EMPTY COFFINS

I was loitering around the casket showroom on the day of a delivery. It was the coolest room in the house, a respite on muggy summer days when it was too hot to play outside. The casket room was set in the back of the property where the limbs of shade trees grew close to the building. My father rolled tremendous, long boxes into the room via an outdoor ramp that led directly inside to the casket room. But on this day two noticeably smaller boxes appeared. I stood at my father’s side when he opened the first one. In it was by far the smallest coffin I’d ever seen. The pink satin box looked like a toy. I glanced at him, but said nothing as he opened the second one – a blue satin covered baby coffin. I ran my fingers along the outside of the pink one on which puffy tufts and pleats attempted some kind of design detail. He took the lid off. Inside was a tiny pillow. I asked if it was meant for a baby girl and he said yes, it was.

“Did a baby girl die, Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“What’d she die of?”

“She was born dead.”

“Oh.”

He continued to unwrap the clear plastic wrapping from the blue one.

“What’s that? What’s born dead?”

“Well, it means that the baby died before it had a chance to be born, it’s called stillborn.”

“Will her parents leave the casket open?”

“No, they won’t.”

“They don’t want to see her?”

“No.”

“Why? Why don’t they want to see her?”

“It’s just too hard on them. And she’s too small.”

“Did a baby boy die?”

“No.”

“So why do you have that blue one then?”

“Well, sometimes baby boys die, too.”

“Did the baby girl’s parents know when the baby was going to die? You know, a lot of times you know when people are going to die, I hear you say so and then they do.”

“That’s not the same. I don’t know if they knew. It’s not something you ask a parent.”

“Do you know when I’m going to die?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you know when you’re going to die?”

“No.”

“Where’s the baby girl, Daddy?”

He glanced over at the door.

“In the embalming room? Is she in there right now?”

He knew where my question was headed.

“We don’t embalm babies.”

I didn’t know that babies died. Until that moment I thought that only old people died.

I moved away from him and the baby coffins so that he couldn’t see me. I felt a cocktail of sickness, fear and sadness, but I wanted him to think that I could handle it. I felt his hand on my shoulder directing me out of the room, away from the boxes for dead people.

“Come on, let’s go get a Coke and some peanuts,” he said as he turned out the light.

He closed the door and left the blue baby casket in wait of its yet unidentified occupant.

THE GHOST OF SEXTON HOUSE

Southerners learn from the time they’re able to scoot across the floor in diapers that most stories they hear with a drawl and a twang are exaggerated, and none more so than a ghost story.

The Maple Grove cemetery sits on what was once the edge of town. Still small and rural, the town nevertheless grew up around the cemetery. Opposite two gas stations, and at one time, an efficient little milk bottling plant, our cemetery was always on display to those traveling in and out of town and life buzzed along just outside its black rod iron gates. On one corner of the graveyard sits Sexton House where most of the caretakers have lived since 1870.

At the turn of the century the caretaker who owned Sexton house lived there with his wife and daughter. One Saturday his daughter was looking forward to attending a dance. She planned to meet her boyfriend who had given her signals that tonight was the night he would propose. Excited beyond containment she rushed to the second floor to dress. She was in the bath, or maybe not. She was naked, or maybe not. One thing everyone agrees upon is the lightening storm. In the South when the air is pregnant with humidity, before the clouds break water, the sky suddenly grows black and lightening flashes, followed by a long pause and then a shrieking crack of thunder. On this Saturday the lightening storm was so vicious the girl’s parents felt it was too dangerous for her to leave the house and refused to let her go.

The girl was bitterly disappointed, angry to the point of madness. She stood at the window, raised her fist and cursed God. Lightening struck her and before she fell dead to the floor, a lightening portrait of her was etched into the window’s glass. Her parents, who’d heard a terrifying clap of thunder, ran upstairs to check on their daughter, only to find her lifeless body sprawled on the floor.

Soon, people reported that the girl’s etching appeared on nights of lightening storms. Others swore that what they saw was the girl herself, railing at the window.

By the 1920’s the house had become a tourist attraction. The owners at that time painted over the window, but still the number of sightings and tourists grew. In a desperate attempt to stop the congestion in front of one of the town’s few traffic lights, the window was boarded up. This did absolutely nothing to dispel the traffic or squelch the dares of young boys to walk through the cemetery at night.

Years later, another caretaker who’d lived in the house for over ten years decided to remove the boarding and began work on stripping the paint. He never finished stripping the window. One day, while standing in his kitchen, he too fell to the floor when he suffered a fatal heart attack.

