My friend Judy asked me to serve as a pallbearer at her father's funeral. Mr. Oather Garner was a very fine Christian gentleman. He was 80. He had Alzheimer's. He did not know anyone. He referred to his wife as "mama," which while not altogether inapt demonstrated the depths of his confusion. He died in his sleep Saturday morning. Just didn't wake up. Just like Aunt Jean.
It is a blessing for all concerned. One does not have to be alive for very long to learn that there are some things that are worse than death.
This being the South, the coffin was open at the visitation, a tradition that my goddaughter Audrey-Judy and Jim's kid- found tantamount to barbarism, a reaction that I pretty much agree with. Despite being 20 years old, this was Audrey's first funeral. Evidently, she found the practice sufficiently traumatizing that she wouldn't enter the funeral home for the actual service until the coffin was closed. It was a tough two days for the girl.
" Hell, that's nothin'." said my friend J. She was calling from the courthouse during a respite from doing her part to keep the streets of Little Rock safe or at least less ridiculous as our little procession rolled through South Arkansas en route to Kingsland. I was following a hearse (typically pronounced "hurst" in these parts). Her voice was in my earpiece on the right. The Detroit Tigers were in my other ear. Not a bad way to do a procession if one must do such a thing. Beats all hell out of riding with 6 people in a Cadillac in any event.
"When I was a little girl in Georgia, they used to lay 'em out in living rooms or dens for 2-3 days. Sometimes people would take pictures of 'em." she said.
"No!" I said. I was genuinely stunned. I had never heard of such a thing happening around here. I mean, I knew that they used to hold home vigils for the deceased here in Arkansas years ago. But I never heard of taking pictures of them. But then again, Polaroid technology probably did not penetrate Cleburne County until the late sixties or so. That might account for why I had never seen anything that weird as a kid.
"Yep. I have seen it with my own little eyes. Typically, the ones that liked to take pictures were pretty strange to begin with. But I have seen it done."
I must tell Audrey. She will start her junior year in college this fall. It is about time that she is acquainted with the fact that cultural barbarism is a relative thing. We have our quirks here in Arkansas. But at least we don't photograph the dead. Not unless they are at a crime scene.
Here in the South, we still pull over when we see a funeral procession draw near. All along the way, cars and trucks pulled aside to let us past. A state trooper gave a two-fingered salute. Along the side of the road there were several produce stands in operation. Just outside Sheridan I noticed one such vendor had two baskets of tomatoes on display. One basket was adorned with a hand painted sign that said, "Cannin' tomatoes." The other one said, "Eatin' tomatoes." Until yesterday, I had no idea there was a difference.
Eventually, we crossed into Cleveland County. Immediately to my left I saw a water tower with "Outer Kingsland" on it. This strongly suggested the presence of an "Greater Kingland." But I couldn't prove it because the lead hurst was soon bearing a right onto a logging road beside the Garner family cemetery.
There was a group of elderly people waiting for us in lawn chairs under an oak tree. One gentleman agitated the breeze with a fan festooned with the name of a local candidate for sheriff. My friends helped their mother make that long walk to her husband's grave. His death may have been merciful. But blessing or no blessing, it is a terrible thing to see a man carried in a coffin before your eyes. Just a terrible thing. Once we got the coffin in place, I heard the preacher tell the funeral director, "We need to get started. It is too hot for these folks to sit out here much longer." And with that, we drew near the tent. The preacher opened his Bible.
And we said goodbye to good old Oather.
After the service one of the nieces told me a story. She said not too long ago the highway department wanted to cut a by-pass through Garner cemetery. The local engineer said they had to have the by-pass and that the family would have to move some of those graves that were closest to the highway. The family said that there was no way in hell those graves were moving. Some of those folks had been lying in rest there since 1883 or so.
"The engineer told us that they would just come out and do it if we wouldn't. Well, I told him he had better bring the sheriff too because otherwise all of us would be out there with our guns and we would shoot the first one of 'em that set foot out there. Some of those graves have babies in 'em. They've been laying by their mothers for a hundred years. They're not moving until Jesus calls 'em."
She said the engineer never came back. The by-pass never got built. And those graves are still out there where they were originally installed patiently waiting for Jesus to call.
One of the things that used to infuriate me back during the Clinton Administration was how the national media used to portray the Arkansas that brought forth Bill Clinton as this den of internecine corruption which was completely alien to the rest of the country. Regardless of this gross and largely untrue caricature of our state, Arkansas is also a place where you can find cannin' tomatoes and eatin' tomatoes and where folks pull to the side of the road when a funeral procession comes through. It is a place where elderly people sit patiently in infernal conditions, waiting under an ancient shade tree to receive one of their fallen.
This, too, is the Arkansas that produced a Bill Clinton.
It is also the kind of place that produced a saint on Earth like Oather Thomas Garner.
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