Why I Love Funeral Homes

I went outside to walk my dogs the other morning and the fog was so thick, I could barely see to the end of my driveway. And it's a short driveway. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the roses on the bush in front of my house were still covered with dew.

As a southern girl who grew up going to a lot of funerals, it took all of .03 seconds before I found myself humming the classic hymn "In the Garden." Depending on where and how you were raised, you may or may not know it.

I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses, says the first line. Illustrated perfectly by the dew clinging to the blossoms on my knockout bush.

And the voice I hear falling on my ear, the son of God discloses....as a kid this line always made me picture the voice as a string of letters and symbols literally falling from the sky.

And He walks with me, and He talks with me...this line was fodder for many a corny preacher joke heard during my childhood. The dramatic way the words are sung, and the fact that southerners are notorious for stringing our words together makes it sound like you are in fact singing "Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me." And all the corny preachers in the south said: Can anyone guess God's first name? [the punchline is supposed to be Andy...get it?]

This song, said to have been written in 1913 by Charles A. Miles, was a staple at southern funerals of my childhood. Along with "Beulah Land," it was one of those songs you just knew would be played.

In the funerals of my childhood, held less frequently at churches and more often at local funeral homes, there was a special group of funeral singers. Likely a small quartet of willing church choir members, “In the Garden” was always part of their repertoire.

I always found it interesting that the singers didn't stand up front in the funeral home chapel, but were instead in the back or in an adjoining room, out of sight entirely.

You could hear their voices, but never actually saw them. I guess this is because it was supposed to have been less of a performance and more of a soundtrack for the occasion.

Funerals never freaked me out as a kid. They still don't. I kind of liked them.

In seventh grade, I was best friends with a girl whose family ran a local funeral home. I guess because funerals are all hours, and all different times of year, it was more convenient for them to live on-site. My friend lived with her parents in an apartment that was above the funeral home, up a set of wrought iron stairs around the side of the building.

This never seemed weird to me at all. Her aunt and uncle had the adjoining apartment and she could go back and forth as she pleased. It created a real sense of community and I actually thought it was wonderful. They always made me feel so welcome when I visited.

Sometimes we went down the back staircase into the funeral home to say hi to her uncle. This wasn't creepy or anything to me. I found it very peaceful.

There was a big room where all the sample caskets were displayed. I had been there before, with my great-grandparents when they did their pre-arrangement. Pre-arranging funerals was a big deal in my family. My great-grandparents knew exactly what they wanted and made sure their wishes were carried out, right down to what preachers were to speak and what songs were to be sung.

In fact it got to be kind of a problem because after they chose the ministers they wanted to hold their funerals, many began to die off and they had to move down their list of alternates.

My great-grandma’s faith, Freewill Baptist, dictated that a woman’s hair was her crowning glory, so naturally she even had special instructions about who was to fix her hair and how nobody was supposed to cut it. She wanted a baby blue casket, "to match her eyes." We didn't try to remind her that her eyes would likely be closed at that point, but oh well.

One of the first times I encountered death as a child and old enough to understand it, was when my great-great uncle Willie passed away. It was 1988 and I was six years old. We hadn't been close but he was one of those people who was just there for as long as I could remember. Not part of my daily life, but always a fixture at family reunions or other special gatherings.

I remember hearing my parents talking about the fact that he had died. "Wait, what?" Uncle Willie died, my mom said. This news hit me like a Mack Truck. I burst into tears, feeling sad all the way down into my toes. We had been sitting in our car, in the driveway of my grandparents house on Walnut Street. I couldn't believe something so awful could happen. And what’s more, I couldn’t believe how sad I felt about it. Even at age six, I realized I was growing up.

There'd be other deaths. Extended family members and family friends. My parents didn't always take me to the funeral home, but many times they did. And I liked it. Funeral homes could be such peaceful places. And I had such a big extended family, it was always like a reunion of sorts.

"You're growing like a weed," they'd say. "Such a grow’d up girl. I wish't we all got to see one another more than just at funerals."

And the food. There was nothing like funeral home food at the small town southern funeral homes of my childhood. Big ol' trays of cut up veggies and fruit, sandwich platters and buckets of fried chicken, giant bags of Ruffles potato chips and tubs of sour cream and onion dip. And desserts, both homemade and store-bought. Every different kind of Coke you could drink, even Pepsi and Dr. Pepper which we never had at home. You could eat whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted to.

