I hope that my words never seem disrespectful. I usually feel the need to purge and sometimes it’s about sensitive subjects. I have been labeled a sensitive soul, because I tend to cry at the drop of a hat. But in the meantime, my smart mouth is forever earning me the label of…well, you know. You’ve heard. I AM strong-willed, I have no lies to tell.

I say all this because I didn’t take a picture today. It would have been disrespectful to take out my phone and snap one, no matter how badly I wanted to remember the beauty of it. I have only my words.

I go to a ton of funerals. I don’t see it as morbid. I was raised up in funeral homes like some kids are raised in church. Seems like somebody all the time was dying. Holly Hills, Berry’s, Atchley’s, Rawlings, McCammon-Ammons were the ones locally that we frequented. Once I started working at the Co-op, we occasionally branched out to Newport and Morristown. College friends laying their parents to rest were sometimes surprised to see me turn up, not understanding that I was raised to comfortably attend these events. It doesn’t matter if it’s Greeneville or Cookeville or Murfreesboro. I will come. People don’t seem to understand that you don’t have to know the person who passed, you might love someone who loved the deceased. You go for them. You might have not talked to the deceased in ten years, but fifteen years ago you were thick as thieves. You go for them, for that time. You go because you care, one way or the other.
I promise you will never forget who attended the funeral of your loved one. You will forget who attended your sixteenth birthday party, and you may get hazy about who was at your wedding. You won’t remember who made it to your daughter’s fifth birthday or her ballet recital or your son’s first Little League game.
You don’t forget who came to hug you when your daddy died.

I sometimes will be the only one crying at the receiving line, as the family eyes me with pity while they manage to hold their own tears back.
Funerals are as unique as religions. I’ve been to all kinds: ones like a tent revival, where I thought the preacher was gonna keep us there till the sun come up, and just when he wound down another stepped up to continue. Funerals where if I hadn’t seen the body my-own-self I wouldn’t know who the preacher was preaching about. I’ve been to funerals that wasn’t a funeral at all– like my Grandmother’s– where we all just stood around, not looking at her because she didn’t want us to anyway, and telling funny stories. She was buried in purple silk pajamas, if you wanna talk about strange things at funerals.
I’ve been to funerals where the family was already Into It, and it showed. I’ve stood at grave sites while the husband dug his wife’s grave in his shirtsleeves, and where the grandsons pitched in covering their Mamaw up.
Plenty of those, out in the country.
Funerals where the procession to the graveyard was led by a tractor, or a jeep, and once, a boat on a trailer. Amazing Grace played on a bagpipe, songs sung by women who could crack glass. Led Zeplin and Elvis and of course, Patsy Cline.
Funerals for old men, primarily. Women with cancer, teenagers in car wrecks. I’ve never had to see a baby buried, and I hope I never do.

I have now attended four military funerals.
They’re the ones that squeeze your guts out. They’re the ones where you learn about their other life.
The first one was for a coworker of mine, one Delmar Maples, mechanic and janitor. And Marine. A sunshiney day on a rocky hillside in Caton’s Chapel.
Doves.
21 shots.
Wailing.
The second was for my college friend’s Dad. It was at the Mason Lodge. Fired the canon. Presented the flag. My friend was pregnant and I remember her rubbing her belly and a big tear rolling down her cheek.
My Uncle’s best friend was next.
Brass on asphalt.
Bite of smoke on the frosted breeze.
Taps.
Cheryl looking straight ahead, chin proud. As she should be.
Stronger than me.

And today, John.
We gathered at the little stone chapel next to the Veterans Cemetery overlooking the river. A humid morning, fog still hiding out on the riverbank. We found respite under the maple trees and watched birds wheel until it was time to file in. Flag at half staff. I found a farmer from the valley to talk to while we waited. He hadn’t known John stood at the casket of John F. Kennedy. He’d known him for decades, farming right alongside in the mud and snow and heat. But he hadn’t known that. None of us did. We knew about the hay, and the weather, and the cattle. We knew the man who devoted his life to agriculture. We were learning he’d also devoted it to the United States of America, his church, and his family.
I was full circle again, sitting beside Judy Godfrey, the one who introduced my family to John when I showed his sheep. Judy, that I serve with on the library board. Judy, that instructed me at the library summer camp when I was six or seven years old.
I clenched my jaw.
John was laid to rest in a steel John Deere casket. I don’t mean that it is simply green. I mean that it is BRANDED John Deere, complete with emblem. Dedicated to the end.
His remains were up front, between the American Flag and the Tennessee State Flag, with other service flags as well. His John Deere casket was covered with another American Flag.
We sat.
The salute.
Firing
Firing
Firing.
Taps.
Silence.
All at attention as the flag was folded and presented to Miss Glenda. She smiled a quavering smile, accepted, nodded.
Sniffs.
The officer saluted, long and slow.
My nose dripped and pressure built behind my eyes.
The grandson rose and read Paul Harvey’s So God Made A Farmer.
Of course he did.
And he didn’t get hoarse until the last paragraph. And there wasn’t a dry eye in the chapel.
His granddaughter read Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.
His son-in-law told some jokes. Yeah, we agreed, wiping our eyes, he knew John.
Yeah.
As I left I could hear John saying, “let’s go eat.”
And so it was today, when we buried John Huff.