Making Room For Mack
When we entered Latham Cemetery, and I confess I was still unsure that all my phone calls had produced a ready hole in the ground, we saw, in the distance, a lone truck next to a fresh mound of earth. We pulled up to the driver and instead of introducing ourselves we simply said hi.
Keith, who worked for the vault company, was a young guy, lean of frame, not too tall, and with a quick smile and efficient manner. He grumbled just a bit about how the concrete box (into which the body is placed) didn’t fit into the grave. Instead of four inches too long, the hole was four inches too short. Not a problem on a warm day with soft earth, and a truck with a motorized winch, but this day he had neither. The arduous process of raising and lowering the half ton box was pure mechanical advantage – a long chain wrapped through a series of pulleys. Easy to lower, but way slow to raise, and bare-handed Keith was doing just that in 11 degree wind chill weather.
He’d raise the box, hack away at the frozen earth, lower the box only to find it didn’t fit, raise it again and hack away more earth. Finally Keith gave up and pulled the box all the way out of the hole. He called the funeral home who called the grave digger, and together they jumped down and worked, spades in hand, on either side of Mack’s grave. Time was not exactly flying at we stood in the cold wind, so I’m guessing the too small hole added another two hours to the committal. Keith apologized but we didn’t care a bit. Peter simply joked about the stubborn earth mimicking the stubborn man about to placed into it.
Will it fit?
“Not a chance, Keith.”
Gaining access.
Keith works on one side and
Jim on the other.
Well, *there’s* another example of “real jobs”!
Whew, Michael, Adam and I were just talking–worried that your cliff-hanging ending comment on your last post might mean that the wooden casket was too large for the concrete box.
*That* would have added more than just a couple hours to the internment…
Comment by smiling Dan — February 9, 2007 @ 10:21 am
But you could have put your carpentry skills to work … Yaaaaaahhh ……. !!!
Comment by el Kib — February 9, 2007 @ 11:32 am
“Keith apologized but we didn’t care a bit.” I would love to hear the thinking/feeling process behind this. Michael, you are the master of cliff hangers. You know when you hear a song you really like and the lyrical meaning is left to your own interpretation? You are a brainteaser physically expressed. Your father has done well by you.
“Peter simply joked about the stubborn earth mimicking the stubborn man about to placed into it.” Love this line, Peter.
And I find it very fitting that your last days and hours with him had you apply abstract mathematical concepts to a “real-world” situation; a word problem. Here’s another:
Q: If a man passes after a full life of challenges and joys, how many people does it take to lay him to rest?
A: All beings that come in contact with the butterfly effect that is Mack.
Thank you. This has been an amazing experience for me.
Comment by Jen — February 9, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
Wow, Jen.
Comment by Jennifer — February 9, 2007 @ 8:55 pm
Michael, do we get to hear about Nevada? Not that I’m greedy, or anything.
You know which photo, of all these in the last few days, gave me the chills? “Near Latham, Kansas.”
Comment by Jennifer — February 9, 2007 @ 8:59 pm
On this his birthday, I cannot help but think about how much shinydome would have relished this serial blog saga or how much empathy he would have had for Michael. Frank Stochl was a formidable man, and Jim loved him and mourned his passing. He would have understood.
Comment by FierceBaby — February 9, 2007 @ 11:18 pm
I remember one Christmas when Jim, knowing I had much work to do before I could settle into family festivities, brought his work clothes and offered to be my right hand man. I’ve a feeling, had he been with us, that grave would’ve been widened in no time.
Jennifer: Nevada is coming, but if I don’t finish this one, I fear I’ll never come back to it. And, yeah, I agree with you about that prairie picture. Peter snapped that, and others, through our moving van window.
And Jen touches on something I think about often. How all this has affected Diane. I told her, maybe at grave side, that if she’d married Rich, the lawyer-man she was dating when I came to town back in ought ’69, she’d a spent her life at conventional funerals. Which, of course, may not be true, but I was trying to be funny and make a point, and thank her for being at my side. Now that I read this, I may have failed at all of the above.
Anyway, I’ll never forget and I will always be grateful for Diane’s part in all this. She knew the Latham burial was the right thing to do and she never wavered even as my legs got a little shaky, she kept Peter and me on track (we do have a habit of wandering), and she guided me through the hard moments . And you know what else? The casket ride creeped her out not a whit.
Comment by michael — February 10, 2007 @ 9:00 am
“The Casket Ride” would make a great title for a novella someday … And leave the excoriating self-doubt to ones more worthy. Diane knows what Joe knows.
Comment by adam — February 10, 2007 @ 10:15 am
You are a much better woman than I, Diane. I get the creeps from bug remains.
Comment by Jen — February 10, 2007 @ 4:24 pm