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The First Dead Body I Ever Saw

Bill Tope

My Dad’s mother was the first dead body
that I ever saw. I can remember it like it was just
yesterday, though it happened nearly sixty years
ago. My Mom bustled into my bedroom—she was
always bustling in those days—and told me that
Grandma had died the night before. This didn’t
mean much to me at first; I guess I didn’t fully
grasp the concept of death and passing on—and
never, ever coming back. I said, “Oh.”

Mom started rummaging around in my closet.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Getting a suitcase,”
she said. “We’re going to Buckner,” which was where
Grandma lived. “Why?” I persisted. “Well, we have
to bury her.” Again I said, “Oh.”

Then it was revealed that I would miss school, Mom
and Dad would be granted time off from work, and
strangely enough, a bounty of food began arriving.
This was all new to me: no one in my family that I
was close to, had ever died before. When Grandpa
died, I was too young to attend the services, so very
little of the procedures remained fresh in my memory.

At length, our bags packed, we set out in our old
jalopy, a monstrosity from the 1950s. We were
determined to traverse the 110 miles from the Greater
St. Louis Metropolitan Area to Franklin County, Illinois,
a hotbed of the coal mining industry, at least till the
coal ran out.

Arriving at Grandma’s house, my Aunt Blanche, as usual,
had the sole bedroom staked out. My mother audibly
sighed. This was no time for recriminations; Blanche’s
mother had just died. Of course, so had my Dad’s, but
then, Blanche generally required a little “understanding,”
having always been the baby of the family. And
squeezing it for every drop she could.

From the moment we landed, strangers began arriving,
bearing gifts of comestibles. This dying business must
be very good for grocery stores, I thought. We ate a lot,
and often. Seems everybody in Buckner—around
700 persons at the time—knew my grandmother.
She had lived her whole long life right there in
Southern Illinois. She was from an old-time mining
family and coal mining was once the life’s blood of
Buckner. And my folks still knew everyone in town.
Forty years later they retraced their steps back to
that sleepy little hamlet and told me there weren’t ten
people they still recognized—and no one recognized
them.

After we had eaten—again—it was deemed appropriate
that we repair to the funeral home for “visitation,”
whatever that was. My brother, seven years older and
well-versed in the vicissitudes of the world, seemed
unanxious to go. Not me! If we were going visiting,
then maybe there’d be other kids and new toys to play
with. Who knew?

But when we got to the funeral home—even today the
mere mention of the term gives me the willies—I found
out what this excursion was all about: we were going
to see dead people. And one of them was my Grandma,
who used to hold me and hug me and call me “dumplin’.”
Frankly, I didn’t want any part of that. But, we went.

So I hung around in the foyer for as long as I could, till
Dad touched my shoulder and told me I should “go see
Grandma.” Yikes. Taking baby steps I made the long
way over to the bier, through the cloying aroma of hot-
house flowers, and there beheld a huge silver box and
peeped inside. I don’t recall just what I was expecting,
but all I saw there was Grandma, looking like she
always did, but in her church clothes.

Now, “Bessie” was not a small woman: barely five feet
tall, she must have tipped the scales at a good 250
pounds. I stared at her hands, wreathed in deep wrinkles.
I kept hoping that I wouldn’t suddenly stumble into the
coffin and send the whole gizmo crashing to the floor.
I began taking rapid, shallow breaths and before I could
hyperventilate my dad rescued me, taking my hand and
leading me to a tray of soft drinks and cookies. I spent
the next forty-five minutes noshing on snickerdoodles
and nursing 7-Ups.

Over the next two days we made additional trips to the
funeral home to visit Grandma and encounter the
seeming 10,000 residents of Buckner, all of whom had a
good word or a funny story or charming anecdote about
ol’ Bessie, and all of whom wanted to ruffle the hair of
her favorite—or nearest at hand—grandchild.

Some made unseemly inquires about the disposal of my
grandmother’s property: her furniture, her jewels, her
bric-a-brac. Aunt Blanche usually countered this line of
questioning by snapping, “We’re taking that!” I could
almost hear my Mom grinding her teeth. I thought, who
cares about all that junk? Grandma didn’t have any
good toys.

Then came the subsequent funeral at Buckner’s little
concrete chapel. People moaned and wailed, and of
course Blanche and her brood upstaged everyone by
moaning and wailing the loudest. Thank God they had
a closed casket, else my Aunt would have done what I
feared doing at the funeral home. I could just picture
the scene: inert bodies, spent tissues and rose water
everywhere.

I kept wondering what was wrong with me, that I didn’t
moan and wail as well. I tried, but to no avail. I watched
my Dad closely; he grew very silent and very pensive,
but he didn’t shed a tear, either. That reassured me some.
He seemed more concerned with how this ordeal was
affecting his own little family. That was my dad: first and
always a family man.

The whole experience so scarred me that I didn’t attend
another funeral till my father died some 40 years later. By
then I was used to the idea of death, of course. The US
had lived through the Asian War, riots in the streets,
Charles Manson, slasher movies, everything. But there is
that one moment when you know that it’s all over. With
Mom at my Dad’s funeral, it was her little cry of dismay as
they lowered the lid for the final time.

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