It was at my great-grandfather’s funeral that my cousin Amy and I got the giggles. We started laughing and couldn’t stop. This was many years ago—Amy and I were both in elementary school at the time. Picture two little girls, with Tennessee twangs and big blue eyes, sitting in their Sunday best, their hands clamped over their mouths as they tried to muffle sidesplitting laughter. That was us.
What it was that sparked our laughter, I am not sure. Rest assured that it had nothing to do with my great-grandfather, Grover Sain, who lay in his casket just a few feet from us. Who knows what sets two little girls to giggling? Maybe one of us said something funny. Or maybe, in our boredom, we had focused our attention on something mundane and found it humorous. Whatever it was, we couldn't help ourselves.
I should go back a moment and tell you what I remember about my great-grandfather. For one, I called him "white-headed PaPa" (pronounced paw-paw). You see, white-headed PaPa, not to be confused with my grandfather, whom I called PaPa, did not have gray hair. He had an impressive shock of white hair that was always a bit mussed up, as if he'd just walked into the house with a gust of wind. I have a few vivid memories of him. One is of when my mom and I went to white-headed PaPa's house to decorate his home for Christmas. He was at the age where he didn't feel like decorating for Christmas, or was disinclined to, but my mom was determined that he would have some Christmas cheer in his home. She took what few ornaments he had—old glass Christmas tree balls and a couple of strings of lights—and carefully placed them about white-headed PaPa’s living room. On another occasion, I was fortunate to sleep over at my great-grandfather’s house. His youngest daughter, my Great Aunt Pattie, was visiting him, and as a special treat I got to spend the night too. It was the only time in my life that I slept on a feather mattress. I remember getting into that big bed in that cold, old house and immediately sinking deep into soft, downy feathers. I had never experienced anything like it. My last memory of white-headed PaPa is, as I said, sitting at visitation, just prior to his funeral, and giggling with cousin Amy.
In my mind, Amy and I were loud and distracting. How could we have been anything but? Our giggling was of the sort that brings tears to your eyes and makes your sides hurt. We wanted to stop laughing—we could tell that we were supposed to be somber—but we just couldn’t stop. Yet, we must not have been as loud as I thought, because no one told us to shush, and we were not scolded. Perhaps our carrying-on is greater in my memory than it actually was that day at the funeral home.
I confess that I have given death, and the life that follows, more and more thought in recent years. I hope that doesn’t sound morose. But I want to say this. When my funeral is here—no day soon, I hope, but when the occasion does come—I invite you to laugh. Really, I don’t think I’ll mind. I will have moved on to something far grander than anything we can imagine here. Pass out cigars, if you’d like—you know, the way a proud father does when a baby is born. For our life after death will be just the beginning, the start of something new.
I leave you with 1 Corinthians 15:42-44—So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
—Kim Paras
No comments:
Post a Comment