Spring
is the time of naissance. Stories abound about the rituals and celebrations of
spring that bind our human fates with the cycle of nature. It’s during spring
that the sun teases the plants from the ground, and the animals fill the barns
and fields with their young. In central Appalachia, it’s during this season of
birth that the long-standing ritual of grave dressing begins.
Central Appalachia is in the oldest mountain range in North
America. In this beautiful and rugged place, that I call home, small towns and
communities are the way of life. Small town life taught me to have a strong
sense of place and a great love for, and pride in, my heritage. My Appalachian
legacy includes its folktales, legends, superstitions, and traditions. One of
its oldest traditions is the rituals that surround death.
Family cemeteries, or graveyards as they tend to be called,
dot the mountainsides and church yards in this rural part of the country. The
number of graves in these cemeteries range from a single family to generations
of the same family. In central Appalachia, graves are not kept to areas
designated as cemeteries, but can be found on a hillside adjacent to a house or
even in the backyard.
Often, I pass by a small lot next to the road; on it is a
mobile home that has a grave in the front yard. The teddy bear tombstone claims
it is a child’s burial place. Even when the yard isn’t mown, the area around
the tombstone is pristine. As the years go by, the absence of toys in the yard
and the empty front porch is like a spotlight on the child’s grave. No matter
what story I imagine about this place, there are no happy endings.
Funeral services in central Appalachia are still dictated by
religious practices and family traditions. As old-fashioned as they may seem to
some, in truth, today’s funerals bear little resemblance to those of a hundred
years ago, when families took care of the wake and the burial. The absence of
undertakers and funeral homes as well as the lack of church buildings made home
services the norm. In those days, the women prepared the body while the men
hand-dug the grave. The coffin was made by the local carpenter or a family
member who was handy with tools, and the women lined it with cloth or a funeral
quilt – a quilt made for this express purpose.
Houses were built with a window in the front room wide enough
to get the coffin into the house, and the body was always ‘brought home’ to be
made ready for burial. If the family owned a clock, it was stopped at the time
of death and any mirrors in the home were covered. Often pennies, or sometimes
nickels, were placed over the closed eyes of the dead.
When everything was prepared, the wake was held before
burial. Since a hundred years ago, ministers in this area were in short supply,
there was no actual service. Family and neighbors brought food, and often
moonshine, to the home of the deceased. Women were supposed to cry over the
dead while the men stayed in the background. At night, family members were
expected to “set-up” with the body, because an old mountain superstition
decreed the soul didn’t leave the body until twenty-four hours after death;
therefore, someone had to keep the soul company and make sure the devil didn’t
steal it away.
When the undertaker arrived in this area, death practices began
to change. The modern funeral home changed them even more, but some of the old
rites are still practiced. Today, funerals may take place at the funeral home
or in a church instead of the deceased’s home, but the tradition of ‘setting
up’ with the body is still observed. After friends and family pay their
respects, a practice now called ‘visitation,’ chosen family members stay with
the body all night.
Internment in a family graveyard, instead of a large public
cemetery, is still the norm in central Appalachia. Location of the cemetery
dictates how the burial takes place. Family plots are often on steep ridges in
out of the way places. Some don’t have roads that are passable, making it
impossible for a hearse or even a four-wheel drive vehicle to get the body to
the grave. In days past, a wagon pulled by a horse or mule would be used to get
the coffin to the graveyard. Today, the coffin must be carried to a grave that
has to be hand-dug because it is impossible for a backhoe to get to the grave
site. Burial is also done by hand, with the pallbearers lowering the casket and
filling in the grave.
The old family cemeteries are some of central Appalachia’s
most beautiful landmarks because families embrace the ritual of grave dressing.
This seasonal activity is especially important after winter has ravaged the
landscape. Decorating family graves is as much an Appalachian tradition as eating
soup beans with cornbread. For some, it’s a simple affair of mowing grass, removing
old arrangements and installing new ones, but to some families, it is a ritual
that has become a family ceremony as worshipful as the funeral.
When the grass greens and the sun warms the earth, it’s time
to make the trek to the family graveyards. This is an important ritual for my
family, and on the appointed day, I arrive at our family cemetery early, so I
can wander through the uneven rows of old graves alone. The beauty of spring
juxtaposed with death doesn’t escape me. I sit under a poplar tree and look out
at my history; the most recent chronicle being the graves of my sister and
father. As the breeze, with winters chill still upon it surrounds me, I think
of these lines from Walt Whitman’s poem “Leaves of Grass”:
I WAS looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for myself, and for these
chants—and now I have found it;
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It is not in those paged fables in
the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject;)
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It is no more in the legends than
in all else;
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It is in the present—it is this
earth to-day;
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When my mother arrives, it takes some time to spread out the
paraphernalia she needs to dress the graves: bottle of soapy water, gallon of freshwater,
bottle of baby oil, brush, various rags, and of course, two large bags that hold
the new arrangements. I discover she has added a new tool to her arsenal - a
pair of small grass clippers, battery operated, and fully charged. I ask her
what I can do, but she waves me away while she, “cuts a little grass” around
the graves. I watch her for a while, amazed at how she can bend and cut so
carefully and methodically when at eighty-nine, she suffers from arthritis and
osteoporosis. Her back is bowed from an old fracture to her spine. I know she
suffers pain, but it doesn’t stop her; it merely slows her down.
