Going Home
Allison Keeton Fisher
It’s a small town, the center of which is situated just about three miles south of Interstate 64 in eastern Kentucky. The connecting road between the town and the Interstate is a four-lane highway dotted with businesses and homes built on and into the hills that border the road. Close to the Interstate, nestled on a hill at the edge of the forest, is a funeral home that transports the deceased through town and all over the countryside to small family cemeteries.
On a recent trip home, my mother and I were driving north on this connecting highway toward the Interstate, when I noticed that all the cars in front of me were pulling off to the side of the road and stopping. I slowed down, too, simply because I didn’t know what was going on. Then, around the bend, I saw what was happening. There was a hearse leading a long line of cars toward town. I pulled over, like everyone else, and noticed that everything around us had come to a halt as well. In a parking lot across the road, some high school kids were raising money at a car wash. They stopped their laughing and sloshing around and stood still, some with hands folded in front, some with their heads down.
The whole scene brought back a memory I have of being downtown with my mamaw as a child, walking up the sidewalk with her and seeing a funeral go by. We stopped, as was customary, and I asked why. She shushed me until all the cars had gone by and then told me, “It’s just something you do when someone dies.” In my hometown, it still is, plain and simple. As my mother and I watched this procession go by, I was immediately taken back to my own mamaw’s funeral.
My grandmother was my first close relative to die. My other grandparents had passed on when I was a young child, and I can’t really remember anything about their funerals. I was thirty when mamaw died and consider myself blessed to have made it that far into my adult life without losing anyone intimately close to me. I had long since left Morehead, gotten married, and Rachel was nine months old at the time. It had been years since I attended a funeral, so I had forgotten the small town rituals surrounding it. I had gotten used to the muttering and sighing and eye rolling that usually accompanies a funeral in a big town, because of the traffic jam it causes and how it makes everyone late for whatever they are in such a hurry to get to.
After mamaw’s service, we all climbed into our vehicles for the long trek to our small family cemetery about fifteen miles away. As we pulled out onto the highway, I began to see reactions that triggered my memory, and it moved me in a way that took me by surprise. As I stared out the window of our assigned car, I witnessed the same scene, back then, as I did now with my mother. Everything came to a complete halt. Cars on the road pulled over. Pedestrians stopped walking. Even the university students with backpacks thrown over their shoulders walking quickly down Main Street to get to their classes stopped. Small clusters of people gathered on the sidewalk, chatting about one thing or another stopped talking. Children were shushed just like I had been years before by the woman we were now trailing behind. Everything just stopped as we went through town, and even as we wound our way out of town onto the small, winding, two-lane road, the farmers in the fields turned off their machines and took off their hats. It was an emotional time for me. Most of the people we passed would not have been able to tell you the name of the person we’d just lost or anything about her. If there was someone who knew her, there was a pretty good chance they were in the convoy with us to begin with.
In a small town, it’s not knowing the deceased, personally, that compels you to stop and give a moment of silence and stillness. It’s the way you are raised. It’s recognizing and respecting the fact that another human being who shared your community with you is now gone. It’s a way of quietly showing support for the family who is suffering, whether you know them or not. It’s a way of honoring the gift of life that is, without a doubt, taken from all of us one day. It’s a way of saying, “One of us is gone.”
My mamaw was a housewife who was rich only in family and personal experience. She grew up during the depression and didn’t trust banks. Every penny she owned was either in the sole of her shoe, various drawers around the house, jars and panels throughout the house, between mattresses or pinned to the inside of her bra, just for emergencies, mind you. If it wasn’t cash and wasn’t where you could get to it quickly, then there was no use for it. There was a time, as a young mother, when she had to leave her children with her mother to take a job out of state, because it was the only job to be found, and they all needed the money so badly. In an age before phones were in every home and mail to rural areas took ages to get through, I wondered how hard that must have been for her, to be that far away from her babies with very limited communication.
My mother told me that in her younger, stronger days, mamaw could take a full hog, skin it, gut it, and cut it up so that nearly every part could be used in some sort of recipe. She washed clothes by hand, fed each piece through the wringer, and hung the clothes on a line to dry. Her tiny frame gave birth to an eleven pound son with no drugs to alleviate the pain, and she delivered my eldest sister after chasing the doctor away when he showed up to my mother’s house with alcohol on his breath. She was my babysitter growing up, while my own mother went off to work.
I remember her small, cramped kitchen filled to capacity with every kind of ingredient known to mankind, stocked on top of her refrigerator, taking up half the kitchen table and nearly every inch of counter space. When I was young, I personally saw her hold a chicken by the neck and with one swift crank of her arm, snap the neck, decapitate it, fling the head over the fence, direct her son-in-law to bring it in once it collapsed from blood loss (and once his own shock and nausea subsided), so she could boil and pluck it and fix it for dinner that night.
She was a small but mighty force and lived a life I can barely imagine. She never held a title or political office. She never led any committees or served on any boards. She was well known only to those who benefited from her never-ending generosity and amazing common sense. She fed strangers when called upon and sprang into action in the middle of the night if anyone needed anything. She had coffee ready from sunrise to sunset just in case someone dropped by. She didn’t go to high school, but her memory of people and events and the Bible was long, and she drew on that to determine her beliefs and any course of action that needed to be taken.
There are other areas of her life of which I’ve only recently become aware. With every story, she becomes more three-dimensional than I ever would have figured growing up. She was a great woman to us, to the ones who knew her so well. So on the way to the cemetery, it struck me that a whole town had just come to a complete standstill for my mamaw in much the same way that it would have for the mayor, a military hero, or any other well-known person in our town. In a small town, everyone is important, at least once, at least at the end.
