Funeral Sermon

When the preacher came, no lie any adult could tell would put me at ease. Preacher Cur­ley was bald, per­pet­u­ally red-faced, and short. On Sun­day morn­ings he was all fire and brim­stone and Bap­tist, deliv­er­ing bale­ful ser­mons to a flock eager for chas­ten­ing. On Sun­day after­noons, he had din­ner with my grand­par­ents, and some­times I was there too, cowed into polite­ness by my mem­o­ries of ear­lier in the day. But it was a Sat­ur­day this time that Preacher Cur­ley drove up. There’s no church on Sat­ur­days. Papaw died that after­noon, in the mid­dle of Preacher Curley’s prayers.

By the time Papaw was dying, though, I had stopped going to church. Every Sun­day since I was ten, I pre­tended to have a headache, too sick for church. It was one of my mother’s favorite ploys for get­ting out of fam­ily func­tions, so I must have picked it up from her. My preacher fright­ened me, shout­ing his way through ser­mons. I thought he was angry, and when I asked the Sun­day School teacher, she brushed my ques­tions aside. “Preacher Cur­ley is a man of God, dear. He’s angry because God is angry. We are weak before Our Lord. We mustn’t dis­please Our Lord And Sav­ior Jesus Christ by ask­ing ques­tions about the preacher.”

We took turns pray­ing in Sun­day School, hands joined in a cir­cle of fel­low­ship. I was too shy to speak out loud in front of my class­mates and the teacher, so I refused each time. I could recite any num­ber of prayers by heart, but the com­plex, archaic lan­guage of them con­fused me, and the sim­pler ones were just bor­ing. Obvi­ously, I wanted God to keep my fam­ily and friends safe, and since God was omni­scient, why did I have to say so out loud? And if I had to hold hands with the entire Sun­day School group while I prayed, did that mean I was wish­ing for all of their well-being, too? Some of those kids, I wasn’t so sure about.

My par­ents were eas­ily fooled at first. I only got headaches on ran­dom Sun­days, so they never found a pat­tern to my decep­tion. After a few months, they began insist­ing that I go, which sur­prised me. They weren’t very reli­gious them­selves; Mom sel­dom went to church with us, and when she did, she wor­ried aloud that Preacher Cur­ley was work­ing him­self into a heart attack. Dad’s piety only got him as far as the park­ing lot of Mt. Pis­gah Baptist—he drove my broth­ers and me to the church every Sun­day, let us out of the truck, then turned around and drove him­self back home. When my par­ents insisted on my going to church, my fleet­ing teenage rebel­lion kicked in and I refused to go. After a few weeks of gen­uine headaches and sit­ting sto­ically in a pew, star­ing at the hym­nal, Mom and Dad relented. I only went to Mt. Pis­gah after that on Christ­mas and Easter, when Mamaw Haf­fey guilted me into it.

In my fam­ily, nobody tells you what’s going on until you’re 21. So I didn’t know Papaw was dying, exactly. He had been sick all my life, that was noth­ing new. But I could read the anx­i­ety in the women’s eyes and the piles of whit­tling shav­ings beside the men. Some­thing was wrong, some­thing worse than usual. And the worse things get, the less any­body wants to talk about it. The grownups nom­i­nated the youngest adult to step out­side the house and take us, the too-young-to-understand, for a walk. What was dis­cussed inside the house, behind closed doors? I imag­ine them all sit­ting vig­i­lant, won­der­ing in silence how to help their father. I imag­ine him, faintly breath­ing, ready for his pain to ease but not quite ready to over­bur­den his chil­dren with death.

I imag­ine my dad was Papaw’s favorite son. Of seven boys, Dad was the first to learn his father’s trade, though he was the mid­dle child. Papaw built houses to last, houses to with­stand the harsh­est win­ter, the strongest hur­ri­cane wind, or the fiercest domes­tic strife. He taught my father how to use a chalk­line, read a level, and take care of tools they likely could not afford. Dad also watched his father meet with new cus­tomers, saw how they so eagerly shared their dreams of own­ing a house and set­tling down, how care­ful a guardian of those dreams Papaw was.

