Michele wrote this weekend about attending a wake, voicing her desire to be cremated instead of put on display after death. It reminded me of the most memorable wake I've ever attended, for my paternal grandmother.
My parents both grew up on the same mountain in West Virginia, coal miner's kids. Even though I never lived there, (My grandpa told his sons, "Go West, young men", and they all did.), we visited enough that it is "home" in a sense. That sense that "home" is wherever your family meets, the place where you conspired with your cousins on late summer nights, played games in the yard long after dark, and slept in a pack together on the front porch with the older boys threatening to beat up the doll of the youngest if she thought to bring attention to any of our misdeeds.
I was 21 when grandma died. The family headed "home" to the farm on the mountain, where my Dad and his siblings had worked the land by hand, built the cistern, grew like weeds into the people I loved and looked up to. There on the hill, as was done in those times, is the family burial plot, where Grandma would rest with those who had gone before, taking her place next to Grandpa, who I don't remember because he died when I was a toddler.
As one does, we consoled each other, thankful for the many years we had Grandma with us. We told tales to keep us cozy, like warm blankets on a fall evening. Grandma was a woman of great faith, and seemed to have an uncommon connection to the spiritual. When my father was seriously hurt in a work accident, she paced the floor for two days praying before the news reached her, knowing somehow that someone in the family was in trouble. Her prayers were a powerful weapon, not to be taken lightly.
The arrangements were made, and I, a city girl, was taken aback when informed that the wake would be held at the farm. In fact, Grandma would be brought home to the house where she raised her family, her casket put in the front room, which was cleared of furniture. She would be with us overnight, then taken to the church for the service the next day, and finally laid to rest on the hill.
I had never heard of such a thing.
Well I had heard of it, but had no idea that things like that were still done.
So they brought Grandma home.
Looking back now, I realize that I don't remember much of the funeral or the burial. My memories center on the time that Grandma was with us in her home. We sat up with her all night, her body there in the living room, while we told stories of her life at the dining room table.
If you've never experienced this type of wake before, I'm guessing you might think this story quite strange. I know I thought the idea was strange myself. Yet, there was comfort in bringing Grandma home. Home is where she belonged until she was laid to rest, not in some building away from her family, with professionals in the crowd to facilitate the grieving. She was ours until the end. We were together one last time before she had to go.
Understand, I'm not saying this is how it should be done today, but it was the right thing for our family at the time. I'm not sure I would have felt it was right if any of us had to live in the house when the wake was over. But, my Dad and his siblings had left the farm long ago, making their own homes across the country. The farm was the place of their childhood, not their present lives.
On a business trip a few years ago, I landed in Virginia, with no plans to visit "home." But one look at those mountains, and I was checking the map to see if I had time to make it to the mountain and back and still make my meetings. Once confirmed I took off in my rental.
A part of who I am is rooted back in those hills, in a place called home.
DC
P.S. To CoV browsers. Brainstorming is a new blog started in September. If you have a minute check out the rest of the site and talk to me people :)
