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When the rest of the mourners had slipped away, I walked up to my grandmother's open casket, said goodbye and put a receipt in her hand.

My grandmother was a compulsive shopper. When she wasn't buying something, she was returning something. Sometimes she bought something just so she could return it and buy something else. Her wallet was spring-loaded. She could compute percentages like a mathematician and calculate sales tax better than a cash register. Her addiction filled two closets, bending hefty metal rods to the breaking point. If there was an outfit, you could be certain there were shoes to go with it. And there was a getup for every occasion-including the final one.

"When I die, make sure you put me in this." I don't know how many times I heard those words as a child, sitting on the edge of her bed as she held up a hanger enshrouded in translucent plastic. The lucky outfit that would one day accompany her to her grave was always a pantsuit, usually in somber black or-when Barbara Bush was the fashion plate of the steely-haired set-a sensible blue. Inevitably, the choice outfit would fall out of favor, usually because of some perceived offense, like griping her butt or binding her stomach. Once I grew old enough to understand physical trivialities such as those are irrelevant to the dead, I still refrained from pointing out the fact she probably wouldn't care much about a tight waistband when the time came; it was never about what she took with her into the ground. It was about what she brought back from the store. It was the hunt for the end-all-in every meaning of the term-of outfits. The Final Outfit.

When my grandmother died, nearly senseless with the side effects of COPD, it had been over two years since she'd indulged in her favorite pastime. The closet still brimmed with clothes, but all were too large for her considerably shrunken frame, and the current Outfit's identity had faded from my mind. The search then fell to me, the onus of locating the perfect accompaniment to a cream-colored satin lining that wouldn't gripe or bind falling heavily on my inexperienced shoulders. Since it was early spring, the winning outfit ended up being a tweedy, pastel suit.

It was the best I could do. Yet, the viewing room's piped-in hymns did little to quell my unease, or drown out the Jacob Marley-like echo of my grandmother's voice in my head.

"Why the hell did you put me in that? It's too short in the crotch."

I knew it would be. I walked to the front and tucked the receipt for the entire getup into the fold of her hand, silently telling her to take it back to the Great Hecht's in the Sky, and begin her favorite cycle all over again.

My grandmother was put into the ground two days after Easter. While she didn't go with the Outfit, it was an outfit, chosen with love and care. And if I could have, I would have let her lie in State in the Hecht's shoe department, where her casket could have supported each season's new styles for years to come.

Learn more about this author, Lynn Wills.
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