And there were kind people who wanted to do nice things for you to make you feel better because you were sad. Honey, can I get ‘chew a cold drank? Well, I do believe you can.

And the Kleenex! At funerals home of my youth, there were boxes of Kleenex everywhere! On virtually every surface, near a little always full bowl of mints you could help yourself to. And not just the bright yellow Kroger brand box with the thin, scratchy facial tissues inside. These were thick, plush pillowy sheets of softness, housed in boxes with beautiful designs or perhaps even under a brass tissue box cover. As a kid, Kleenex was much too much of a luxury at my house and something my parents never bought. If you had a sinus infection or a bout of allergies, you'd carry around a roll of toilet paper from room to room.

Of course as I got older and more close relatives and friends started to die, funerals were not something to look forward to. When I was born, all my grandparents and great-grandparents were still alive. Once I hit high school, my great grands started to pass away. One by one, each year or so. Those funerals were much tougher...not only because I loved them dearly and they had been such integral parts of my life, but also because on one particular side of the family there were some strained relationships. By the time my granny passed away, one faction of the family wasn't exactly friendly to the other and it created some awkwardness at the funeral. But we muddled through.

I guess in a way a funeral is like the last thing you can really do for a person. This is why I stood, along with other members of my family, for hours on end in a receiving line as hundreds of people attended a visitation and paid their respect for my great grandpa. An old time country preacher who had lived in the area all of his 96 years, he knew everybody. And he was from a time when people still went to funerals, or at least to visitation. When just showing up really meant something.

We stood there at the front of the chapel, near his open casket, letting people file through, shake our hands, and hug our necks for hours. And tell us how good he looked.

No matter how tired I felt, or how much my feet hurt in my pointy toed shoes, it was so comforting to have all those people tell me what my grandfather had meant to them. To hear them recount stories of how he’d baptized their father, or married their parents, or held their own grandpa’s funeral. And how he had always been there for them. And how they just wanted us to know that it made a difference in their lives.

And the entire time, I thought "This is exactly what he would have wanted me to do. What he would have expected us to do." And it was something I could do for him. So that’s what I did.

Death doesn't have to be scary or weird. Even though it's sad. And funeral homes don't have to be creepy places. Sometimes they can bring real comfort. Especially when it feels like the one you loved is being honored and celebrated. When there’s a loss of somebody who meant the world to you, it’s okay to want to mark the event in some way. To come together with others who knew and loved the dearly departed. To cry together, tell stories together and just remember. And I guess for me that’s what funeral homes are for. A place where the life of somebody who mattered is recognized.

[image via Library of Congress Digital Repository] 

Funerals in My South

This week I attended a funeral. Like the wanna-be cultural anthropologist that I have always been, I couldn’t help but wonder what future generations would think of us if they were able to witness our most intimate and personal moments of grief. You can learn so much about a people by their traditions, especially the ones they practice at the end of a life.

The south is a wide and varied place. My experiences of it may be completely different from yours, yet we are both correct when we consider the region our own. Funerals are a big deal in the south. Not just by the way you celebrate the life of the person who has passed, but also in how you circle up to surround the living who are left behind.

In my south, funerals are visitations at the funeral home, complete with bowls of mints and boxes of Kroger brand facial tissues on every surface. Hunter green wall-to-wall carpet, and brass fixtures. It’s people who stop by the funeral home after they get off work, for visitation. Some go home and change clothes, but others still come just as they are, in their work shirts, with their name on the chest. They arrive and sign the guest book, while waiting to pay their respects to the grieving sons and daughters, spouses (if any), grandchildren and whoever else is left.

It’s little old ladies, nosy and wanting a peek at the body “to see if he looked ‘real good’” or not, disappointed when it’s a closed casket. It’s neighbors who are not at all neighborly, who come out of the woodwork to see if they can get first dibs on the old home place, when it inevitably goes up for sale.

It’s photo slideshows, looking back to happier times, images of childhood, glory days in the service, milestones, celebrations, and snapshots taken for no reason at all. It’s people who knew you when you were just a little thing, who haven’t seen you in a coon’s age, who wouldn’t have known you from Adam, except wasn’t your grandpa that Whittaker man who used to preach over at Scott Street? And you’re Glen’s girl? Oh right, his granddaughter.

It’s I sure am glad I ran into you, but I hate that it was under these circumstances. It’s people you never see except at weddings and funerals.