I grew up playing in the cemetery and sorely wanted to ask the caretaker about the house, but my father wouldn’t let me. “Leave the poor guy alone,” he used to say. When I was older I drove past the house everyday on my way to high school. My car was full of girls, Cokes, cigarettes and Cheese Nabs, all part of a healthy breakfast. Most of the time our minds were far from ghosts, but once and a while, especially on Halloween nights, we looked up at the window and fully expected to see the etching of the girl, almost dared her to show herself. Someone always screamed, “There she is!”

PRESIDENT JOHNSON’S PROBLEM

For many years after we moved out of the funeral home, I couldn’t bear to see a gladiola. My gladiola aversion developed because it was the least expensive funerary flower and there was never a funeral in our home without their spiky blooms. Carnations may have cost a little less, but bucket loads were needed to create an impressive arrangement. A spray of tall gladiolas demanded attention and it didn’t take an imaginative florist to throw a few together. I’m not accusing the town’s citizens of being cheap, but good lord, fill several airplane hangars full of gladiolas and you get the picture. Maybe you’ve noticed that many things left in a sale, whether it’s a kitchen utensil or a cashmere wrap, are often orange. The same applies to gladiolas. If you ever want to ruin my day just send me orange gladiolas.

The Shandihar cave in Iraq was excavated in 1957. Neanderthal remains were thought to have been buried with flowers, suggesting that the idea of funerary flowers originated there 60,000 years ago. Alas, it was later argued that animals that stored seeds and pollen was the most likely explanation for the remains. The exact origin of funereal flowers is still debatable.

The man who took over for President Lincoln after his assassination was President Andrew Johnson. After two failed impeachment attempts and a lacklustre post presidency, at his request he was buried wrapped in an American flag with a copy of the constitution placed under his head. But there was the problem of his swiftly decomposing corpse. His undertaker, Lazarus Shepard, now there’s a name for an undertaker, who ironically was Knoxville, Tennessee’s first embalmer, did not embalm the president. By the day of the funeral the air surrounding the president was so unbearable that Lazarus Shepard literally buried the president’s coffin under a massive blanket of highly fragrant flowers to mask the odour.

On the American mid-West prairie in the early 19^th Century, families chose Flower Ladies as honorary assistants. With the same clout as a pallbearer, usually six women bore the responsibility of carrying the flowers from the funeral to the cemetery and then carefully arranged them at the burial site. This custom died out, so to speak, when family and friends began to spread out and live farther apart, which begs the question, why didn’t the pallbearer custom die out. Hmm.

In the early 20th century, the practice of hosting funerals in flower gardens became common. Some funeral home directors brought the garden inside, conducting services in solariums, with waterfalls, live plants, flowers and even birds. I can’t tell you how happy I am that this particular practice was not in vogue while my father was in the business.

There was a frenetic atmosphere in our funeral home before the doors opened to allow the first mourners in, especially if it was a big funeral. A large funeral meant more of everything, more people, more chairs, more food, and of course more flowers. Florists scurried quickly through the hallway laden with their flower deliveries, stealing looks at each other’s arrangements, checking out the competition. My father set the stage, placing them in just the right spot, not too many roses here, a few lilies there, spreading out the gladiola factory, creating the best configuration to enhance the tableau. A buzz in the air, a heavy scent wafted through, men scurried around like a production team preparing for the silence before curtain up.

An elderly lady slowly made her way up the steps to the funeral home on a quiet afternoon in a year I’ve forgotten. A small round hat sat atop her grey haired head, a simple handbag dangled from her wrinkled wrist and she more or less attempted a pale colored lipstick. She’d made an effort. Her husband had died that day. She had no other family and not much money; in fact, she was worried about paying her husband’s funeral bill. My father noticed she twisted a thin, worn out flowered handkerchief in her spotted hands. He remembered such things. Please, could her husband have the least expensive casket and a no frills service, she asked. She couldn’t afford flowers, not even the casket piece. It pained her to ask for long-term credit.

My father waited for a flower delivery for the husband’s funeral, flowers that never appeared. He thought maybe a friend, or the widow’s church would provide at least a simple wreath, but no. On the morning of the funeral he called the florist and ordered a wreath of carnations, which he placed on the man’s casket. Every week after her husband was buried the widow returned to the funeral home. She sat down in the chair opposite my father, opened her small black purse and handed him one dollar. She was a regular visitor to our funeral home for over two years, until at long last she’d paid her husband’s funeral bill in full.

MEET ME AT THE FAIR….said the undertaker

Our county fairground was a cow pasture on the outskirts of town. With a splash of a few machines, colourful tents, carousel music and shady carneys, it was amazingly transformed in a few hours.

