Most old church hymns take me back to being a little kid, dressed up in my best polyester dress, sweat running down my knees because the church wasn't air conditioned and poly don't breathe, accessorized with a straw purse containing lip gloss, a pair of white gloves that I had to take off because it was too damn hot, and a dollar for the offering plate. I then remember how I stopped going to church about a decade later and how my zealously-born-again Christian friends said to me, "Don't worry; once you're saved, you're saved." which was extrapolated from some bible verse in the New Testament. Saved from what, exactly?
Anyway, going to churchy events makes me a bit melancholy.
But at a memorial service with old hymns in a little chapel in the woods, I met up with two relatives who helped wipe the melancholia away.
First, my mother grabbed me and stage-whispered, "Make sure you introduce yourself to Father Ralph."
Who? "The priest. He's your cousin." I'M related to a Catholic priest?
Indeed. He was sitting directly behind me. Because it was a protestant service, not a Catholic one, he was in the "audience." I turned around. He wore a bad toupee and what Salty D. called a tallit (since I don't know the name of those things that priests wear around their necks I'll stick with that) that had been given to him by the Pope himself, he said. I felt my neck burn a little with him sitting behind me during the service. Or maybe it was a bug bite because we were in a chapel in the woods.
I sang, rather, sort of mouthed and spoke the words because my singing voice has become HORRIBLE, to "For the Beauty of the Earth," one of my favorite churchy tunes that I remember most of the words to. It's pretty straightforward about being grateful for our natural world and the pretty skies that even the good little churchgoers continue to poison.
ANYway.
At the after-party, my eyes bugged out when I saw my cousin Billy for the first time since we were kids.
I spent summers visiting his parents' farm, playing with the kitties in the barn, romping through the hay (no dirty jokes, he's my 3rd cousin for godssakes, and I'm not that white trash,) collecting peacock feathers, and exploring a big old farmhouse with scary nooks and crannies.
I shook cousin Billy's hand, and it was like football leather. He now runs two farms himself, in two states, turning out corn, hay, and beef cattle.
After he mentioned the Black Angus, I said, "Wait, let me grab cousin Melinda, she just told me she recently became a vegan..."
Billy now works "the land" 24/7, but managed to batten down the farms for the coming hurricane, a.k.a. tropical storm, adjust his delivery schedule, and get to this memorial service and reminisce with his cousins.
We didn't let him ask about us, we were so excited to dig up the memories of good times down on the farm, funny stories about peeing on the electric fence or taking off on a horse across a field. Laughing after a funeral, that's what I like, and I'm sure it's exactly what the dearly departed wanted from us.
Farmer Billy and I hugged as I left the party. I know that I won't see him again for a long time but perhaps I'll think of him when I see a farmer haying or ....eat beef?
I felt like a loser for ever complaining about being tired because now more than ever I think family farmers have it tough. I'm kind of in awe of the farm lifestyle even though it gives you a weird tan.
"For the Beauty of the Earth" has now become an earworm that I've not been able to shake for the past 48 hours.
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