One of the best funerals I attended was for Great-uncle Alec, many years ago. He’d been a farmer all his life, farming the land his parents had homesteaded in the 1880s, and which he passed on to his sons. He’d buried one wife, and was survived by his second, Great-aunt Sadie, a women of great drive and sense of family. He’d been a founding member of the Wheat Pool, survived the Great Depression, and raised a large, happy family. When he died in his 80s, it was the culmination of a long life.
We drove to the little town where he had been living latterly, following the traditional Saskatchewan farmer retirement practice of selling the farm to the sons and moving into town. It was a beautiful Prairie fall day, bright blue sky and a crispness in the air. On route, we picked up his sister, Great-aunt Hazel, and his sister-in-law, Great-aunt Elsie, from the seniors’ home where they were living. The leaves had just begun to fall, and there were orange and yellow highlights everywhere we looked. Since it had been a dry year, there were some dust-banks in the ditches as we drove along, which seemed appropriate, somehow, on a day when we would bury a survivor of the Dustbowl.
We met up with other family members at Great-Uncle Alec’s house in town, neat and tidy. It was crowded, with all of his sons and daughters, and the grandkids, and the great grandkids, and the various nieces and nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, and all the other hangers-on in a big country family. There was a buzz of conversation, of greeting people you’d not seen for a while, and meeting people you’d never seen before. People reminisced about Great-uncle Alec, and paid their respects to his widow, Great-Aunt Sadie. There was sadness, but a feeling of celebration at someone who had lived a good life, and made it through one of the worst decades in Saskatchewan history, still on the farm.
Then we all drove to the little United Church. As we arrived, we saw a huge crowd of people, standing politely outside - friends of the family from the town and surrounding area. Since the church was so small, and the family was so big, there was only room for family in the church - plus one pew for some of Great-Uncle Alec’s contemporaries - not many now, and looking pretty frail. The friends of the family stayed outside, and listened to the service on a speaker, in the bright sun.
The service was short and simple, with the hymns that he had known and sung all his life, and then we left. Great-aunt Sadie was in tears as she led the family out, mourning the man she’d been with for over forty years. One of my silly second cousins had both arms in casts, the result of trying to duplicate a horse trick he’d seen on t.v. (had he never heard of trained stunt-men and “Don’t try this at home, kids”?). And then we all got in the cars and drove south into the country, to the little church near the home quarter, which my great-grandparents and the other settlers in the area had built, a century before. We buried him in the churchyard, open to the prairie winds and sun, near my great-grandparents, and only a few miles away from the land he had farmed all his life.
Then back to town, where there was a reception put on by the church ladies, with all the dainties that are traditional at prairie weddings and funerals. And more talk - talk about Great-uncle Alec, talk with cousins and relations. A feeling of completion.
Finally, we set out for home, taking Geat-Aunt Hazel and Great-Aunt Elsie back to the seniors’ home on the way back. I walked them to the door, and Great-Aunt Hazel, having just helped bury her brother, turned to me and said to me in all sincerity, “Thank you, dear - I had a wonderful time.”
And that really summed it up.
