You can tell that I hadn't gotten the hang of needing to change the names "to protect the innocent" yet. I love my instructor, and she gave me lots of good advice about improvements. I'm not a good student because I didn't revise.
She’s Inside
with Mama
A funny thing happened in the church at the funeral. To be truthful, it was embarrassing to
the max, but after the beet blush disappeared, it’s a moment good for a laugh.
My daughter, Wendy, and I had been out of town for the
weekend, and when we returned, a neighbor told me that Old Mrs. Webb, whom we
fondly called Grandma, had died. How sad,
I thought. I had been meaning to walk across the street to see her,but
I am prone to let busy-ness get in the way of ought to do
As Wendy and I walked across the church grounds next door to
our house that Tuesday afternoon, we spied a group of men standing around
talking, as men are wont to do before a church service of any kind. I spied Howard,
Grandma’s son, in the group.
What? There’s Howard.
What’s he doing outside? How strange for him to be standing around talking when
his mother is lying dead in the church!
I went over to him. “Oh, Howard, I was so sorry to hear
about Grandma. I’d been meaning to go over to visit. I’m just so sorry.”
Howard looked at me quizzically and simply said, “That’s all
right,” in his Southern- gentleman
drawl.
“Where’s Margie?” (That’s John’s wife.)
“She’s inside with Mama.”
How sweet. He just
thinks of her as inside sitting with Grandma, keeping her company. Such a close
family.
Wendy and I walked into the little Methodist church and
signed the guestbook. Since this was my daughter’s first funeral, I knew I
needed to fill her in on what we’d be doing. “Sweetie, now we need to go down
to look at Grandma.”
“What? Do we have
to? I can’t do that!”
“Oh, yes, you can . . . that’s what they do in these little
country churches. It’ll be okay.”
We slowly made our way to the front of the church, Wendy
lagging just a little behind me.
She caught up with me at the casket, and by that time, I was the one
with the quizzical look.
“Oh, Wendy! She must have been really sick. She doesn’t even
look like herself.”
By this time, Wendy had looked at Grandma and had agreed
with me. As we were standing there, marveling at how much Grandma had changed
because of her illness, a sweet, tiny voice came to us from the front row of
the church.
“Why, Wendy and Sandy, thank you so much for coming.”
We couldn’t believe our ears . . . it was Grandma! As we
turned in the direction of the birdlike voice, we saw Grandma, and sure enough,
Margie was sitting with her, just as Howard said she’d be.
I rushed to her, hugged her, and assured her that we’d be
over soon to visit. Of course, Grandma was happy to hear my promise, but she
wasn’t nearly so happy to hear it as
I was to make it.
As we began to walk toward the back of the church, Wendy
stage whispered, “Mom! Can we leave? You know what we’ve done!”
“Of course, we can’t leave. How would that look?”
Wendy just rolled her eyes and plopped down next to me in
the pew, slumping down, trying to make herself invisible as only a
sixteen-year-old can do.
I sat down and tried to look properly funereal. I don’t know
what voice inside my head told me what to do next, but I very primly turned to
the lady next to me and said, “Whose funeral is this?”
(Melanie – What do I do now? Do I stop here, or do I say
something about the lady and her thoughts about the crazy lady sitting next to
her? Do I say anything about who the lady in the casket was? Obviously, this a
true story, a family story that I’m always encouraged to tell when folks are
sitting around swapping stories and trying to one-up each other. I’ll try not
to rely on autobiographical material next time. By the way, I left out lots of
details that I always include when telling the story orally.)
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