My mamaw’s family cemetery is not easily reached. In fact, it used to be a downright nightmare. It sits on top of a hill near the county line. The single lane, gravel road that leads up to the cemetery is a tight, thirty degree right turn off the main road. Most vehicles need to swing wide into the oncoming lane to even make the turn. The grade is steep – too steep for some cars in years past. The distance from bottom to top is probably less than one hundred yards, but it’s a hard one hundred yards. Even in good weather, some mourners chose to park at the bottom and walk up through the tall grass that covered the side of the hill. In rain or snow, only the hearse and those with four wheel drives attempted the climb. Others would walk in the deep tire tracks dug into the gravel after they were sure all the cars reached the top. It was surreal, that long train of people walking up, mostly in single file, not talking, heads bowed, the stronger healthier ones helping the oldest and youngest in the line.
Obviously, it’s a small, secluded place, unlike the massive, sprawling memorial gardens that have become so popular in the last few years. It’s also one of the most beautiful places I know. Because it’s so high, you can see rolling hills that lap over one another until they disappear in a haze. For years, there were beautiful, thick, tall trees that created a columned border, encircling the site like a crescent moon. Those trees were so tall, they were probably old even when the first person was buried there two centuries ago. Storms and disease took their toll, though, and forced the removal of most of them. The cemetery is still an awe-inspiring place, however. The families themselves are the caretakers of the cemetery. Twice a year, usually in the spring before Memorial Day and in the fall before winter sets in, family members gather with their lawnmowers, weed eaters, fresh flowers, and special stones to keep it looking respectable. It truly is a labor of love. The caretaking of a loved ones doesn’t end when they die. Not here, anyway.
I try to visit the cemetery every time I visit Kentucky. There’s just something about the place that I love. It might be the fact that I vaguely recognize so many names from family stories. My mamaw is buried next to her brother, who died as a very young man in the early 1940s from complications during surgery. He was her closest sibling, and she loved him dearly; that much I remember well. My mamaw outlived two husbands who are buried in nicely kept and easily accessible cemeteries in town, but I don’t think there was ever any doubt where she would be buried in the end. She wanted to be with “her people.”
Her mother and father are buried right above her. Set into the monument at the top, there is a ceramic oval that has a black and white picture of the two of them, my great-grandparents. Their faces are worn and creased, and their clothes didn’t fare much better, but I can see the resemblances of these strangers to my grandmother and my mother and maybe even myself, sometimes. It’s not a picture of a well-groomed couple posing for a portrait. It’s a casual picture. They are wearing everyday clothes, and they look natural. I love it.
Mamaw’s sister and brother-in-law are buried a few yards away on the other side of the site. There are several small, plain, diamond and rectangular stones with names of children sprinkled throughout the cemetery. Some stones go back to the late 1700s. I examine the dates of births and deaths, figure the ages, and wonder how these people, these relatives of mine, may have died. Did the children die of illness or accident? Did the young women die in childbirth; the young men in war? My mother can explain some, but others go back much too far.
On one particular visit, it dawned on me that I’m connected, on a genetic level, to nearly every person in that cemetery. My DNA is tied to most of those people whom I will never know, and it makes me wish I listened more closely to my family’s history as my mamaw talked about her parents, grandparents, siblings, and cousins. Why didn’t I take notes and record these things, somehow? Maybe it’s because the stories came spontaneously and in short bursts. They were plopped down into ordinary, daily situations, and were dismissed just as quickly; something my brother did reminded her of her own brother, or something on TV would remind her of her childhood home. Maybe, because as a child, you think nothing will ever change. Everyone you know will always be there, and there will always be time to get the details, later.
Every person in our family cemetery has a story, and for no other reason than just plain ol’ curiosity, I want to know those stories. Who was the black sheep of the family; who was the pride and joy? Who was happy with their lives, and who secretly wished for something much too far from their reality? Who was the hothead, always causing trouble, and who was the constant, dependable one? Who were the parents that grieved for all these children; who recovered, and who didn’t? These are my ancestors, and I can’t help but think that, even though they lived fifty, one hundred, and almost two hundred years ago, there are similarities between some of them and me. At this point, it’s a mystery, and I do love a good story.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve had to do those pesky adult-oriented tasks, such as make a will, buy life insurance, assign guardians of my children in case, well, just in case. I’ve also thought about where I would like to be buried, not that I’m in any hurry mind you. It just doesn’t seem to paralyze me with fear the way it seems to do with some people. It’s a transition, just like birth, and THAT worked out okay. Despite what modern medicine would like us to believe, none of us will live this life forever.
Mom says the hill is nearly filled to capacity. She just can’t see where the rest of us are going to fit. We’re a big bunch, these descendents of Fowler and Winona. Some of the newest members of the cemetery are starting to take their spot down the slope on the side of the hill, just off the plateau at the top. When I mentioned to Mom that I wanted to be buried there, she said there may not be room by the time I’m “called home,” but I figure even if I have to be cremated and scattered over the hilltop, that’s where I’ll be. My ashes will settle over the prettiest little ridge you can imagine, and a little stone off to the side in the corner will have my name, date of birth and death, and a ceramic oval with random pictures of me in it, nothing fancy, the “kiddie table,” as it were. Oh, there’ll be room somehow. I’m sure of it, especially if mamaw has anything to do with it. After all, in mamaw’s house, family is always welcome, and there’s always room for one more.
