I’d heard about Reverend Jenkins, who was just as often referred to as Preacher John. I didn’t pay a lot of attention except when dad mentioned he rode his bicycle across the United States when he was in his fifties. His wife went along the route in a camper or motor home — the details would make a more clear picture but you’ll have to settle for an abstract — and now, he is eighty … snow white hair and eyes made kind from seeing clearly.
He could see the spirit moving on the faces, some stricken, some observant, of those gathered to witness the return of the body to a hole in the ground. There are silent watchers over the graveyard, and while some may be angels, skittering in and out of existence, one that never flies away is a backhoe. It comes to life only when you maintain it, fuel it, and fire it up. Then you have to develop a touch for making it an extension of your hand. Scooping delicately beside the graveled trail through the old Pioneer Cemetery, Preacher John gathered some dirt in his hand. He put it on the casket and pronounced, “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”
He had checked with dad, first, to make sure there was no objection to his doing the closing ritual releasing dust back to dust. Dad said, “That’s the way we always did it. We had to lay the body on a cooling board and then dig a grave and bury it ourselves.”
You bury the body yourself so as to not let death get too far removed from the gravedigger. Preacher John mentioned that we all have to pass this way, that he was eighty, and Ruby was eighty-eight. Eight years behind the death on this day is Preacher John, who ritually tosses the earth onto the casket — suspended there — above the grave.
The cemetery is small, and surrounded by a rock wall. The two plots reserved for Ruby and George have a rock wall around them, about a foot and a half high. The air smells fresh because it is the first clear day following a series of storms. The sky is clear and slate blue. The air is cool but the sun is warming it up.
Around a big black hearse there is a three man crew of funeral directors. They are respectful and efficient, though a constant dealing with death strips it of the natural solemnity of rare events. Death is not a rare event at the mortuary.
Around the grave there are flowers, in bunches and sprays. Gradually the flowers will die and the containers will be thrown away. The backhoe operator will come over and bury the casket. And I will be at home, drinking wine, when the feelings I have held back are given permission to congregate freely.
What else was there? And of course it was Ruby, but not old and enfeebled, looking around her in baffled wonder at those cheering her on toward nothing they could define, beyond another day like today. It was Ruby younger and more filled with life. I tried to explain what I was feeling, but Linda already understood it. She lost her mother many years ago, when she was fairly young. ”You get your mother back,” she said. ”But the way she used to be, when she was young.”
One of my clients wrote that we all have to face death, and he asked if I am ready. I said, “Sure; just let me use the bathroom first.” And he wrote back he was serious, whereupon I replied so was I. He wrote back with a quote from Woody Allen: ”I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Amen to that.
Later in the afternoon dad wanted me to drive him over to see John Jenkins. He wanted to give him a card with some money in it. I knew he was needing to take care of things, stay busy with what needs to be done. And when he’s done with the details he will open to find out what else is there.
(From “The Gates of the Forest,” by Elie Wiesel):
“the body has time; it moves slowly and prudently, step by step, in obedience to laws of gravity, but the soul brushes time and laws aside; it wants to push forward, regardless of the cost in pain, or intoxication or even madness. that is the only way it has of raising itself to god. on your way through life you’ll meet men who cling to reason, but reason gropes like a blind man with a white cane, stumbling over every pebble, and when it comes up against a wall it stops short, and tries to tear it down brick by brick, quite ineffectually, because an invisible hand builds it up again, higher and thicker than ever. We on the other hand, believe in the power of faith and ecstasy, and no wall can stand against us; with our fists and our songs we bring it crashing down. Gates do not frighten us. because, my child, listen to this: other people can open their eyes wide to see god but we close them. yet these others attract darkness while while we laugh at it, until it follows rather than precedes us.”