Ronda Rich

Syndicated Columnist

Most of the local tellings — it’s not gossip – come from two places: the beauty shop and the funeral home.

When Tink moved to the rural South, he had only been to two funerals in his life. On average, we have a visitation or a funeral about once a week. He’s become a pro. In fact, I was crunching away on a deadline when he came storming down the stairs to tell me that the mother of a church friend had died. Tink had never seen her, never met her.

“What time do you want to go to the funeral home?”

Proudly, I smiled. My husband, New England bred, California raised, had learned the ways of the rural South. We don’t just go to funerals of close kin. We pay respects to the family of those who are acquaintances or nearly a bare stranger who once did us a kindness.

I looked at the work spread before me. “This is due tomorrow. There’s no way I can go.”

Tink didn’t hesitate. “I’ll change into a suit and tie and I’ll go for both of us.”

In 30 minutes, off he went. When he returned, he recited conversations (he doesn’t get stuff like I do) and brought three funeral home calendars which I use to tell the signs of the moon, mostly for surgeries — the others, I give away to those who’ve requested them.

Sometimes, when we are going to a visitation where I know a lot of friends will be, I’ll say, “You take your car and I’ll take mine. I’m not going to be in a hurry to leave. There will be many people I want to talk to.” More than a few times, I have closed down a funeral home after visitation.

At the beauty shop the other day, I was sitting with foil wrap in my hair for highlights when one of the kids in our family came in for a haircut. He’s a high school senior with dark, good looks, a reputation as an excellent athlete, and remarkable intelligence. I’ve loved him since he crawled around, following me wherever I went. As soon as he could speak, he took to calling me, “My Ronda.”

He called me that until he grew up and went into the first grade.

While my highlights cured, I sat in a chair and talked to him about his plans after graduation and such.

“You gonna work this summer?” “I got a job now.” “Really? What’re you doing?” “Diggin’ graves.” “Diggin’ graves!!!” I exclaimed so loud that the whole beauty shop stopped and he blushed. “Are you serious?”

He nodded. These days, they use a backhoe to dig a grave and put someone six feet under, then cover it with the dug-up dirt. It’s a mound of deep, red clay that is about two and a half feet high. There is a phrase that sticks in my mind. I can hear my Daddy praying it on Sunday morning when a church member or someone had died, “Dear Lord, please, be with and comfort those who have returned from a newmade mound.”

I always sat on the front bench, sometimes the second, and still do to this day. I was about 13 when Daddy finished a prayer that included that line. After his amen, I looked out the window to the cemetery and saw a new-made mound of an elderly woman named Miss Irene.

In my childhood, graves were dug by hand. Sometimes, a snow would come or a deep freeze would keep a shovel from digging in.

“Well,” the undertaker would say. “We’ll just need to keep the body out until we can get a grave dug.”

In the attic recently, I found Daddy’s enormous black umbrella, used only for burials. A memory flashed: Daddy, in a brimmed hat, a black dress raincoat, holding that umbrella, sidestepping gravestones as he left the cemetery. Sadness always clinging to him.

The Gothic South. May it never be forgotten.

Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of The Stella Bankwell Mystery series. Visit www.rondarich.com to sign up for her weekly newspaper.