Funerals

We buried my oldest cousin yesterday who passed after a ten month fight with cancer. After a traditional church service and VFW/American Legion 21 gun salute in Craig, CO, his cremains were interred at a private family cemetery West of Maybell, CO located on a 1913 homestead that is still in the hands of family members.

Lee was a gunner’s mate on destroyers in his younger days.

A portion of the road in.

The entrance.

His cremains were placed in his boots and those and his hat were interred.

The church was packed while the gathering at the cemetery was mainly relatives.

One of his daughters insuring his favorite M&Ms went with him.

In our clan, we dig the graves and fill them.

R.I.P Lee. Ride those wild horses cowboy.

There is nothing formal about the graves area. People just pick a spot.

My father’s grave.

 What appears to be a rope in the upper left corner hanging from the tree is bark caused by a deer scraping velvet from his antlers. From the location, he probably stood on the grave. My father would be pleased. Seems the badger has stopped trying to den in the grave as noted from our last visit. A cousin’s husband added some more rock to the site.

I rode over with my sister. We have started getting rain, helping to put out wildfires, and the early dawn light show was amazing.

At 8,000' ASL the leaves are starting to turn.

As always, life goes on. The youngest person at the church was a great grandchild, age two months.

DYI Funerals

Swiped this off Facebook because it reminded me of my late father.

My maternal grandfather died in Cottonwood, AZ. The family wanted him buried in Walden, CO. My father borrowed a station wagon/hearse from the Mortuary in Steamboat Springs, CO. This was not the formal hearse but a utility vehicle. After loading an empty coffin he headed to Cottonwood.

Enroute the alternator failed and he had to stop in Kayenta Springs, AZ.No alternator was available and had to come from Tuba City, AZ. Since he had to wait,  he slid the coffin to one side, laid down, and caught some sleep.

Kayenta Springs is a Navajo town, and a tough town at that. This was prior to the coal mines and power plants.  Navajos have strong beliefs about death and dead people, as in they want nothing to do with them or anyone associated with them. Not dissing their beliefs but situations can become awkward. The alternator finally arrived but the repair place employees wouldn’t come near the station wagon or my father. Finally, with the intervention of tribal police (who also kept their distance) the staff put the  alternator and some tools where my father could reach them. He promptly made the necessary repair. There was more awkwardness as he returned the tools and paid for the alternator but he was soon on his way.

I’m sure the situation was helped by my father’s people skills and that he could get by in their language. He had a gift for languages and had Navajo work gangs while he was with the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. He was by no means fluent but had enough to communicate.

At Cottonwood, the remains were placed in the coffin and my father, mother, and her oldest sister made the drive back to Steamboat Springs.

My sister and I are descendants of a long line of hard nosed,  practical people. We learned most things are nothing more than a job of work. Some jobs are damned unpleasant, to be sure, but they nothing more than a job that needs to be done. So, in the words of Larry the Cable Guy, “Git’er done”.

Country Folk (Redneck) Funeral

Recent humorous emails themed “Etiquette for Rednecks” sparked a conversation about how my sister, late brother in law, and I acted like we didn’t have “proper fetchins”.

ETIQUETTE FOR REDNECKS...

DRIVING ETIQUETTE:

5. Do not lay rubber while traveling in a funeral procession


Our extended family has a history of taking care of funerals for our members. Professional mortuary service are usually not used except for preparing the body and placing the remains in a casket, or boxing the cremains. A section of the old family homestead West of Craig. CO., has been set aside for a family graveyard.

My father had remarried at the time of his death and his wife wasn’t coping too well. Various family members prepared the grave. I conducted the services at the Community Church, while an aunt played the music.

A step brother and I picked up the body, in a coffin, at a Craig Mortuary in my late father’s GMC pickup for his last ride. We stopped in the small town of Maybell, CO for the service. That is where the trouble began.

The widow’s sister in law tried to take over. We damn sure didn’t need her “help.” My sister could see I was, quite literally, ready to kill. She got between us and put the sister in law in her place, with a hovering throng of kinfolk standing by, and we started and finished the service.

The ten mile procession to the homestead was outstanding. There were nearly forty vehicles. Strangers going Eastbound stopped their cars and trucks, stepped out, and paid their respects (love the Old West people). After a brief Odd Fellows graveside service conducted by a cousin, we closed the grave and everyone left except my sister, brother in law, and myself. We stayed there about an hour, talking quietly, and trying to calm down.

I had borrowed a cousin’s S-10 4x4. As we left, I started roaring around the sagebrush, kicking up dust, and generally raising vehicular hell, i.e. laying down rubber. My sister was whooping and hollering. My brother in law was silently and grimly holding on for dear life. If our father was watching, he was laughing and whooping and hollering too. That is just the kind of irreverent people we are. You can be sober, prim and proper, and solemn for only so long. In fact, I needed to decompress, before going back to town and the post funeral pot luck. I still wanted to kill that bitch.