When it came time to dis­cuss terms or pay up, Dad knew why he was just as happy to trade a preg­nant sow or a team of mules as he was to take cash. As mea­sured in tan­gi­ble terms, they never turned a profit on their work. But they were beloved. I think that’s why Dad was able to entice his broth­ers, both older and younger, to join the fam­ily busi­ness. Together, they nur­tured our small town, helped most of a gen­er­a­tion of kids grow up not too far from home, put down roots within walk­ing dis­tance of their own par­ents’ doors. When Papaw turned sixty, his sons became Mahaf­fey Broth­ers Builders, and every­thing they built was meant to last. They remem­bered every favor they’d been granted, and those they helped along the way made sure none of the Mahaf­fey boys ever did with­out. If I were still liv­ing near my par­ents, if I had not ven­tured out of the Car­olina foothills and into the moun­tains, I would be work­ing now at my father’s side.

I always felt this good­will in our com­mu­nity. The most impor­tant thing I could tell a stranger was that I was “Den­nis Mahaffey’s boy.” It granted me access to every kitchen in town, every bas­ket­ball court, and later, a fair amount of free auto repair. While we lived in a trailer down the road from a man the Mahaf­fey broth­ers built a home for, a bright red Ford pickup drove by every week­end. The dri­ver, our neigh­bor, gave me and my broth­ers a five dol­lar bill each, then drove away.

* * * * *

I made it all the way to 7th grade before I attended my first funeral. My Dad’s dad, Papaw Van­der “Haf­fey,” chewed tobacco all his life, and in the end it chewed him, too, from the inside out. I never knew him when he wasn’t sick. When I was 5 or 6 years old, I remem­ber pound­ing his back as he coughed, try­ing to help him loosen the phlegm from his lungs the way Mom had taught me. If I leaned in too close, check­ing to see if he was okay, I risked get­ting spit on by the frail old man. If I held myself back, he choked and gasped, bent dou­ble from the fire in his lungs. I was too young to know that when he was really sick, when the cough took hold of him, there wasn’t much to do except hope it would pass one more time.

Papaw was never well, but when he and Mamaw looked after me while my par­ents worked, he would sit out­side, under­neath his favorite oak tree, and watch me swing on their old front porch swing. “Sweet­pea, slow down there, you’re mak­ing my head swim,” he’d wheeze, a full head of white hair shin­ing sil­ver in the sun. He called each of his many grand­kids (17 and count­ing) “Sweet­pea,” though nobody could remem­ber why. He only smiled when one of his Sweet­peas came through his door. When weather and wors­en­ing health forced him indoors, Papaw sat in front of the TV and whis­tled. Not a tune, just the occa­sional ran­dom tone. Inside the house, his face was slack, expres­sion­less with sleepy eyes, except when he coughed. As he got worse, every intake of breath brought his cough­ing face: mouth peeled back in a painful grin, eye­brows raised, every mus­cle tense. Hideous, it was as ani­mated as he got dur­ing his last years.

Can­cer had invaded his body from all points. It was in his lungs, but also in his throat and jaw. From there, it spread. My grand­par­ents bought a hos­pi­tal bed for him, and for a while he slept under the big liv­ing room win­dow and seemed to rest bet­ter. My mother, a nurse, gave him reg­u­lar shots. Even full of fam­ily, the life of the house faded with Papaw’s strength.

It was the house they’d all grown up in, the house where they returned every week for a feast pre­pared by Mamaw, who never learned to cook for fewer than 10 peo­ple. From my own yard, I could see their house, see Mamaw hang­ing clothes on the line with Papaw sit­ting beside her, see cousins at play, beck­on­ing me to join them. I was always wel­comed with choco­late milk and fried bread with honey.

Nobody told me Papaw had died for another two days. As soon as Preacher Cur­ley walked into Papaw’s house on that Sat­ur­day after­noon, Mom drove me to her par­ents’ house to be with my broth­ers. We all slept over and spent the next day there, fill­ing another house with whis­pers. On Mon­day, Mom told us we weren’t going to school. Ordi­nar­ily, this news would have sent us into rap­ture, but some­how this time it felt like a punishment.

“Papaw Haffey’s dead now. He went to sleep and never woke up again,” she told us.

All I knew about death came from books and TV. I knew I was sup­posed to cry. But my youngest brother, Brian, began cry­ing first, and I thought it would be bet­ter if he didn’t see his old­est brother cry. So I turned to Richie, whose lower lip was bunched up and quiv­er­ing. His nose was flared and pink. “I knowed it,” he said.