My father never missed a chance to advertise his funeral home, even at the county fair. Before our family moved into town the rival funeral director had pressed palms from his fair booth for years. The duelling undertakers kept a close eye on each other and my father had no choice but to stake a claim. When he spotted his chance to set up his own booth he flew to the task.

It wasn’t really a booth, but his own fine, open tent erected by his gravediggers. Somehow my father wangled a prized position at the entrance from where he greeted folks from all corners of the county as they arrived. I’ll admit it sounds a bit strange to be met by an undertaker at such a merry event, a bit SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, but in a small town an undertaker was considered part of the community in the same way as a fireman, preacher, or doctor – a service provider.

Under the tent was everything one needed to recover from the scorching evening sun. Women with pink faces and large bottoms fanned themselves while resting their swollen feet and ankles. They sipped cold drinks and gossiped as people passed on their way to the belly of the fair. I dug down into the boxes of calendars, pens, pencils, potholders, and handed them to passers by. The funeral home’s name and phone number throbbed on every item in bold black type as if flammable.

In the corner of the tent sat two large tanks of helium. My father and his employees spent hours blowing up balloons with the stuff. They twirled a string around them and then strung them up along the tent poles. They floated through the air in the hands of children who kicked up dust on the fairground. Not a year passed that my sister and I didn’t eat the helium in huge gulps. We filled the balloons, inhaled, held our breath and then spoke like munchkins. Hilarious. My mother warned us of brain damage.

After sunset, carnival lights lent their glow to an otherwise blackened sky and the children were led home, high on sugar. The haunted house ride picked up a long line of customers. Ours was a church-going, god-fearing town. Men passed the hoochie coochie girls with one eye to the ground, the other to the swaying hips inside a tight dress. They lingered as long as they could without being obvious. Many strolled around to the back entrance.

Throughout the week tractor pulls, (still don’t know what that is) a beauty pageant, judged in rather close proximity to the heifers, hogs and tobacco, were awash in a sea of blue ribbons and tiaras. A peculiar odour of cow patties and popcorn wafted through the evening air.

At the time, I thought how terrific it was that my father was lucky enough to spend every night at the fair from opening until closing, four or five hours of shaking hands, handing out balloons and listening to people talk incessantly about the heat. It was summer, school was out and the days were long and lazy. True for me, but not for the undertaker, who was still on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

We buried him with ham…

`It's likely to be a very cheap funeral,' said the same speaker;' for upon my life I don't know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer.'

`I don't mind going if a lunch is provided,' observed the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. `But I must be fed, if I make one.' A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

Whenever our doors opened to welcome the family and friends of one of their deceased, my father was adamant that things should be just right. He never wavered from precise rules and instructions to which our family eventually grew accustomed.

One of those rules involved our dining habits. From the moment the bereaved family arrived to make arrangements, until the last mourner left the funeral home a couple of days later, we weren’t allowed to eat any food that had a strong or lingering odor. This rule was always completely at odds with the goings on downstairs. All day long friends of the deceased brought food by the truckloads, wrapped in foil or stacked in boxes, they were placed upon a groaning table in a back room downstairs. Pots of coffee continuously brewed throughout the day and a ginormous red Coke machine hummed and clattered and clinked with each glass bottle removed.

The custom of feeding the mourning has been a ritual longer than one might imagine. Last year the remains of a huge burial feast was found in a cave in Northern Israel that dates back 12,000 years. The bones of giant extinct cattle were excavated and over 70 tortoise skeletons.

This kind of evidence had only been found in archaeological sites that dated much later. The research states this is the earliest evidence for feasting on this scale.

All over the world feasting rituals take place for one reason or the other and in one way or another. Quoted from a record in England in 1309, the provisions for consumption at a funeral feast were as follows:

"One and a half butts of cider--five pigs--one hare--five sheep--thirteen hens--nineteen geese--one and a half gallons of oysters--two hogs--nine capons--one and a half carcases of beef--four 'bacons' besides wine, ale, eggs, bread given to the poor and friends, and a fee of sixty-six shillings and eightpence to the Chaplain. Fifty pounds of wax was also used--presumably for candles."

In 1702 the most costly item of George Brown’s funeral feast, above the cost of cheese, bacon, veal and mutton, was the 16 shillings for ’16 dozen at 14 to the dozen whole loaves’ of Arval bread, or “averil”. Often called Arval Cake because of its sweet, fruity dough. The funeral repast was once known as the averil. An averil, which means "heir ale" or succession ale, was a banquet to welcome the new heir to the title, or property, more so than a feast in honor of the departed. In a ritual found most often in the north of England, mourners were each presented with a piece of rich cake or biscuit (Americans, think large cookie) wrapped in white paper and sealed with black wax, a ceremony which takes place before the 'lifting of the corpse,' when each visitor selects his packet and carries it home with him unopened.

