August 1951 brought death to my family. My Granddaddy Marion Grissett died at age 75. His neighbor Mr. Marvin Lisenby rolled into our lane to motion with his head for Daddy to come out to the car. I was on the front porch with my siblings and that was a sure fire way to get our attention.
Daddy walks to the car with a knowing look on his face.
That gave me another reason to shush everybody and get information.
" Shut up y'all, som'ums wrong".
Daddy listens to Mr. Marvin and asks,
"Do what, what happened"?
" Mr. Marion just fell dead".
" When, where, how long ago"?
Mama was cleaning the Kelvinator after it had been defrosted and stood looking out toward the lane with her brow furrowed.
Daddy turns to walk back inside as Mr. Marvin drives off.
Mama and Daddy meet at the front door as Daddy pulls her to his chest to let the flood gates open.
The afternoon waned with speculation and plans.
The night was pitch dark as my family rides up to the "Old Steel Place" to attend Grandpa's wake.
The house was a double pen log house that had seen years of living and now used by my Grandparents as a sharecroppers rental.
Our family off loaded our little trap truck that we called, " Flip-de-Dip" because of the sound it made as it got us to our destination.
I remember the smells of honeysuckle even though honeysuckle mostly blooms in April around our part of Alabama.
August was hot and dusty. Cotton fields were coming into need of picking. Iron weeds and yellow tops grew in gully cut clay ditches.
Pecan trees dripped honey dew.
Dry winds on the leaves of sycamore trees rattled like boys had tied Jesus church fans against the wheel spokes of their bicycles.
Things felt hot and wilted.
Death was in our lives and this was my first experiance with death in our family.
Things felt spooky.
Things were done differently. Everybody talked quieter. Mama turned to look for things she couldn't remember. Daddy seemed more cordial to her.
Grandpa wasn't embalmed, so the menfolk neighbors and kin took charge of the laying out of Grandpa.
The day he died was spent getting things ready for his wake.
Night came dark and hot and discombobulated for me.
We walked up the lane to see the outline of cars and trucks parked along the lane with men sitting on bumpers and leaning on fenders as the smoulder of a thousand cigarettes glowed in the dark. A hush came down as those people stopped talking and spoke to Daddy. Mama walked stiff and with purpose.
The smell of honeysuckle and tobacco smoke and dried grasses mixed with the heat and dust of August imprinted in my memory like nothing since.
Death was everywhere in that place of my tenth year of life.
I walked as close to Mama or Daddy as possible.
I remember seeing folks standing in the yard, on the porch and their silouettes backlit by kerosene lamps inside the open windows with shutters hooked against the outside wall.
Daddy stopped to talk with somebody as Mama walked up the steps. The people on the porch parted to allow my Mama her respect as the daughter of the dead man that, "lay a corpse" in the front room of that old log house.
The term, "Lying in repose" was never used in our world. My people came from the hardscrabble life in Escambia County, Alabama and home wakes called for the dead to, "lay a corpse".
This was to be a night of " sitting up with the dead".
Family and neighbors sat up with my Grandpa.
I stood as near to the door of that death room as I could stand. I held on to the dresstails of my aunts.
I didn't like the look of the lamp shadows dancing on the walls around Grandpa's coffin. All the furniture of bedding, a dressing table, a chifferobe were taken away. The ladderback chairs that were used to sit in front of the fireplace had been placed around the walls so as to allow sitting and watching with Grandpa's coffin centered in the front bedroom/fireplace room.
Several sprays of white gladolia and carnations stood at the sides.
The sweet odor of those funeral flowers in that stale air room nearly gagged me.
Grandpa looked dry and drawn and bluish.
Loud keening from a Goodway relative got carried to cause a rushing from the back porch.
"Lordy, she loves to bring her sorrow out at times like this".
"Shush"!
" Take her across to the bed so as she can rest a spell, her heart ain't good anyway".
Relaxing of shoulders helped to ease the moment.
Mama was hugged and patted by her sisters before being led across the dogtrot to the kitchen where Grandma was being attended by ladies of kin and aquaintance with the hovering around of wet face cloths as she endured spells of wailing and weeping.
I could see Grandma's gums all pink and fleshy as she fell back to scream her anguish.
I don't think my Grandma had ever been so seen after.
Time dragged toward midnight, conversations settled the questions of who would go and who would stay to set up with the dead. Agreements were made among those who would come back to cook breakfast and attend Grandma.
It was urgent that Grandpa be put away as soon as possible due to his not being embalmbed and this being August. Heat on a dead body works fast and furious.
I distinctly remember the most memorable part of the wake was all the food sitting on the table.
The ritual of "feeding the grief " was full on in Grandma's kitchen.
Mercy, this sounds awful, but funeral food cooked by ladies in the south cannot be explained, it has to be experienced.
Example: Fried chicken, (not KFC,) yard pullets fresh killed, beef roast with gravy slow cooked in a cast iron dutch oven, home cured ham, meatloaf, lard fried porkchops, vegetables of every kind fresh grown from the gardens all around the Barnett Crossroads community, bowls of potato salad, casseroles from recipes out of Progressive Farmer magazine, cornbread, biscuits and yeast rolls. The side tables sagged from the weight of desserts., cakes, pies, puddings, even cobblers. The old water shelf on the back porch just outside the kitchen door held gallon jars of sweet tea, a galvanized bucket of fresh squeezed lemonade, compliments of Albert Watson a grocer from Flomaton sat on a bench against the wall . Albert was our Smith cousin by marriage. Albert was born and raised about a mile north of this place of death, he knew the ways of a country wake. He also supplied a big block of ice from the shed in Flomaton. The ice was kept cold with being wrapped in burlap and set in a tub of sawdust. Mama's brothers chipped ice as needed.
Young girls and youngish ladies washed plates and drinking glasses. Forks, spoons and knives clattered in dishpans,
That night of grief and good eats was endured and partook of. The old kinfolk ladies sat tableside to talk and grieve with Grandma. Their swollen legs and ankles showed results of age, weight and inherited heart problems. Their stockings held above the knees with elastic garters caused misery, then eventual rolling down to the ankles for relief.
Heat of August caused bodies to smell and hair to sour.
Babies crawled between those old legs to gnaw on little drum bones that had been cleaned of fried chicken by their mothers. Little cousins and neighbor children ate their fill and drank lemonade with chipped ice until leaving time.
The darkened yard was played in by children of all ages.
They were randomly quieted from time to time.
Kids have to let loose at times, they let loose in games of hide-n-seek in that darkened sand swept yard.
Death be damned for the young................
The wake went rogue around midnight as the ones sitting up with the dead got involved in yarn telling as a way to relieve the effects of grief exhaustion and sleep deprivation.
The coffee pot was kept boiling as the old woodstove kept the kitchen smouldering.
Grandma got fanned and eventually had a compress of chipped ice laid around her neck until she was taken off to bed.
The kitchen crowd turned into a full blown Hee Haw show.
Doorways got crowded.
" Wonder who is keeping watch on Grandpa"?
My Daddy knew it was time to take Mama and us on home so he could come back and do his part in honor of Grandpa.
My family on the Smith side always said the demise of home wakes took the joy out of death.
One time one of Daddy's sisters came by our house after a wake to say she had never enjoyed anything so much in her life as sitting up with a corpse after midnight as the party rolled in the kitchen.
Grandpa had a well attended funeral. Loud crying and falling out into a faint happened that sad day. One estranged brother never made it to Grandpa's funeral. Kentucky was a bit too far and death a bit too early for mending of fences.
Grandma got coddled and taken care of until she too "Fell Dead" at age 80 in 1956.
*** This story will contiune next week.
