.
No. The wryness of my mom both being a summer and passing in summer has not been lost on me. Welcome to life – and death – with my mom. Mercifully, I found a lipstick shade, a gold tube called Peony Pink, I knew she would love.
Why are these things so important in death? Wigs and fake legs and flashlights and lipstick shades? Well, I, for one, am afraid of getting haunted. Afraid of the resurrections of Pet Sematary. Afraid of the zombies of George Romero. I am not afraid, however, of a $299 color consultation in New York. Or General Zod. Maybe I’ll take him with me.
Contact Wendi Rank on Instagram @wendirank
