Digging For Heaven's Sake

     On March 15th, 1997 Grandpa died. Robert James Houghtaling, my grandfather, was one of greatest men to ever live.  He inspired me with a great love of God, history and genealogy research.  Just minutes brfore he died, I spoke with him on the phone.  To his very last breath he remained clear in his thought and cheerful in his words.  A part of me will always be with him and yet, a great part of him will always be with me.  Never was there a more unpretentous man. Many people saw him as a little strange, eccentric, and unusual.  He WAS!  And he carried his unusualness with him to his grave.  He did not want to die in a hospital and he passed his final hours quietly at home with those he loved.  He never thought anyone should be conformed to the way that others did things.  Grandpa is buried on family land, in a grave dug with shovels by his family, under dirt that we laid over him. Not having much experience at this grave-digging thing, my brother buried him backwards!   On the day of the funeral we gathered to bury grandpa and to mark the passing of an exceptional man.  Some old wood that Grandpa bought for a project was nearby.   We fashioned a cross of wood to mark his grave until the headstone was finished.   But the headstone is over his feet!  Because we buried him backwards! Poor Grandpa -- backwards in life and now even in death.  He would just laugh!  The florist delivered the wrong flowers -- not what I had ordered but a gastly arrangement of purple and red.   My dear cousin Barbara heard about the interesting events and her imaginitive mind went to work.  This is the result!

Digging For Heaven's Sake

For my seventh cousin, Caroline Ross-Pence

On a day when everything Alabama

is down or up, falling or rising

or falling apart,

the funeral director rings.

For their recent bereavement

this burial morning

he is so sorry, but he can find no

corresponding emptiness

prepared in Mars Hill Cemetery.

Absent the grave

or the hired gravedigger,

what are the family's wishes?

 

Always for something simple

as sky and country grass;

fresh flowers for fresh

grieving of every wild color;

never the florist's dirge

delivered in red and purple;

for a gravedigger worthy of hire

and a ready cavity of earth

for Grandpa's bones

on a new old-fashioned

family plot on family land.

If Cousin Caroline wishes

to dispatch the fickle gravedigger

with dark admonition,

 

"I go to prepare a place for you,"

forgive her need for comic relief.

Shrouded to the knee

in succulent mud, the pallbearers

work with shovels kept keen

as Grandpa's sermons.

Each scoop delves deeper

the way he taught them

to dig into life,

to move what has to be moved

and to search out the black wings of soil

that can fly to the mountain

rising to heaven.

 

But why is sorrow like thirst?

Why is one drop a hundred more?

Semi-liquid as mud,

Cousin Caroline whimpers

while the children's celestial sopranos

rise and fall in wet waves,

 

Yes, we'll gather at the river,

the beautiful, the beautiful river.

Then the mountain of falling

black feathers enfold an old man,

buried backwards,

face to the east, feet under his name,

 

He did everything backwards

so why should this be different?

Robert Houghtaling, 1905-1997,

Minister of the Gospel,

carved on a cross of old wood

intended ages ago to fix something,

which it did.

CBarbara Seaman

September 1997

Copyright 1997, Barbara Seaman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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