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Excerpt from Shuffletown USA
Southern Grieving Is Unpredictable
Funerals are not always sad events in the South. Southern funerals can be downright memorable. The collision of our lust for living and the stark reality of death occasionally creates a spontaneous performance of theatre in the round.
My ex-sister-in law loved to tell of her grandfather’s funeral. He had stopped attending the local Baptist church many years before his death, but when he died his wife decreed that his funeral was to be at the very church he had forsaken.
The preacher began the grandfather’s eulogy by stating that he had fallen from grace and was doomed to hell. As the preacher paused for his next condemnation, the deceased’s son stood up and motioned the family to assist him.
Together they pushed the casket out of the church with the son hollering: “My father would rise up and kill me if I let him lay there and listen to that crap.” As the family paraded up the aisle pushing the casket, the young granddaughter waved at the gathered mourners, who sat in stunned silence and the preacher hollered to her father, “You are taking your family to hell also, Son. Bring your father back up here and repent. Now.”This was the same family that painted their house pink and white to celebrate its eldest daughter’s wedding and became Catholics.
- Abby Rozzelle
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