This past Thursday my wife and I
attended the wake of a family friend who had passed away earlier in the
week. While standing in line waiting to
see the family, I spotted the usual photo tributes to the deceased, propped on
easels in various corners of the funeral home.
As we approached one, I had to smile.
Instead of a photo of the recently lost person, there was a photo of
Minnie Pearl. “Oh!” I heard someone
ahead of me exclaim, “That was from her trip to Nashville!” The mood lifted slightly as people began to
quietly chat about the trip. Other
photos posted along the line included pictures of her children, grand-children,
grade-school friends, and trips she had taken.
At one point my four year-old tugged on my hand. “Is this the story of how she die-ed?” (She
always over-pronounces the “ed” on words).
“No,” I smiled, “This is the story of how she lived.”
Every time I attend a wake or a
funeral, I can’t help thinking about family members that have passed away, and
how we handled their deaths. It seems
that we laugh as much as we cry.
When my mother passed away from
cancer the year after I graduated from college, we held a graveside service for
her. Two rows of chairs had been set up
in front of her stone for the family to sit upon during the service. As friends and family approached, my cousin
Aunt Lily (that’s a story for another day) went to sit down in the front
row. Somehow she missed the chair,
landing square on her backside in front my mother's urn. There were a few horrified gasps from the
crowd behind, but Aunt Lily was laughing hysterically, which made the rest of
the family laugh as well. We all agreed,
as her last prank on one of her favorite relatives, mom had somehow pulled the
chair out from under Aunt Lily at the last moment.
Many years later, at the same
cemetery, we laid my grandmother to rest.
Once again we had a graveside service.
The ceremony itself was casual and somber. Rain had soaked the ground, and the sky was
still overcast. After the service, my
cousin and I were standing near the grave, sort of idly watching the men from
the funeral home prepare to bury Gram’s urn.
When they removed the carpet from over the pre-prepared hole, my cousin
glanced in, spotting several inches of water in the bottom. She gasped, looking at the undertaker with
wide eyes, “You’re not going to put her in there are you?” The undertaker looked nervous. “Well, yes,” he mumbled softly. My cousin slyly grinned my way, “But, Gram never
learned to swim!” I had to walk away,
chuckling at the shocked look on the poor man’s face.
A couple of years ago, the man
who laid both these women to rest also passed away. He had been a family friend since long before
I was born, and he had performed weddings, baptisms and funerals for our
family. During his life, he had been a
lay-preacher at our local church, and his stories were always entertaining, making
church services much more than just learning written scripture. Before he passed away, he planned his own
funeral down to the last detail, including writing his own eulogy. Like his church services, we knew upon
entering his funeral service that we were in for something different. Sitting at the front of the church, on a
small platform behind the alter, sat a bluegrass band, complete with banjo,
fiddle and red plaid shirts. His eulogy
was read by his cousin, who delivered it exactly as he would have had he been
with us. As always, his stories made us
cry, laugh, and remember. It may be the
only time I’ve left a church saying “That was the best funeral I’ve ever been
to!”
While funerals are generally
thought of as sad, somber affairs, filled with mourning relatives dressed in
black talking in shushed tones around perfectly constructed flower arrangements,
it’s nice to know that they aren’t all that way. As we approached the casket of our family
friend a few days ago, I was once again given a chance to smile. Hanging in her casket lid, among other tokens
of her life, was a small sign referencing two of her idols. It summed up her
personality perfectly. “Unless you are
God or George Straight,” the sign read, “Wipe your feet and take off your boots.”
