On Stories and Visits and Community

My Grandmother's visitation was yesterday at the town funeral parlour from 2-4 and 6-8. From 1-2, the immediate family arrived and took their turn saying farewell to the greatest lady we had ever known. It was sacred but not somber. Grandma lived far too great a life for anyone to be sad about. As my brother said...quality and quantity.

The kids went to the funeral parlour. I spent a lot of time thinking about that decision but, in the end, I felt that if they were old enough to understand death, they were old enough to be involved in the ceremony of dying. The ceremony is for the living; they needed to be a part of it.

Grandma had already chosen her own casket, her pallbearers, and made books that we would lay out during the visitation. My mother found some chalk, a monocle, a teacher's pin, a teachers' apple and a 60th anniversary photo of my grandparents for the casket. A long time ago, she and my grandfather chose their burial plots. They will be buried together, side by side, in a cemetery located just a few short miles from the home they shared for over 55 years.

Seeing Grandma lying in the puffy, white folds of her casket rekindled that sense of loss and we all shed a few tears. I think that, until they saw her, the kids had more of an idea that Grandma had passed. Seeing her lying there solidified that idea in their minds. It's scary. It's sad and it's so foreign an idea for many kids that they needed a few minutes to process it. It is just as much about our their mortality as it is about Grandma's. My son asked how long most people lived. I'm sure he was doing the math to calculate how many precious years he will share with his parents, his grandparents or even how many years he himself will enjoy on this earth.

From 2-4, many of Grandma's students paid their respects. It was wonderful hearing their stories. They talked about how she would inspect their hands each morning and grade them on their cleanliness. They talked about how she always taught in a dress. Sometimes, if the snow was deep, she would wear pants to school, but she would always duck into the schoolhouse and change into a dress. My cousins came to visit and talked about how Grandma shared her books with them when they stayed in a nearby cottage during the summer months. Grandma's house was like a library to them. One of my cousins said that she still owns a copy of Aesop's Fables that Grandma gave her one summer long ago.

I love hearing her stories. I do. Today I will get a few more. The funeral is this afternoon and, afterwards, the ladies at church are putting on a little lunch. I'll listen then and fill up on more stories; the kind only seniors can tell about a time long before people passed their time in front of a television being told what to think. A time when community dances, barn-building bees and quilting parties knit together the fabric of a community like a fine sweater.

When I hear of these stories, I wonder sometimes if we have advanced as a society or if we are slowly devolving. I wonder how Grandma felt about the changing times. Maybe she didn't see it as much. She lived after all, in the same safe, rural community of farmers and quilters and friends that experienced life as she did. The kind of people that bring pies to their neighbours when they lose someone. The kind of people that stand in line and say, "Sorry for your troubles."

It's nice being back up here. I like the safety of this community. I like driving past someone and having them wave at me whether they know me or not. I like going to the store and hearing somebody call me "Tommy's daughter," as though my father is a kid himself. I like hearing the neighbours call me kid, even though they can see the flecks of grey staining the hair at my temple. I like the way it feels to belong in a community.