I whis­pered, “Me, too.” But I hadn’t. I only knew what I’d learned those last few days, that death is a pri­vate mat­ter, what you don’t talk about when kids are in the room, if at all. Though I tried to pre­tend to be strong for my broth­ers like a grownup, I still felt like a kid myself.

I didn’t see my father until he met us at the funeral home. I’d been try­ing to under­stand this death, this fresh void in my life, by imag­in­ing what it would be like if Dad died. He had been such a per­ma­nent and impos­ing pres­ence it wasn’t pos­si­ble for me to think of what would fill that space if he was gone. When I saw him stand­ing in the funeral home door­way, I under­stood a lit­tle more about loss. He looked tired, and his face held fear. He reached out to all of us, and as he cried he choked.

I had never seen my father cry, and some­times I resented him for it. I thought it meant he didn’t care, was too far removed from our every­day lives to feel our pains. Stand­ing there, try­ing to hold him and Mom and both my broth­ers, I didn’t want my father to stop cry­ing. For the first time, I was cer­tain he was feel­ing what I felt. We were all safe, could hold each other up, as long as we were together.

The funeral home had deep car­pets and chair cush­ions to muf­fle the laments of the bereaved. A kind look­ing man named Mr. Cole shook Dad’s hand and led us into the view­ing area, where a mod­est cas­ket had already been set up. Mr. Cole spoke into my dad’s ear and hugged him briefly. He looked like he might cry, too. Dad put his arms around my broth­ers and me. “Let’s go say bye to Papaw one last time,” he whis­pered, voice shaky. He led us toward the cas­ket, and I stared hard at the car­pet all the way. Brian turned away, bury­ing his head in Dad’s coat. Richie looked down, hands in pock­ets, silent tears run­ning down his nose. I knew if I looked up, I’d cry too. I was too focused on Papaw being gone to think about what might be lay­ing in his deep red coffin.

Papaw looked relaxed. The deep wrin­kle lines of his face were a lit­tle less defined, and he looked like he wasn’t hold­ing in pain any­more. His hair, which always fell to cover his eyes, had been combed back. One strand had dropped down to touch his nose, and, unthink­ing, I reached out to brush it back. He looked just like my dad. I gripped the edge of the cas­ket and began to cry. Dad squeezed my shoul­der, and when I looked up, he tried to smile, weak and reassuring.

“He’s in a bet­ter place, David. He don’t hurt no more. He’s got his pas­ture and his old cows and hogs up in heaven and they don’t need tend­ing like ours here do. He’s feel­ing good again.” His eyes were bright, ask­ing me to believe him, ask­ing me if it was true.

“I know, Daddy. I just wish every­body wasn’t so sad, is all.” Though I mis­trusted almost all of what I’d heard from Preacher Cur­ley in church, I tried to believed my father. There was com­fort in an idyl­lic after­life, with no talk of eter­nal damna­tion threat­en­ing us all. I could still embrace this, our hope.

“Everybody’s just sorry he hurt for so long. We’re all happy for him now. One day I reckon we’ll see him again.”

The doors to the view­ing room opened again, and we took our place in the receiv­ing line that began with Mamaw, who seemed to be lost, sor­row­ful but unsee­ing. She did not acknowl­edge the count­less old men in clean over­alls and women in flo­ral dresses who walked through the line to shake my hand and give me a kiss, ask how old I was and say how hand­some I’d grown. The monot­ony of the rit­ual numbed me, and I was able to return their smiles and thank them for their condolences.

An hour later, I noticed Dad was miss­ing. Mom didn’t know where he was. Nei­ther did Richie or Brian, but they noticed that all of our uncles, Dad’s broth­ers, were gone, too. I slipped away to look for them under the pre­tense of find­ing a drink of water.

Mr. Cole stood qui­etly out­side the recep­tion area. He smiled when he saw me com­ing. “Some­thing I can do for you, David?”

“Have you seen my dad? Him and some of the oth­ers ain’t in line.”

“Let’s see,” he said. “I seen a few of the broth­ers talk­ing out­side. Lot of peo­ple need to take some air around this place.” He seemed apolo­getic, as if he felt some­how respon­si­ble for all of the death and grief infus­ing the building.