And funerals themselves are held at little country churches, that don’t come up on Google when you’re trying to get directions. Churches with double glass front doors that open right into the sanctuary, where there’s light brown paneling half-way up the walls, and pinkish-purple carpet. And an old fashioned water fountain, a rectangle of smudged chrome, with a shiny faucet and a hard metal button that hurts your finger to press. The stream of water barely comes up an inch, and you have to smoosh your mouth down onto it because you’re thirsty and you don’t want to have a dry throat when it comes time to read your poem to the congregation.

Funerals in my south are Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. And song leaders who tell you to turn to number 181 in the little red Heavenly Highway book, and all stand while we sing It is Well with My Soul.

And while you sit up in the sanctuary, crying not just for the one whose life is being memorialized, but also for the others you loved who are no longer with you, you take comfort knowing that the ladies of the church are downstairs in the basement, setting out assorted Corningware and Pyrex dishes, including three different kinds of macaroni and cheese, and four kinds of potatoes. Lunch, which will be waiting for you when the burial service at the adjacent graveyard has concluded. Complete with Taps and a 21 gun salute.

It’s hugging people’s necks that you don’t know, just because they are there and it seems like the right thing to do. It’s listening to stories you’ve heard before, and feeling comforted by the familiar.

For some, it’s just too much to stay and be comforted. And the very best they can do is get through the funeral service, and slip out quietly.

And sometimes it’s let’s all go back to Granny’s house, for old time sakes. And you go, and visit with cousins you never see, and reminisce about better times. Not knowing that in just a few short weeks they will move mountains to change the will, gripped in the grasp of greed and “it’s what Pa would have wanted.”

Funerals aren’t really for the dead. They’re for the living. The ones left behind. The ones left asking all the questions, often with none of the answers they want or need.

If a cultural anthropologist from the future came back and witnessed our funeral traditions, I wonder what they’d think. I wonder how much these traditions will change and evolve over time.

I hope they always have the macaroni and cheese.

Southern Funeral Traditions: Pre-Planning

Funeral traditions vary all over the world, but here in the south...we take them pretty seriously. From flowers to food and other ways that we honor the lives of our departed loved ones, southern funeral traditions are unique. 

I guess to some people, funerals and talking about death is morbid. But my great-grandpa was a preacher so he regularly officiated at funerals when someone passed away. Each day, he and my great-grandma would listen to the obituaries on the radio. We all knew better than to talk or make any noise while the obits were read on WHUB, our local radio station. 

It was a small town so he pretty much knew everybody. This meant he attended a lot of funerals as well. 

To my grandparents, planning your funeral was not morbid. They saw it as an important task, just like any other, and a way to ensure their last wishes were carried out. 

I recently came across this sheet of steno paper in my grandma's handwriting. It contains her funeral arrangement wishes. Maybe it seems weird to you, but it gives such a true picture of who she was...I wanted to share it. 

She outlined who was to speak and that each speaker had the same amount of time as well as which songs were to be sung. If you knew her, it would make more sense. She was a devout Freewill Baptist and never cut her hair, based on the belief that a woman's hair was her crowning glory. I think she was afraid someone might cut it after she died so she made special note of this. 

She also specified a lady who could fix it in the exact style she liked, but I think that lady preceded her in death. My mom, who was like a daughter to her instead of a granddaughter, ended up doing her hair the day of her funeral. Again, that might seem weird to some folks, but it was a way to honor her wishes. 

It's not written in her arrangement notes, but she wanted a blue casket "to match her eyes." Nobody ever mentioned to her that her eyes would be closed by the time she would use it, but she had her blue casket all the same. 

Last week was the 10th anniversary of her death (she passed away in 2003 before my senior year of college). I've always wished she could have met my southern beau. She liked men with hearty appetites, especially when they enjoyed her cooking, and I know he would have. I miss her all the time. Especially the way she would call you at the crack of dawn on your birthday to sing in her earnest (yet off-key) vibrato. I miss the delicious food she was famous for...poke sallet with scrambled eggs, her made from scratch yellow cake, fried pies, vegetable soup, and homemade pickles. 

I miss how when I told her "I love you grandma," she'd reply "and I do you, little darlin." 

My grandpa, her one true love, lived for seven years without her before passing away. I like to think they are reunited again as she says "on the other side. In Heaven."  

When you believe that this life isn't all there is, death isn't so scary.