Laid to Rest

Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea and he was waiting for the kingdom of God. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus' body. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.
The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.
-- The Gospel According to Luke

I was one of the first members of the family to arrive at the church. I was the one who wrapped my arms around Aunt Flora when the casket piece she'd made started to fall apart. I was the one who came up with a solution to it. Wallace and I unfolded the flag to drap the casket, in lieu of the casket spray; I put the "modified casket piece", a bouquet of roses and wheat stalks, on the flower stand.

The eulogy was permeated by "uh"s and "um"s. It was uninspiring, like the sermon. The men who spoke, though... They described my grandfather to a tee. One man described how he and granddad went for breakfast every Saturday at 06:00. Not 05:59; not 06:01; one man was on the other's lawn at 06:00 precisely. Another man described how, during a particularly difficult year, when he and his wife and their children were trying to stretch a pound of hamburger for a whole week, my grandfather showed up one day with a truck full of oak wood that kept them warm through the winter. When his wife died of cancer, a month or so after the funeral my grandfather drove about four hours and showed up for the weekend unannounced, just to make sure that he was doing alright.

The family left. Three of us stayed; a nephew of my mother's generation, and two grandsons. The other mourners filed out of the church; more than a thousand people came to lament and mourn the death of my grandfather. I sat there, looking at him, watching as the people walked past him. Some looked, others didn't. Finally, it was time. My mother's father was a farmer. My father's father was an undertaker. Today, my father's family, the undertakers, served my mother's family, the farmers.

With weak voice, I spoke to Wallace, my father's brother. "I'll close the casket."

"Okay."

"Now?"

"Yeah, let's do it now."

I stood, and I walked over to the casket. I reached down, and I touched granddad's chest, and I cried. I folded up the cloth that drapes over the edge of the open casket, and tucked it inside.

I closed the casket. I was the last one to see his body; the same body that betrayed him less than a week ago. I took the flag; Wallace held the end, and I folded it. I continued to cry. Then we moved the casket out to the truck that granddad had fixed up; the truck that his father bought in 1948, that granddad had restored, piece by piece, and we lifted the casket onto the flat bed.

I was the first member of the family to arrive at the cemetery, having left the reception early to get some real food before the committal. The casket arrived on the farm truck, and despite the weight, we carried granddad. There we put him to rest, next to his mother and father, next to his daughter, next to all of his ancestors in the cemetery. The family's been in the area since the 1850's; now, those laid to rest there span three centuries.

There we laid him, beneath the cold and the wet. Beneath the ground, the earth he tore through and nursed and fed and sowed from the time when he could scarcely read, beneath the grass whose seed he farmed, he now rests until the end of the World.

Twenty-two years of listening to the wealth of human experience tell me that I should lament. Those years tell me that I should be sad, and mourn, and never live my life in the same way. They tell me that I should feel an emptiness.

Gentle reader, I can not mourn as one without hope. There is a void in my life that will never truly be filled, because my grandfather is absent for the rest of my natural life; but what choice do I have? My grandfather was a practical man. Had our positions been reversed, he would have mourned for me, but he would have kept going. He would have worked to change the things he could, and accepted the things he couldn't change.

I mourn my grandfather, but continue to hope. I continue to believe in the promise of Life beyond this flawed existence, and to revel in that promise. I believe that my grandfather is experiencing that promise, and though I lament his absence from my life, I rejoice in his final disposition.

And that? That's what makes it possible for me to endure.