I thanked him and headed for the door. Fresh air sounded good, any­way. I passed a bath­room on my way and real­ized I needed to go. Just before I opened the door, I heard some­one inside. Rather than knock, I thought it would be more polite to wait a few min­utes and let who­ever it was fin­ish up. But there were sev­eral voices on the other side, and I could make out a few sobs.

Dad opened the bath­room door when I knocked. Inside, my uncles, the strongest of men, stood in a cry­ing cir­cle. The bath­room mir­rors reflected each man’s vul­ner­a­bil­ity. They had come, one by one, to share the loss of their father. Daniel and File, the old­est, stood in the two bath­room stall door­ways where they had dis­cov­ered each other. Frank and Van leaned against the mar­ble counter top, heads hang­ing low, with their backs to the tall mir­ror. Dar­rell, the youngest, was incon­solable. He looked up when I came in, and put his arms around me. “You don’t know how lucky you are, Den­nis, to have boys like these.”

Dad raised his eyes from the white tile floor. “We’re all lucky ones here, ain’t we? What we got?”

*****

I hadn’t known there would be a ser­mon. The pews in the funeral home chapel are nar­row, but unlike ours, they are padded. Stained glass win­dows softly light the upper reaches of the high ceil­ings and warm the lower lev­els with gen­tle sun­light. Every­thing seems designed to pre­serve the cowed, numb silence of the bereaved. This, I think, is no place for Preacher Curley.

Yet there he sits, con­fer­ring with two other men in an alcove beside the altar. All three wear black suits with red folded hand­ker­chiefs in the right breast pocket, and all three point to pas­sages in their Bibles and whis­per. I don’t want to stay for this ser­mon. I’m not sure whether the other two men would tem­per Curley’s rage or inflame it. I dread hear­ing what he has to say about my grand­fa­ther. But my fam­ily sits in the sec­ond pew, too close to the front for an unob­served escape. Mom, sit­ting next to me, holds my wrist so I won’t move.

Mamaw limps into the chapel, sup­ported by her two old­est sons, who are in turn upheld by all of their sib­lings, and seem­ingly the entire con­gre­ga­tion car­ries them to their appointed pews. My grandmother’s curls have gone from sil­ver to white in recent days, and her skin has paled to match. She slumps in her front row pew, hum­ming or moan­ing softly to her­self. I have never seen her so weak.

Preacher Cur­ley stands before a micro­phone. At Mt. Pis­gah, he has one attached to his shirt so he can stomp around the front of the church and wave his arms for empha­sis, only occa­sion­ally return­ing to his lectern to read from the Bible. Here, the micro­phone is on a stand, and Cur­ley is con­tained. He can take no more than three steps before he would be stand­ing amid the pews.

“Mozelle,” Cur­ley says, “what an unimag­in­able loss for you, the chil­dren, and the grand­chil­dren.” Mamaw nods but does not open her eyes. Sev­eral in the receiv­ing line had said the same thing, and it puz­zled me that they would want to remind me of how unfath­omable this all was, how con­fus­ing. But Cur­ley does not sur­prise me. He likes remind­ing us of how lit­tle we know of God’s plan, with which he seems to be inti­mately familiar.

“But I don’t want you to worry, Mozelle. I don’t want you sons and daugh­ters and sis­ters and broth­ers to fret. God Almighty don’t want you grand­chil­dren to worry, nei­ther, because God’s tak­ing care of Van­der now, yes, God’s got him right up in Heaven next to him.” I begin to relax. This is the famil­iar com­fort my father offered at the view­ing. I can believe my father’s words, even com­ing out of Preacher Curley’s mouth.

“No, none of us needs to worry, God no! Because the Bible, dear Lord, teaches us of death just as it shows us the way in life. And the first thing it says, chil­dren, about that, is that all of us dies. Every one of us. Will. Die. Ain’t noth­ing you can do about it, praise Jesus. Hebrews 9:27—‘It is appointed unto men once to die, amen.’” A cho­rus of “amen” fills the chapel in response. I am silent. Dad mouths the word with­out sound. I don’t need any proof of this one, with my own grand­fa­ther lay­ing in a cas­ket now closed in front of me.