While she cuts, I wander around the cemetery. I see by the
cut grass and bright spring flowers that other family members have been there
to tend their branch of the family tree, but there are many graves waiting to
be dressed, their vases holding weathered Christmas arrangements. It saddens to
me that the favored flower, the silk red rose, looks the worst after a winter’s
exposure. I find many arrangements whose roses are now the color of dried blood
tinged in gray, and I want to change them to spring pinks, yellows, and
oranges.
Half an hour later, my mother is ready to clean the grave
markers. She lets me pour the soapy water over them and use the soft brush to
scrub away the dirt, taking special care to get inside the letters of the
names. Mother watches me, instructing me like I have never done this before,
and I get the sense that she is making sure I know what to do for the day when
the side of the tombstone she shares with my father, bears not only her date of
birth, but her date of death. I realize I have accepted the job of grave
dresser, even though I was never formally asked.
When the grave markers are rinsed and dried, she lets me
apply the baby oil. This is her special trick to make the headstones shine. I
rub it over the entire surface, taking special care to get inside the letters
of the names. When she is satisfied, I step back and let her put the flowers in
the vases. I have not earned the right to do this, not yet. I am merely a grave
dresser in training. My mother makes the arrangements herself, and they are
beautiful. They are full and lush, but not too tall, so the spring winds won’t
blow them away. My sister’s and father’s arrangements are just alike, and in my
mind’s eye, I watch her creating these arrangements, bent over her work,
counting the orange tiger lilies, pink mums, yellow and orange zinnias to make
sure there are equal numbers in each arrangement. There are sprigs of greenery
and ivy, baby’s breath, and her signature touch – long green blades that look
like sea grass.
While she works, she talks of times gone by, of relatives I
barely remember, if at all. As is her way, she speaks of them in present tense,
reminding me her brother Roy “won’t eat breakfast without gravy on the table,”
and her sister Frieda, “wore my new high heels out to the coal pile and left
them. It snowed and ruined them, and Mommy didn’t even whip her.”
Mother tells me of coming to this graveyard when she was a
girl. She recalls that every spring, the whole family from all around, gathered
for a big dinner on the ground. This dinner coincided with the coming of the
traveling preacher. The family would hold a service at the cemetery for the
dead who’d been buried in the time since the preacher had last visited. They
called this custom of having a funeral after the fact, funeralizing.
While I listen, I stand by, handing her pieces of Styrofoam
and strips of florists’ green tape that she uses to anchor the flowers into the
vases. I feel like a nurse handing instruments to a surgeon. When at last, she
stands back to observe her creations, wondering aloud if they are secure enough,
I see her eyes rest of the names of my sister – Jeannine, and my father, Frank.
It’s now when she makes a remark that has “missing you” somewhere in it, and I
know it’s almost time to leave. This year, her “missing you” remark was
followed by “I’ll be seeing you soon.”
At last, she stands for a minute in silence, then picks up a
bag and starts packing her things. I help her put everything away and then
carry it to her car. I walk back for her and together we walk to our cars. When
we get to the road, she turns and looks back at the graves. She doesn’t comment
on them, instead points out the kaleidoscope of colors that the cemetery now
boasts. When she’s finished, I help her get in her car, seeing the pain on her
face as she uses her hand to pick up her leg. We don’t talk about it because
she doesn’t complain. The aches and pains of old age she bears in silence. She
puts that pain alongside the grief she’s born for twenty years after losing her
oldest child, added now to her newest grief of two years, the loss of my father.
I watch her drive away and go back to the graves we’ve just
tended. I sit down between them and turn my face toward the breeze. I breathe
deeply. My hair blows back from my face. I imagine the wind says, thank you.
After a while, I stand to leave and see others moving about the cemetery. I
feel a sense of peace like I have been blessed by the hand of God. My heart is
full with the blessing of it. I know that one day soon, I will be the one
conducting this ritual, and my heart accepts it. I know, too, the day will come
when I will take my place here next to my family, and other hands will dress my
grave when spring returns to the mountains.
