Day 4,117—My Grandmother’s Funeral—

 

         I managed to arrive in Little Flock, Arkansas, early, to my surprise. This morning, I saw either a small deer or a similarly sized animal crossing Watson. I went over to see if I could find it, but it was gone. At first, I thought it was a deer, but I didn’t see the tail standing up, so I couldn’t be sure. 

         I noticed a police officer parked with his lights on. I wondered if they were awake. If they were paying attention and if it was the same one, I usually see, they must be able to recognize me by now. I keping going and went through the community center and saw the deer I took a picture of.

         I shaved before leaving and drove the 5 hours straight to the cemetery. I was sure I would recognize it because it was the one I had been to the most. First, for my great grandfather’s funeral, so long ago that I am not sure if I have any real memories of the event, but I remember my great grandmother’s funeral. I remember playing dominoes with her and a game where she got the double blank. She loved to laugh and liked giving me any type of Hostess snack cake she had. I remember my grandfather cried when she died.

         At the time I was thinking there were not a lot of people at her funeral, and I imagined that most of her friends and family had passed by then. The next one was when my great uncle JC died. I remember the person doing the usual sermon and his friend talking about him at length, but it was nothing like some of the funerals I had been to at my church. There, people would talk for hours, and they would play music, and there would be a sermon, but most of those funerals involved much younger people.

         When JC’s wife, Patricia, died, it seemed so close to JC’s passing that it felt like they had been connected somehow. I looked at the dates today, and they died four years apart. When my grandfather passed, I made it to the ceremony in Florida, but not the one 6 months later at Little Flock. I would have gone, but they had it the same weekend as Sarah and my 5th anniversary. My grandmother told me that she picked that weekend on purpose because she remembered the weather being nice that weekend.

         This was the smallest funeral I had ever been to before. Only 9 of us were there in total. My parents, my brother, and I. My mom’s brother, his wife, and their two kids, plus my cousin’s husband. She just got married and was planning on a trip to visit my grandmother with her spouse over the summer.

I thought of my great grandmother Pearl’s funeral and realized this might be the end of going to funerals in Arkansas. I never realized at first that this place would become such a pinpoint in my life for decades and that one day it would come to an end.

         Almost everyone talked, and I had some thoughts about what to say. I decided on two things, but only told one. I told the story about taking basketball trophies to the family reunion so that she could take pictures of me with my trophies. I don’t know if someone asked me why I brought them; it seems silly in retrospect, but she was so happy to take pictures of me with those trophies. She was always eager to celebrate things with me. My life always sounded better in her retellings. I liked the version of me she reflected in how she talked about me.

            The second thing was how she instilled in me the love of letter writing because she wrote letters. Whenever we traveled in the RV, she was in e-mail exchanges with everyone in the family giving them updates. She used to do a yearly newsletter where she went into details about whatever everyone was doing. My family was so spread out, so the only way to keep in touch was writing e-mails. Part of me thinks of the irony that she was the most popular person in the family, yet so few people were at her funeral, but not many of her contemporaries are living, and the ones that are don’t travel as easily anymore. 

I imagined all the people that she kept up with over the years being there, and how many people might that be? It is not the same as them being there, but I know, and I think she knew too. All I can think now is why we didn’t play any backgammon before calling it a day.