Of Folk and Funerals

Today I looked upon a corpse.  I also shook the hand of many-a-stranger, contemplated how dousing oneself in blood - holy or otherwise - makes one whiter than snow (and exasperatedly wondered why so many people are morbidly willing to SING about it, let alone contemplate it), assuaged a mentally stressed loved one, drove seven hours through the hills of Missouri, ate some cow, got a late-afternoon shut-eye, and failed to save the galaxy from the swarm - twice.

It was a strange day.

Let me back up a bit, to the part about a corpse.  His nickname was Shorty, and he was my Grandfather-In-Law, on my wife's father's side.  The last - and only - time I saw him alive was about 2.5 years prior, in the exact same cemetery, on a cool, eerily similar sunny day in the quiet heart of the Country.  We were at my wife's Grannyma's funeral, on my wife's mother's side, a bizarre coincidence that I did not find in the least bit pleasant.  That first meeting left me without much of an impression, simply because in the end, he was just another One of Dozens of people I interacted with for about half a minute.

Today, I learned more about Shorty than I did in the first meeting, despite the fact that don't have the power to commune with the dead, or at least none that I know of.  I, of course, learned of such things through the most common of ways - speaker/s at the funeral service - but beyond that, I learned of Shorty by simply observing the vast number and variety of people who came to pay their last respects.  There was the nervous but confidently chatty son, a man of many words and a story perpetually on the tip of his tongue.  There was the slender brunette cousin lifted straight from an 80's magazine with her zip-up boots.  There was the sarcastic, surprisingly nerdy cousin whom I heard mention the word "Silmarillion".  There was the tearful, slightly-graying late-thirty-or-forty-something "tech-savvy" grandson who used a laptop to power the uncomfortably traditional southern gospel renditions of old-time hymns.  There was the easy-going, candy-snorting, twenty-two year-old cousin who aspired to build a house and just live free and let life "happen".  There were the small cadre of honest children, equally wearing the content of their hearts and their noses on their sleeves, ever ready to comfort a nearby adult or quietly grab another roll of Smarties (of which several rolls would be buried with Shorty, tucked away in his favorite used overalls).  There was the sunglasses-wearing "rebel" grandson, who at the last second, asked to be a pallbearer as they were carting Shorty out of the small church next to the cemetery.  There was a large representation of aging Good Folk, the kind of people who were as likely to chat boisterously as they were to sniffle quietly, in equal measure.

And there was the grandmother, to whom Shorty was married to for a long 66 years.  The Matriarch of the Family, my wife would later describe her as.  "Shorty was a pillar of the community, well-respected and loved, but don't let that fool you," she elaborated.  "Grandmother shaped the family into what it's become."  I had done a pretty good job of stonewalling myself to the powerful emotions swirling in That Room and under That Burial Tent, but when it came to the Matriarch, I couldn't help but tear up.  66 years.  How do you cope with that?  How on earth do you adjust to life without?  My empathy was in full swing by the end of our two hours - not that she needed it.  She struck me as a tough woman, always ready with just the right words for the situation at hand, even in as trying a time as her own husband's funeral.  She was, indeed, The Matriarch.

What I really learned about Shorty was that, ultimately, he was surrounded by a host of interesting, hearty, loving Folk - people who were touched by his life, his faith, and his earthy, grounded personality.  And what better way to go into whatever comes After than surrounded by Folk like this?  His life left a mark - big or small -on every single person who visited that church and cemetery - even on slender city-dwellers who would later fail at saving the galaxy.