T.S.Dawson -Author

​A Good Funeral

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The first funeral I ever remember attending was at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in the microscopic South Georgia town of Avera. I was all of about three years old when we had to attend the funeral of one of the older church deacons.  I had an aisle seat so I got to see everything.

"When the Roll is Called Up Yonder" was being hammered out on the piano and there he was laid up there in the casket for everyone to gawk at the body. The sermon was about to begin when these two young men came in, helping this feeble old lady down the aisle. She had to have been all of 100 years old. Right down to the casket they carried her to where they held her up as she leaned over and planted a fat one on the lips of the corpse. It was a kiss that rivaled something that should have had Atlanta burning in the background. Apparently, they had been childhood sweethearts. She had never been married, can't say that for him, and she was not going to her grave without kissing him goodbye.

At one other funeral I attended, also in a tiny town, there were two car accidents leaving the grave side service as well as a good old fashion blessing out which was not a result of the wrecks. I dare say I have now been to several funerals where someone left knowing exactly what others really thought of them and I don't mean the deceased.
My Mama said there was no such thing as a good funeral, but I beg to differ.   Fenders were bent, faces were slapped and the "choice" flowers were stolen, to me these were the events that made for a good funeral.  Someone always cut out early blabbering about hurt feelings.  Thank goodness the guy in the coffin didn't have to witness such a sight and now we are going to have to miss out on their award-winning sickly yellowed colored congealed salad later on at the reception.  Pooh!
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The theme here is that there is no safe place that a red neck will not make a spectacle of themselves.  A red neck is smart enough to seize the moment, air their dirty laundry and move on…even if it is at a funeral. It might not be pistols at dawn, but some resolution is going to be reached, even if the Deputy Sheriff has to be called out.
Sadly, I have discovered after attending a couple of funerals here in Atlanta, that city folk are not like that.  Rather, they don their finery and act all civil and respectable toward one another, including the deceased.  Now, what kind of funeral is that?  I was highly disappointed...but Mama might have called them "good" funerals.