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| A Funeral in the Bush |
Losing family
members and friends, on the other hand, was a very sterile experience. I was a teen before going to my first
funeral, and it was orchestrated from the beginning to remove me, as well as
the rest of the audience, from the true act of the person passing from this
world to the next.
Don’t get
me wrong, the tears and pain we felt at that funeral were real. I knew that my great-grandmother was gone
from her body, and what was in the casket was just her shell. But, when the pastor was done, the last hymn
was sung, and the casket closed, that was it.
I walked out to the car, and my grandmother was gone.
I will
never tell someone how to mourn. That is
a very personal experience and is a path that we all have to walk on our own,
but there is something different about how we do it in the culture that has
adopted me. I don’t want to claim it is
better, but it does work better for me.
My family
recently lost one of our close members.
He went hunting on his own, and while out, experienced a stroke. Search and rescue was made up of family and
friends. We searched all over town,
checking the homes of his friends, we looked across the river at his old cabin,
and then finally took the search out of town where he liked to hunt spring
bears.
A friend
spotted his four-wheeler from the air and called others to go out by
four-wheeler to find him. When they got
there, he was conscious, but had signs of a stroke. They loaded him on to a four-wheeler and met
up with others who had gone out with a side-by-side that made transporting him
easier.
The clinic
staff met us in the very early hours of the day. The physician assistant was the spouse of one
of our local teachers, his helpers my former students. When our loved one made it to the clinic,
there were no introductions necessary as we strategized how to best assist.
Due to Covid,
a medivac without an accompanying family member was arranged. My sister-in-law flew in later to be with her
brother.
He didn’t
get better, and the reports from the hospital indicated that it was only a
matter of time and that we should say our final goodbyes and make
arrangements.
Making
arrangements in the village means that family contacts the pastor, speak with a
friend with coffin making experience,
talk to the city about where to dig a grave, and decide who should make the
grave marker.
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| Gary allowed me to learn from him. Knowing how to build a casket is an important skill in the village. |
“You live
in the olden days,” my sister texted me when she found out what was going
on.
In
Michigan, people don’t make caskets for loved ones.
The school
district donated pine, and a family friend (we’re all related in the village
somehow) offered to lead building the casket as well as teach me what he knew.
Dave, who
donated materials and shop space, commented as the casket took shape, “Gary, if
I go first, this is the style I want.
Looks like something right out of a western movie.”
“Well,
Dave,” Gary responded, “if I go first this is what I want you to make for me.”
Dave and
Gary are brother-in-laws.
We worked
on the casket for three nights. Myra and
Ellen came along for the last two with Ellen helping around the shop, sweeping
up sawdust, helping to clear coat the pine, and picking up scrap wood.
“What are
we building, Dad?” she asked at one point.
Ellen is
three. This is a casket, would not have
been a sufficient answer.
“Well…” I
started, “Uncle didn’t get better when he was sick. This is a box to put his body in since his
soul doesn’t need it anymore.”
“Uncle isn’t
real anymore?” she asked.
Admittedly,
her question took me aback. She is
three, but made me think about death in a whole new way. We had been fishing plenty of times together
recently and the way she verbalized the difference between the fish when they first
came splashing from the water and what they were like after being in the
plastic tub was the same. Living fish were
“real.” Dead fish were “not real.”
And, I had
to say, that a person’s body after that person had passed looked nothing like
the “real” person he or she had once been.
That body wasn’t a real person anymore.
What had made it real was missing.
Where I
grew up, the hospital and funeral home made all the arrangements for transportation. In the bush, we worked with a friend on
shipping, met the plane with a truck, and transported the body to the clinic where
it would be until the funeral.
Three guys
and Ellen went to get the casket (we dropped Bub off at home before going to
the clinic), and we carefully transported the beautifully crafted pine box. We moved the body to the casket, and one of his
sisters put socks on the body that she had knitted for him. The funeral home had taken care of the rest
of the dressing, though that is not always the case with bush funerals.
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| The casket matched the man: He was an outdoorsman who lived a rugged life. The handles (not seen in this picture) were made from an ax handle that he must have used for years at his camp. |
Earlier in
the summer, a friend, Bub (she goes everywhere I go), and I went logging up the
river for trees calving off the river bank.
I had milled a number of them up into boards. An electric planer cleaned two of them up,
and I fashioned the marker for the grave.
The grave
it would mark was that of an outdoorsman and artist. Its natural simplicity and straight lines
were purposeful for who I was building it for.
The school shop teacher laser engraved it, and we decided to leave it
natural spruce with just a clear coat.
“He would
have passed that tree on the river a lot during his life,” Myra pointed
out. “Now it is his cross.”
The pall
bearers assembled at the clinic and loaded the casket into the back of a truck
and took it to the church where the same discussion we have before every
funeral took place.
“Do we need
to take the center post out of the entry door?” I asked.
“Nah,”
another pall bearer responded, “the casket should fit.”
After a
failed try…
“How does
this center post come out again?”
People were
sent for tools that were brought to the church just as my nephew, Merle, was
getting the center post out. We will
remember how it works for next time… and still have the same conversation.
Covid has impacted
everything, funerals only being one. The
viewing was limited to just a few family members and friends before we moved
out to the cemetery.
A long-time
family friend and pastor, Chip Swanson, lead the service on the most beautiful
day we had experienced in weeks. Chip
had spent a lot of time with the family, at times even sharing a room with the
man we were now burying.
“Nowhere in
the Bible,” Chip spoke, “does Jesus say, ‘are you ready?’ He just says get ready. Now.”
We laid the
casket we had built with our hands to rest in the grave. In Michigan, there is a fancy lift that
lowers the casket. In the bush, the pall
bearers lower the box by rope by hand.
“Those who
believe in the resurrection of the body,” Chip said, “are welcome to put some
soil on the casket.”
The men
then provided their final service to the one who had passed and began filling
in the grave. The city left around a
dozen shovels for the job, and as one man tired, another tapped him on the
shoulder for his shovel.
The first
shovels-full were somber and the workers sad, but there is something about the
work and working together. Stories were
told of the person’s life, and smiles began.
It was rhythmic. It was healing.
“How will
he get out, Mom?” Ellen asked as I removed my kuspuk in the heat of the sun.
“His soul
isn’t there anymore,” her mom answered. “In
the end days, the grave will not hold him.”
Mourning is
a process. I won’t claim this way is
better, but it works better for me.
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| Walter would have passed the tree his cross was made out of multiple times on his way up and down the river as late as this spring when he went out on the ice to catch trout. |
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| Walter J. Slwooko 1/2/1954-7/2/2020 |
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