My dad has been gone two weeks, and I still catch myself dialing his number to see if he wants to go with me to town, or if he needs anything. In his honor, today's blog will be a chapter from the memoirs that I hope to have finished by the end of the year..............
One of the most important things you learn when you're growing up Southern is that death happens. Nobody down here hides death from a child although they might use euphamisms like "she has gone to be with the angels," "she's gone to be with Jesus" or a thousand more. No matter what they call it, there is no doubt in any Southern child's mind that death is final.
Until fairly recently, it was a custom in the South to "sit up" (or set up, as it was said) with the dead. I assume that harks back to the days when dead people miraculously came back to life having been mistakenly labeled as dead (thus the reason for putting a string around the finger of the deceased that was attached to a bell on the surface, just in case; if someone used it and was dug up in time it was said that they were 'saved by the bell') Or perhaps it was to keep wild animals at bay that might have wanted to feast on a tasty unembalmed corpse in the days when homes were less inpenetrable than now. Perhaps it is simply the signature gesture of respect from Southern people? For whatever reason, neighbors and family took shifts throughout the days and night between death and burial sitting beside the open casket (nobody much wanted the night shift, when the shadows got long and the air got filled with spooky sounds, and every sense is heightened by the knowledge that you are in the room with Death).
When you're five or six years old and you walk into someone's house (it is also only fairly recently that funeral homes took the place of someone laying in state in their own home) and instead of a couch there's a big metal box with a creepy looking person asleep in it, and everyone is crying and speaking in hushed tones -- you become very aware that "death" is a bad thing. No horror story ever written can come close to the feeling you get the very first time you're held up to look into a casket at a dead person. I was probably two or three and it was my great-grandmother. I reached out and touched her hand and remember not how it felt, but how it made me feel: filled with sadness and emptiness.
Death always has a humorous as well as a macabre side though. One of Ray Stevens funniest songs was about the experiece of sitting up with a dead relative and in the middle of a thunderstorm rigor mortis took over and stiffened the man's body into a sitting position. The chorus of the song says "I ain't settin' up with the dead no more, since the dead started settin' up too!" I believe that it is a true honor to have people remember you with laughter, and the religions that have happy parties instead of gloom and doom vigils have the right idea.
The whole ordeal of "funeral planning" is one that is taken to great extreme by Southerners, with great pageantry and fanfare. Very few are sent off on their one-way trip to see Jesus without a royal goodbye. While people from other areas have their memorial services and wakes, etc., they have nothing that comes close to a good old timey Southern funeral. And, there is no machine that man will ever create that can get a message to so many so quickly as telling one Southern woman that a "person of importance" has passed to his great reward and a funeral must be planned quickly. "Importance" of course being a subjective term in this instance...it could mean someone who was very visible in the church, someone who owned a local business, someone who was related to someone who was "important" or perhaps they were important simply for dying. Especially if they were "the first."
In case you have never heard about this phenomenon in nature, death always comes in threes. Ask any Southerner worth his salt. If you died after a long dry spell with no funerals, immediately your neighbors started looking at each other suspiciously watching for signs of who would be next. When the next person breathed their last, everyone nodded solemnly and said "Yep, it always comes in threes. I just wonder who'll be the third." It didn't matter if it was months before the hearse pulled into our cemetery again, when it did it would be met with those same solemn nods as the fates proved once again that they could count. If you've heard the Kevin Bacon rule (everyone is connected to Kevin Bacon if you can count back far enough) you will understand the reasoning behind the death of anyone from anywhere, counting towards our personal “rule of three.”
I can remember once when we had had two deaths in our valley and then there was a long breath-holding wait for the third axe to fall. Finally, one day my mother was talking to her mother in Ohio who had to leave the conversation early to go to a funeral. My mother proudly called everyone she knew to announce that she had just learned who the third one was. One of her parent’s parishioners had just been killed in a car accident. A moment of silence was given this fallen Yankee soul, and then life got back to normal. I’m not sure what would have happened if a massive weather anomaly or some other freak of nature had ever wreaked havoc on our community and there was a whole roomful of corpses. Toes, fingers, beans and pebbles would have likely been smoking as everyone tried to figure out whether the end count could be divided by three. And if not, who would be next.
As soon as the word was spread (rapidly) that the Grim Reaper had visited our valley, a few cursory tears were shed and then the women stoicly went to work. Kettles whistled, pots steamed and skillets sizzled as every woman worked her magic to create her contributions to the bereaved family’s table. It became almost a matter of pride to be the first to walk up the porch steps and open the door with its white beribboned wreath and announce to the family that “I knew y’all wouldn’t feel like cooking so I’ve brought you a little something.” Every woman found her niche and it was considered a cardinal sin if you brought the same dish that you knew someone else was bringing. My mother's tried and true was a congealed salad with lime jello, pineapple, cottage cheese and marshmallows. It was wonderful. I have the recipe but I have never been able to make it taste like hers. Most people brought casseroles, wonderful inventions that I feel sure have their roots in a need for a quick, cheap covered dish meal to take to a bereaved family.
