When I get ready to die I think I'll move to a small town. They throw a heck of a funeral. Sometimes people complain about small towns giving you no privacy but in the end, the real end, having them there for you is like a big, warm hug. And there are a lot of those too.
My brother-in-law, who died last Saturday, had retired as the Chief of Police of a small town in Kansas a few years ago, but in a small town everybody has to step up and do things, so after he retired he was on the City Commission and then he was the Mayor. He was buried in his police dress uniform. His hat with the gold braid of chief on it and an American flag were on the casket. Uniformed officers were the casket bearers and as we drove to the church and the cemetery we had a police escort and every police car in town was parked, and the officer, black band across his badge, stood by it with his hat over his heart. It was very moving. I guess it would have been a good time for somebody to rob the bank or something but they didn't have the nerve. They were probably at the funeral with everyone else, anyway.
People told stories at the funeral of when Bill was on the force. One was about the time he had spent the whole day one step behind a man who was selling "hot" pots and pans that had been stolen from a warehouse. He was so mad that he couldn't catch the guy that he was still fuming when he got home. When he walked into the house his wife at the time said "Look what I bought today. Someone came by the office selling these pots and pans. They were a great price!" So not only had he not caught the thief but then he had stolen property in his own house.
Earlier, the funeral director told us about the time his mother, Bill's secretary, had confided in Bill that he was running around with the wrong crowd and on the verge of getting into trouble. Bill invited him and his friend to tour the jail, then locked them in and left for an hour. When he came back he said "Is this someplace you want to spend more time in?" and that was all it took for the young man to get his act together. He obviously held no ill will because the service and all the care his funeral home gave us could not have been better.
In Kansas apparently, at least in this small town, people come to the house instead of the funeral parlor and they started coming in droves within an hour of finding out about Bill's death. It makes me think I need to get up and clean house 'cause you never know. Fortunately my sister is a clean-nik (don't know how that happened). No one who came was empty handed. Most everybody brought food of some kind. A brisket that would feed---I'm not making this up---forty people, dueling KFC bucket meals that fed ten, (two people came in with those buckets at the same time), a six-pound pork roast for pulled pork with all the fixin's, two huge meat trays, a spiral-cut ham, cakes, chocolate chip cookies as big as your fist (we didn't put those out to share), and on and on. And there were only my two sisters and me to feed until the day of the funeral. My sister from St. Louis said it was like being on a cruise ship: every time you moved someone was trying to feed you.
Friends from Bill's daughter's church were bringing just as much food to her house plus they hosted a whole luncheon for our entire family just before the funeral. They must have cleaned out every grocery store in town.
There was a lot of sittin' and talkin' and since I didn't really know anybody I liked just listening. Of course the conversation turned to funerals and so on. One lady said she still has Charlie in the living room and it has been four years since he died. I hoped she meant she had his ashes in a container or something but I didn't want to ask. Another lady said she gets cold all the time so she has told her husband that she wants to be buried with an African to keep her warm. I don't know how the African will feel about that. She may have meant one of those little, warm lap blankets though. I'm not sure.
Now that I've been through this, I learned a few things for the future. It wouldn't hurt to wait a couple of weeks to take food to a family after a crisis. Put your name on your dishes, even if they are plastic & you don't want them back. (We lost track of who brought what and my sister was stressed about that.) One neighbor who came brought Kleenex and stamps. If you don't have time or the inclination to cook, bring paper plates, napkins, Saran wrap, even toilet paper. These are things you may need if there are hordes of people coming in and out and you had not known you were going to have company. Several people did that. It was very thoughtful. People just wanted to give to show they cared.
My sister's former employer not only brought breakfast for us but offered her extra bedrooms for the rest of the family that was coming in. Construction workers stopped the street repair they were doing next to the cemetery during the graveside service.
I guess when someone leaves a small town there is a bigger hole left than from a large city. It was as though everyone in town was mourning with us.
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