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Browsing Tag: #southernfuneral
When you’re seventeen, you don’t think about your best friend’s dad dying. When you’re seventeen, you don’t think about attending the funeral of your first boss. You don’t wonder whether the guy who owns the mountain where you ride horses is gonna die of cancer. When you’re seventeen, all you’re concerned with is boys, hair, and if you’ve got enough gas to run to Wendy’s. You worry about how you look in your swimsuit, and who is going to prom with whom. When you’re seventeen, you’re self involved with your own problems…and too young to realize they’re not problems at all, because they have zero bearing on the rest of your life. But when you’re forty-one, you smile through tears as your best friend delivers her father’s eulogy. You remember the times spent with him as he patiently taught the two of you how to drive in their subdivision. The silver van with the emergency brake lever in the console. You think about how many times he drove you to Walmart because there was nothing else to do…sometimes twice in one day! You recall him helping move furniture and building bookshelves and baking cheesecakes. You realize how much he loved his daughter and how he impacted your life, too. When you’re forty-one, you dress in black on a dreary Saturday and drive to a nearby church to pay…
A soft, gentle, much needed rain will be falling this morning at the gravesite of Mr. Ralph Newman. Maybe I should call it a “mourning rain”. Ralph might’ve got to Heaven & made that his first order of business, ’cause he sure knew we needed it. My heart is with all the Newmans this morning as they lay David’s daddy in the earth. Many of you know him, have bought hay from him, have seen him working in the fields. I loved Mr. Newman. He was one of the first farmers I ever waited on when I came to work at Co-op. He was patient with me as I hunted item numbers for his requested feed and baler twine. He has been patient with me over the years as I tracked down the right bolts, seeds, shoestrings, oil, vaccines, and information for him on herbicide & pesticide application rates. I’d spot him ambling along the aisles of the store & I’d break off from whatever I was doing to go speak to him. Well, go holler at him, is more accurate. We got along good because his hearing had been sub par for several years & I tend to talk loud. ” Hello, Mr. Newman!” I’d bellow, & he’d grin ear-to-ear. “Hello, Amy!” He’d holler back. Or sometimes he’d call me “sis”. It…
