Papa and the red neck funeral

My grandpa “Papa” was awesome. I have two associations with him that I think sum him up best. My first association is sitting in his living room and him teaching us about the Book of Mormon (and scrambling before going to his house to catch up on what I was supposed to read – sometimes listening to it on tape at chipmunk speed while reading along.) The other association is the temple where he served for 30 years in many capacities including a sealer. He LOVED the temple and even in his last few days when he was not fully with it he was worried about the sealings he had committed to do.

Despite these very respectful and important memories……we still managed to have a great Jackson red neck funeral. After all, in addition to being a sealer in temple he did also have a hydraulic hoist in his backyard for working on cars and his favorite thing to do was play on his backhoe. Well, parts of funeral were red neck anyway. Mostly it was unique. At least unique in my experience. Preparation for the funeral started years ago when Papa made his own headstone and placed it in his beloved Fremont, UT where he grew up. He even tried it out to see how it would work.

When he died, my uncle decided to make the casket. (Incidentally, this is the uncle with the necklace made of his original teeth and one of his fingers which he accidentally cut off and then had freeze dried. He is awesome, and really deserves his own blog.) He made the casket out of Fish Lake mountain aspen and Wayne county cedar. It turned out beautifully. He didn’t varnish it and had each of us write notes to Papa on it. But when you make your own casket, sometimes you need to bust out a drill during the viewing to make some adjustments! yes, sawdust may have been falling on the body below. (as you can see in the picture he doesn't wear the finger/teeth necklace to funerals)

The funeral was great. My aunts, uncle, and dad did a great job talking about Papa and delivered messages he would have been proud of. The next day my parents picked up the casket and started the journey to Fremont where he would be buried. Marie and I drove down the night before with Jer so we wouldn’t have to rush in the morning. This was when the fun really started.

We got up Saturday morning and set out to find breakfast. In the parking lot one of my cousins came out and said “All the boys need to head to the cemetery with shovels! Pick some up at the Fremont house and go ask aunt Viola for some! Hurry!”

Oh great, we thought. We’re going to have to dig the grave!?! You see, one of the other things my 9 fingered uncle wanted to do was dig the grave with Papa’s tractor (or backhoe as we call it.) Papa would have thought this was pretty cool but with the alert to get to the cemetery asap we were worried something must have gone wrong. something like the backhoe has no more hydraulic fluid or a flat tire or just won’t start because it misses Papa. We set off for the cemetery but on the way decided we still better get food because I’m not nice when I don't eat. But anyway, we figured we couldn’t be the only hungry ones and we were not sure we wanted to get in a big dirty hole to shovel dirt just before acting as a pallbearer for my wonderful grandfather, SO, we decided to stop and get donuts for everyone in trade for manual labor. Lets be honest – we (jer and I) are not really the hard working laborer types of the family. Buying donuts is much more like us. So that is what we did.

Turns out there was no emergency at all. Just a need to square off the corners of the grave when they were done digging. I know it may be hard to understand, but hanging out the cemetery digging a grave with your family turned out to be a fun and special thing. It was a beautiful morning and my uncle had dressed up like papa in his classic hat and coveralls to dig the hole. (I'm for the first time in my life wondering if he owned any clothes other than coveralls and church clothes. I can't find any pictures to suggest that he did.) My uncle put the dirt in papa’s dump truck because “Papa paid for that dirt and he would want to keep it.” If you didn’t think it was weird before – here is where it really took a crazy turn. When the digging was done and the hole was given the A-OK by the cemetery we all jumped in. I mean you can’t all spend the morning digging a hole without seeing how it looks with everyone in it can you? Romney especially wanted a turn digging so he took a turn as well all on his own. Weird? Probably. Cool? It really was. At one point another uncle asked the guy in charge of the cemetary, "Have you ever seen anything as redneck as this?" "No," he answered.

Finally we drove up to the county line and formed a line waiting for papa to make his final trip home. Once all gathered we drove in together to the cemetery. The graveside service was brief and great.

I guess when you make the casket and then you dig the hole there is a connection to the event that you don’t normally have at a regular ol’ funeral. For example, after everyone leaves, usually the funeral home would take care of lowering the casket and you would never consider reopening the casket. But again, this was no regular ol’ funeral. After most people were gone there were a few issues that needed to be resolved. Issue #1. homemade casket does not fit into cement vault. Issue #2 I don’t want to be around if Papa is wearing that hairpiece he hated so much on the morning of the resurrection. How do you solve issue number one? A good reciprocating saw should do the trick. How you do you solve problem number two? Well obviously you just open up the casket it and take off the hair. He didn't like it anyway but it was the only thing grandma really wanted for the funeral so of course you have to honor that. However, since she is the only one that ever liked the hairpiece I understand it is now being saved for a future time to be placed in her casket.*

All in all I would say it was a fitting tribute to a wonderful man. I love you Papa!

*hey jacksons - please don't get any of us in trouble by mentioning this to grandma!