Do only people a little off take pictures at funerals?
He's too good to me gave me a you're strange look when I told him to take pictures at my daddy's funeral.
I want to remember that no one does funeral sprays on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so flowers are small on the casket. Just the way Daddy would have liked them.
I want to remember and smile at the mismatched group of pallbearers that carried my daddy. Young grandsons just beginning to shave and boys that look like they are from the mountains because they are. Borrowed coats and jackets and my daddy would have liked that. He never saw much need in clothes.
That I forgot Max was an honorary pallbearer and didn't dress him right and he took off running to catch up in his khakis and furry hood.
That it was Mr. Charles that honored my daddy with the words simple, honorable, godly.
Remember how my uncle held tight to my mama. Holding her up while knowing in two days he'd bury his daughter - right there in that red dirt next to daddy. How did he hold up? He'd just said goodbye the morning before.
I want to remember that it was so cold my hands were going numb. Gloves were in my pocket but I forgot to use them.
I want to look back and see how we all look just alike. Daddy's look-alike younger brother and aunts I could belong to and the cousin that could have been the fifth one of us girls. Remember how one red-headed new son carried my daddy tenderly and the other delivered the flag and words of respect to my mama's waiting hands.
I will need to rehear the shofar blow from little Gideon's hands and see that his heart was broken as he cried on his daddy. That my girls were surrounded by love while we sang Victory in Jesus. Remember how my daddy liked to hear David play.
I need to remember that we got lost on the way to the cemetery that holds the bodies of my daddy's parents. That I took a rose from daddy's flowers and laid it at Ma's grave. I will need to laugh when I remember Aunt Sue told me to
tell Mama to go fishing with Pee while she waits on the rest of us. The rest of us ain't coming anytime soon.
And I told her.
But no one will ever need to remind me that what we laid to rest that cold day after Christmas Day was just a tired body that had stopped breathing.
That it was just a way to honor Daddy and remember that he was the oldest and wisest of us all. A way to publically say good-bye for now to a husband, father, brother, grandfather, uncle, and friend.
My daddy wasn't watching us from heaven. Not flying or sitting on a cloud or even fishing a heavenly pond.
My daddy is falling down at the feet of Jesus. Not still in awe but forever in awe.
And I will see him again.