By 1800 there was usually a cold meal at the house of the family of the deceased that most often included ham, from which the phrase “we buried him with ham” originates. In describing the Yorkshire villages of the period, Elizabeth Gaskell’s "Life of Charlotte Bronte," states "the custom of averils was as prevalent as ever, and that after the burial had taken place, the sexton standing at the foot of the open grave, announced that the averil would be held at the 'Black Bull' or some other local hostelry where the mourners and friends repaired."

The first time I attended a funeral in Britain the widow invited thirty or forty of us to a wonderful country pub for lunch after the funeral. It was an entirely foreign occasion for me, one I found touching, calming and generous. I’d never been to a funeral feast in a pub, or really, anywhere other than the deceased’s family’s home. When I lived in New York, I remember crowding into a woman’s one bedroom apartment for drinks and a buffet where we spilled out onto the fire escape, as one does.

In the States, it is a well-known fact that nobody eats better than a bereaved Southerner. Usually, a close family friend moves into organizational mode and the last thing the family of the deceased has to think about is food.

Every Southern woman knows that she must have a “funeral food” for which she’s known, like Aunt Lilly’s fried chicken or Granny Ester’s lime congealed salad. My mother always makes deviled eggs. I keel over whenever she says, “I’m going to dress some eggs.” This always conjures an image of eggs running away from her, bouncing along the counter top as she chases them with tiny sweaters and skirts.

Many women own serving dishes with their names printed on them so the bereaved won’t have to worry about whose serving dish belongs to whom, although there’s also a rule that if your dish is not returned you should forget about it. Never bother a grieving widow with your Pyrex problems.

Here then are a few examples of a bit of South in your mouth, the top Southern funeral comfort foods we all know and love.

Grits Casserole

Hash Brown Casserole

Any kind of casserole, really

Pimento Cheese Finger Sandwiches

Country Ham and Biscuits

Crockpot Barbecue Pulled Pork

Truck Stop Potatoes (don’t ask)

Ambrosia

Mississippi Mud Bars

Moon Pie Banana Pudding

Jimmy Carter Cake

Pecan Pie

All washed down with Party Fruit Punch, or something a little stronger.

I leave you with the great Southern word stylist, Lyle Lovett.

I went to a funeral


Lord it made me happy


Seeing all those people


I ain’t seen


Since the last time


Somebody died

Everybody talking


They were telling funny stories


Saying all those things


They ain’t said


Since the last time


Somebody died

PAID TO MOURN

"There's an expression of melancholy in his face, my dear ... which is very interesting. He would make a delightful mute, my love." Oliver Twist

By the age of seven, possibly earlier, I had learned what to do when someone came by the funeral home unexpectedly. I quickly slipped off my father’s lap, wiped the smile off of my face and excused myself with the most somber expression imaginable. Death was not funny or playful, and those who suffered were to be paid the utmost respect. Nor was death to be a curiosity. That was asking too much – nothing could hamper my curiosity.

From the top of the stairs, my unseen perch, my classroom, I observed a steady stream of people as they came to mourn and pay their respects. They spoke in low voices, sometimes weeping or wailing. They smelled of lavender water, Evening in Paris, hairspray, cigars and cigarettes.

By the time I was twelve, just about everyone who lived in our town had darkened our front door several times. It would have been the shock of my young life to learn that in ancient cultures it was deemed a worthy profession to be paid to mourn. There was even a fancy name for such a person: moirologist.

Years later I visited the Tomb of Ramose, Tomb number 55 in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor where I beheld the exquisite painting of the young king’s death scene. It depicts the ancient ritual of hiring professional mourners to follow the dead to their graves. It was predominately women who were charged with mourning and these were painted in the pale cluster you see below.

They would be expected to wail and pat dirt on their heads, a gesture of distress, as also shown in these terracotta statues.

Perhaps the most interesting contributions to proxy mourners are those of the Chinese and Taiwanese, called ‘professional wailers’.

Studies have shown that wailers most often are laid-off workers or those in low paying jobs wishing to supplement their incomes. They weep, sing mournful songs, and crawl during the funeral.

Wailing is considered a performing profession. One wailer was frightened that she would not be able to cry in her first performance, but when the day arrived she thought about how frightened she was of dead people and wept hysterically during the funeral.

For his book, The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up, author Liao Yiwu interviewed twenty seven people from the margins of Chinese society. One of these was a professional mourner paid to wail at funerals.