“Vander’s body may have looked good in that cof­fin a lit­tle while ago, but he’s still dead, ain’t he Mozelle? He looked pretty good last time I saw him a few weeks ago at sup­per, but he’s dead now, ain’t he chil­dren? Ain’t he? ‘Cause God says every. Body. Must. Die.” He thumps his Bible, punc­tu­at­ing these last words.

“And since everybody’s gonna die, what does that tell you, sis­ters? Broth­ers, don’t that tell you that you’re gonna die too? Huh? Don’t you know that one day, you’ll be right up here where Van­der is, and I will too?” I think of all the men in the bath­room ear­lier, cry­ing. Imag­ine them all falling, dead from their sor­row or stricken down by God. I gasp and look up at Mom, a ques­tion in my wide eyes. She only squeezes my hand reas­sur­ingly and squints at Preacher Curley.

“Van­der was an old man, sick, but you’re not. You still got a lot of years left to serve the Lord, Jesus Christ. A lot of years to raise your babies, get you some grand­kids? But that don’t mat­ter to God. God can take you old, sure enough. He can take you young, too, chil­dren, young as the babies in His house this after­noon.” The hand­ker­chief comes out, pulling me back into the chapel from my grim fan­tasy. Cur­ley, even with­out room to pace, is sweat­ing already. His hand­ker­chief wipes his bald head gleam­ing in the sunlight.

Both of my broth­ers wail at Curley’s last words. I lean over and whis­per to Brian, try to tell him not to lis­ten, to think of some­thing bet­ter. To think of trees and our dog Buddy and the front porch swing at Mamaw’s house. But he is rock­ing back and forth, eight-year-old fists clenched in panic, afraid even the slight­est motion might now kill him. He and Riche crawl over me to hug Mom, who scowls at Preacher Cur­ley. I won­der how it would serve God to kill my broth­ers. I’m not sure it would.

“Van­der Mahaf­fey, I’m sure, is in Heaven. God told me this very morn­ing that your hus­band was saved. Mozelle, Van­der had a con­ver­sion and opened his heart to God Almightly and now he’s sit­ting right up there in Heaven, and Mozelle, I know you’ll be there with him, too. Because every­body, when they die, goes to Heaven or Hell. Every­body is judged in an instant. God knows what’s inside of you all, and God knows, chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, what you believe. And if you don’t straighten up, I’m sorry to say…Mozelle, if some of your own grand­chil­dren don’t get right with God, right quick, they won’t be with you and Van­der and God in Heaven.” I feel Preacher Cur­ley look­ing right at me as he issues this warn­ing. But I won­der why he always says “you” instead of “us,” why he holds him­self above God’s judgment.

I don’t want to go to Hell, but I don’t trust Preacher Cur­ley to steer me clear of it, either. To avoid his gaze, or any­one else’s, I lose myself in the hym­nal for the rest of the ser­mon. I study the grain of the book’s cover, the pat­terns in the musi­cal notes inside that I do not know how to read. I try to remem­ber the parts of the Bible that counter what Preacher Cur­ley said about Hell. I remem­ber, mainly, contradictions.

Mother rouses me when it’s time to go. As we fol­low the gath­ered mourn­ers toward the exit, I see Preacher Cur­ley shak­ing hands at the door. I pull back, hard, break­ing free of Mom’s grip. I can’t go through that door, through the shadow of that man’s piety. There must be a back way out. But I slam into Dad’s belly, and he puts his hands on my shoulders.

“It’ll be all right, David. Let’s say bye to Preacher Cur­ley, too.” He pushes me toward the door.

It’s my turn to shake hands, and I look at Cur­ley with all the raw hate and sor­row and guilt and con­fu­sion I can muster. He clasps my right hand in both of his, bends down to meet my eyes.

“David, I’m so glad you’re with us today. Come back to us on Sun­day, child.” He leans in fur­ther to whis­per in my ear. “I don’t want you going to Hell, son. I fear you’re headed down a sad path.” He pulls me into a hug, but I pull away. I don’t know what to believe, with my father stand­ing behind me, nod­ding to the preacher. I don’t know what is right. I am afraid. Dad’s grip tight­ens on my shoul­der, guid­ing me away from the church. I let him lead me.

(April 2005)