Tupperware parties were really big about this time, mostly because Tupperware bowls gave a nice neat appearance to the food that was delivered to the families of the deceased. No more plastic wrap that didn't stick or tin foil that was easily torn. I’m sure stock rose in masking tape too, for every piece of Tupperware, china and pottery that most women owned had a piece of masking tape across the bottom with their name carefully written on it. Just as it was a matter of pride to be the first to take a dish to the newly bereaved, it was equally important for the bereaved to quickly return the dishes, freshly washed. More than once, after the glow had worn off of the festivities that surround a Southern death the gossip lines were filled with “it’s been two weeks, bless her heart, and she hasn’t gotten back my jello bowl yet. And if someone else dies, I’m gonna be needing that. I hate to call her and bother her, bless her heart, but I need my bowl!” Heaven forbid that grief keep a woman parted from her $4 piece of pink plastic with matching burping lid.
Times were hard in those days and sometimes it was tough to keep enough food in the freezer and on the table to feed your own family. Cooking for an additional family added to the stress of these women’s already-stretched budget, but somehow they pulled it off. Deviled eggs, macaroni salad, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, pork chops, biscuits, sliced tomatoes, dill pickles, fried okra, green beans, cole slaw, boiled cabbage, potato salad, pintos and ham…my mouth waters just thinking about it. It’s not worth losing a family member for, but, if you’ve got to let go of someone you love there’s no question that there's no better place to do it than in the South!
The funerals themselves are carried out with a grandeur reserved in most parts of the world for royalty. Rooms of floral arrangements give funeral parlors a sickly sweet odor found nowhere else. People pore over name cards seeing who sent an arrangement, who just sent a card and subtly checking to see who spent the most money on their spray. Wars have been fought with less tactical planning than that of a group of Southern women planning the dinner before the funeral, the funeral program and then a dinner afterwards.
As many good intentions as most people had when it came to funerals, I have been to some that sickened me with their overbearing preachers (hard to imagine some of these men as "ministers" as they did little 'ministering" and a whole lot of hellfire and damnation preaching!) who took advantage of the occasion to remind everyone that the person in that casket didn't have a chance to make their peace, but you do. "There but for the Grace of God go you." And you. And you. One funeral in particular was the worst I have ever attended. I tend to get flashes of pictures when I'm experiencing certain emotions, and I was sitting far at the back of the room but still got the image of an old wringer washing machine. And certainly, that pious man behind the pulpit was wringing as much emotion from that poor family as he could. His voice raised and lowered like only a man who loved to hear himself talk can manage. No sleazy televangelist every sweated and cried and gave such an emotional sermon. As far as I recall (and this was many years ago), no word of peace, joy, life-everlasting or discussion of what this person had achieved in their life was mentioned. Just the threat that "someday this will be you. Then what?" This person's young sons sobbed so hard they were near fainting and still the sanctimonious parson found the energy to point at them and remind them that their daddy had gone for good and it was up to them to take care of their mother and sisters and their daddy would love to be sitting right there beside them, his rough hand holding theirs, but he had been called on for greater duty..... Yeah. Very few Southern kids grew up with any idea other than that Death was final.
I have made my family members promise there will be no "viewing" when I die (the archaic custom where friends and family, for the days preceding the funeral, meet each evening at the funeral home where they sit and reminisce and gossip and stand and look at the dead body saying ridiculous things like "He looks like he's just going to sit up and talk to us, don't he?" I was just barely out of grade school when I scandalized my family by replying loudly "No, he doesn't. He looks dead.") A lot of tombstones carry the phrase "He's not dead, he's only sleeping." I hate that. It really freaked me out when I was a kid, and it makes my skin crawl now. If he is just sleeping, why the hell is he six feet under the ground and sealed in a concrete vault?
I am quite certain that my friends, neighbors and family members fretted when I didn't plan a big end-all funeral when my mother died. For one thing, her mind had died years ago, it just took a while for her body to decide to follow. It was not a time for tears, it was a time for rejoicing that she was now at peace and her tormented soul could rest. For another, not only had I promised my mother (when she still had some lucid thoughts) exactly what kind of funeral I would plan, but I didn't have the energy at the time to plan a big circus of a funeral to appease anyone else. I was in the middle of a fight with breast cancer. I bravely wore my wig and dark sunglasses to a graveside service that I wrote specifically for her. Afterwards the funeral director called me at home and asked me where I had found the service, he wanted to buy the book. He was very surprised when I told him that I had written it and he suggested I should look into a career of writing eulogies, memorial services, etc. I can't imagine anything I would hate more. When my father died he had a similar funeral filled with laughing memories and even a couple of jokes.. We had discussed it at length, and I followed his last wishes. And it is much the service that I will request for myself...if I ever die (my father's old joke).
Yep. I don't like big fancy funerals and find them a waste of time and emotion and money. Maybe that should be our secret? I don't want to get tossed out of the Southerner's Society. Perhaps I shouldn't mention that I drink my tea unsweetened too. Shhhh.
If I get into bed on one side, it doesn't matter if somebody puts a cluster of poisonous snakes and booby traps on the floor on that side, if I'm ever going to get off that mattress, I'll just have to wade through and hope for the best. I have to get back out from the side I got in on. (Maybe a childhood thing when I didn't understand what someone meant by "getting up on the wrong side of the bed?")