“I entered the mourning profession at the age of twelve. My teacher forced me to practice the basic suona (reed instrument) tunes, as well as to learn how to wail and chant. Having a solid foundation in the basics enables a performer to improvise with ease, and to produce an earth-shattering effect. Our wailing sounds more authentic than that of the children or relatives of the deceased.

Most people who have lost their family members burst into tears and begin wailing upon seeing the body of the deceased. But their wailing doesn't last. Soon they are overcome with grief. When grief reaches into their hearts, they either suffer from shock or pass out. But for us, once we get into the mood, we control our emotions and improvise with great ease. We can wail as long as is requested. If it's a grand funeral and the money is good, we do lots of improvisation to please the host.”

"How long can you wail? What was your record?" Asks Liao Yiwu.

“Two days and two nights...Voices are our capital and we know how to protect them...Frankly speaking, the hired mourners are the ones who can stick to the very end.”

Sometimes wailers receive gratuities. After the ceremony the bereaved may physically lift up the wailer and give them a bouquet that contains money, or, in a different area of China, the custom is to place red envelopes at the side of the wailer while the funeral is in progress. The amount varies. In China the profession is becoming so competitive that wailers are reluctant to take on apprentices these days.

I think my father would have been fascinated to learn how differently people mourn and pay respects to the deceased and their families… Perhaps I should have presented him with a monthly invoice.

SKY BURIAL AT MOUNT KAILASH

There was only one after-death experience offered in our small patch of Southern earth and that was to be buried in it. The first time I heard the word ‘cremation’ and asked my father what in the world it was, I could not believe that this disposal by fire actually existed. There was no crematorium in our town and with the custom of burial firmly in place, no one would ever dream of choosing this route. Of course that’s all changed now, and although I’m told the nearest crematorium is miles away, it has fast become a choice of many.

I’ve learned of another burial practice that I don’t think has a hope of catching on in the Western world, not that it should or could. For thousands of years the Tibetans have practiced sky burial. It is simply a means of disposing the deceased by leaving the remains exposed to the elements and the birds of prey, which are considered sacred to Tibetans. The practice is called jhator, which means “giving alms to the birds”. Sky burial evolved as a practical solution to the problem caused by grounds in Tibet being too hard and rocky to dig a grave and in which the scarcity of timber made it difficult to perform cremations.

To a Westerner the ritual is quite grotesque, and the risk of offending is great, so I’ll not relay the procedure in detail here. When a Tibetan person dies, monks come to the home and pray for three days. The body is left untouched and at this initial stage, the family consider it inappropriate to display grief or sadness. After this period, the body is wrapped in a white cloth and moved to the site.

The ritual is performed on a specified sky burial site, a large flat rock located on higher ground than its surrounds. Monks trained specifically for this use tools designated for the ritual. Family members are near, but usually do not witness. Should you find yourself in Tibet and happen upon a sky burial in progress you should never photograph the procedures or even stop and watch unless you’re invited. It’s considered extremely disrespectful and rude.

The government of China, which has occupied Tibet since the 1960’s, prohibited sky burials until the 1980’s. They consider the practice barbaric, but probably realized it is the most efficient, fuel saving funerary practice for the region and thus allowed the burials once again.

Four of the most remote and revered sky burial sites lie at the foot of what is known by four religions, Hinduism, Bön, Buddhism and Jainism, as the axis of the world – the majestic Mount Kailash.

Part of the Tibetan Himalayas, located in western Tibet, Mount Kailash is considered so sacred that there are no recorded attempts to climb it and even setting foot on its slopes is considered a sin. It’s claimed that any attempts to do so have resulted in death. In other words, it is off limits to climbers.

Pilgrims have made their way to Kailash for thousands of years, and in the early days they walked for months to reach the foot where they then walked the kora, the 32-mile circuit around the foot of the mountain.

The location is so remote and inhospitable that even today the journey to the foot of Kailash is only slightly easier. Every Tibetan aspires to one day walk the kora to wash away a lifetime of sins. There are pilgrims who perform prostrations around the entire mountain. It takes four weeks when they follow this demanding regime.

Along the way, in a painful climb into ever thinning air, Grachon Ngagye Dorsa is one of four sky burial places around Kailash.

Sky burial site at Mount Kailash

Here pilgrims will pause to simulate their own death. They may spill a drop of their blood, leave a tooth or strand of their hair, or tear a piece of clothing to leave on the site. They lie as if dead on the rock to be reborn to a higher life in their next rebirth.

Tibetans believe that life has completely left the body immediately after death. They consider jhator an act of generosity on the part of the deceased and treat it as important instruction on the impermanence of life.