Supportive Voice   Vol. 6 No. 4  Summer 2000

by Patrick Cacchione

Recently, I was listening to a national radio news program and heard two separate and unrelated stories that happened to involve death and dying. At first I was just impressed that there were news stories dealing with the subject; but the more I thought about the two stories, the more I came to realize that they weren’t unrelated, but very much intertwined.

The tales are from Petersburg, TX, and Milford, MI. One involves a county attorney and a gravedigger; the other involves a funeral director who also happens to be a poet. As I have mentioned in the past, stories are an effective way to communicate, and these are two interesting and instructive ones.

Digging Graves
Petersburg, TX, is home to 1,500 people. According to Mario Martinez, county commissioner, around the middle of the last century a tradition started that "when there was a death in the community, everybody would pull together and go down [to the graveyard] and dig the grave by hand." Some of these individuals happened to be county employees and, over time, the county began providing the service using its backhoe from the highway department.

Unfortunately, beginning in August 2000, a tradition that has lasted more than 50 years came to an abrupt halt when it met a legal road block. The county attorney said this action was wrong because it was like using county equipment to perform a private service, such as paving someone’s driveway.

Before being elected county commissioner, Martinez worked on a road crew for 10 years and often had the responsibility of operating the backhoe that dug the graves. When asked if traditions were going to be missed with this change, Martinez replied, "Yes, I had a real close tie with the people that were going through a death in the family, because I felt like we were a part of that. You know, any time that you can help an individual, especially in a time when there is grief and sorrow, it sure feels good. When your friends pull together and help you get through something like that, it makes you proud. I think we were all proud of that, and that’s something that we’re not going to be able to do anymore."

The county attorney seems to be missing some of the nuances of the issue by comparing the digging of graves with the paving of driveways. Not everyone in that community will have the need or desire to pave their driveways, but you can be sure that they will all have a need for a final resting place. Furthermore, the decision to pave a driveway is not accompanied by the duress of losing a loved one. Nor does it require the help and support of family, friends, and community. Finally, the community good derived from collective support and witness at the time of personal sadness and loss can never be equated with the sight of a fresh new layer of smooth blacktop.

Death and Poetry
Milford, MI, is home to Thomas Lynch. Lynch is both the funeral director of Lynch & Sons and a poet. He claims that, on the surface, there is an odd juxtaposition in being a poet-undertaker, similar to being a policeman who sings opera or a wrestler who becomes governor. However, on a deeper level he claims that the occupations are very similar. Lynch believes that "both of them traffic in metaphor, image, icon, symbol, and ritual in an effort to say or do something that is otherwise unspeakable. They are both, in a sense, exercises in language. And in that sense, I find a great co-mingling of these arts in the way that mortality represents a kind of punctuation for humankind, whether we end with exclamations or questions or full stops, depending on our sensibilities."

The majority of Lynch’s writings are about death. To him, death, quite simply, is what makes life interesting. He also remembers his first introduction to poetry and death. He recalls the acoustic pleasure of hearing the prayers his mother taught him. He says that they sounded magical and important and served as his first exposure to poetry. As an example he recites, "An angel of God and my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here."

Lynch experienced death at a young age through his father’s work as an undertaker. The first time he accompanied his father to work and saw a dead man, he asked about the man’s age, his name, and so forth. "I was given all the answers, and perhaps because I wasn’t told I should be scarred for life, I was not scarred for life. It seemed a normal part of the human traffic, which it turned out to be. It is among the most natural things we do. We die."

Lynch’s newest book of poetry and essays is titled Bodies in Motion and at Rest. The title essay begins with the death of the man who dug graves for others in Milford. (See excerpt below.)

Lynch’s writings teach us to examine death, accept it, and make it part of the living experience. To Lynch, "Funeral 101" is the fundamental witness of the living taking care of the dead. This action not only enables the living, it also helps them get in touch with the existential and emotional difficulty that a death in the family presents.

I wonder if Lynch has a law degree and might be willing to relocate to a small town in Texas.

Mr. Cacchione is vice president, advocacy/communications, Carondelet Health System, St. Louis.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This morning, George Horton is really dead.

"And he's really being removed from his premises by Matt and me after we swaddle him in his own bed linens, sidle him onto the stretcher, tip the stretcher up to make the tight turn at the top of the stairs and carefully ease it down, trying to keep the wheels from thumping each time the heavier head end of the enterprise takes a step.

"And it's really a shame, all things considered, because here's George, more or less in his prime, just south of 60, his kids raised his house paid off, a girlfriend in her 30s with whom he maintains twice-weekly relations. 'Catch as catch can,' he liked to say.

"And he's a scratch golfer and a small-business owner with reliable employees and frequent flyer miles that he spends on trips to Vegas twich a year, where he get a little crazy with the craps tables and showgirls. And he has his money tucked into rental homes and mutual funds and a host of friends who'd only say good things about him and a daughter about to make him a grandfather for the first time. And, really, old George seemed to have it made.

"And except for our moving him feet first down the stairs this morning, he has everything to live for. Everything."

from "Funeral 101," by Thomas Lynch