The Funeral Lamp

I’m only one of 221 great-grandchildren. But still, I’m one.

And at seven years of age, just learning about death, I go to my great -grandpa’s house to see him laid out in a casket. I squeeze under the elbows of adults to find him in the living room.

In this room I often played with his wooden blocks and listened to people tell stories and perched with a plate on the couch when the dining room table was filled with adults.

I stand on tiptoe at the casket peering in at his beautiful snow-white beard, always soft in my hands. Especially the morning I sat with him in the amen corner at church, twining my fingers through its whiteness this way and that. And watching it jump up and down while he sang. The benediction never again came so fast as it did that morning on my great-grandpa’s knee.

But in the whispery silence of the death vigil this evening, I keep my hands where they belong—out of the casket, and away from the beard.

A lamp on a pole above the casket shines on his face. I’ve never seen such a lamp. It has a pink glow like a sunset. Its shade is a glass bowl with a hole in the bottom. And sprinkled inside are hundreds of what must be snips of hair. I look at the beard in the casket. And at the snips in the lamp. The hairs match. Exactly.

My father nudges me away from the casket. People wait to see Great-grandpa, a whole line of them.  

So I find a seat not far from the casket where I can see the lamp. And think.

Someone else must like Great-grandpa’s beard, too. And decorated the lamp with hair from his beard. Maybe good hair gets you a lamp. I take a peek at the bottom of my braids.

Soon after Great-grandpa dies, we move away from the mountains. To a city, where vigils are in funeral homes.  And I forget about the lamp—until one day, decades later.

I go back to the mountains for my aunt’s funeral. In the churchyard where my great-grandpa is buried, I remember the lamp. And when I see the funeral director standing alone, I tell him my story.

That old lamp, he tells me, is still stored in a backroom of the funeral home.

“We took it to home vigils,” he says, “to soften the appearance of death with a soft, rose-tinted light.”

He grins.

“It wasn’t your grandpa’s beard hair in that lampshade,” he says. “Just a textured lampshade.”

Of course.

Every day I walk by Great-grandpa’s photo on my dining room mantel. It holds the memory of the funeral lamp. And reminds me to be gentle with youthful imaginings.