The Last Ride

It’s an image I’ll long remember—my Uncle Carl’s coffin on a farm wagon hitched to the first tractor he ever bought, a John Deere 520. And surrounded by grandchildren, twenty-two of them, sitting on long benches along the wagon sides, taking their last ride with Grandpa.

All that long funeral day, it was the grandchildren who caught most at my emotions. They were a beautiful bunch, young and strong, a few having crossed thresholds into careers and parenthood, a few in the primary grades, and the rest in between. During the reading of the obituary, each of their names were spoken, all twenty-two, one by one and with feeling.

At the cemetery, some of them carried their grandpa to his grave. Others stood close, linking arms. And still others supported their parents with an arm on a shoulder or the squeeze of a hand.

But what gripped me most was the ride back to the church for the funeral meal. As the tractor pulled the wagon up the hill, I could see the grandchildren once again lining the wagon sides. And between them, the now-empty wagon bed.

The funeral meal was subdued. At first. But soon stories took up again. Someone chuckled. Someone else laughed. And gradually, the banter began.

It had been a hard day. And a good one.

For the young and for the old.

“I’m so glad I came,” my mom said on our way back to Ohio. “So glad I went to the graveside.”

It was brutally cold that burial day, for all of us. Even the grandchildren shivered. We had triple-bundled my mom. Still, she began to shiver. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and offered a coat. Someone else brought a hunting jacket. And someone a hoodie. We piled them over her like blankets until she was ensconced in her graveside chair.

I’ve been home for a week. But I still hold images of the young and the old: my ninety-six-old mom sitting under wraps and a set of grieving grandkids.