There was a time when I was keeping up with the accounts receivable at the funeral home . . . making account cards . . . posting payments . . . putting it in the computer . . . being certain I hadn’t made such a mess that nothing balanced at the end of the month . . . Part of that task (which had absolutely no bearing on the actual process) included going through the funeral records, removing blank pages from the folders so they could be placed in other folders, ready for the next family who might need them.  We may go through a forest of paper in order to keep up with everything, but we do try to conserve where we can.

I’m one of those people who could never look up anything in the dictionary or encyclopedia because I always got sidetracked by an interesting picture or a word that caught my eye.  Hours later I wouldn’t be any closer to my intended destination, but I’d know all about Martin Van Buren, mainly because his picture looked a lot like Ebenezer Scrooge, which intrigued me. My purging of the funeral folders was equally distracting.  The personal information sheets always provided a wealth of insight because those were the families’ opportunities to share with the world the things they loved most about the person who had brought them all together.  But on this particular evening those weren’t the papers that stopped my rummaging and reading.  It was the sheet completed by a member of the cemetery committee with whom the family had met to approve the selected spot for her burial.  It had the usual information . . . her name, the date the family met with a member of the committee, and the member’s signature signifying his approval of their selection.  All of which was normal and expected and not at all remarkable.  Nothing requiring or even worthy of extended thought.  But his description of the spot . . . the landmark he used to guide our grave crew to the right section of the cemetery so they could prepare her final resting place . . . made me pause.

“On hillside facing river . . .”

I looked at those words for a very long time before I put my pen down and stared vacantly out the window, letting my mind wander to a cemetery perched atop a hill, the Tennessee River within sight as it wound its way northward toward the Ohio.  Being on a hill there had to be a breeze, so my imagination supplied one—as well as the sound of the water gently lapping against the banks. And trees . . . surely there were trees that offered shelter from the sun.  I decided they should be massive and they should be cedars.  Ancient cedars like the ones in the National Cemetery at Shiloh.  How peaceful would it be to sit in that solitude, to be surrounded by the beauty provided by Nature? Even if there was no breeze . . . even if there weren’t massive, ancient cedars to offer shelter . . . how comforting it would be to sit beside your mother’s grave, remembering the moments of joy while mourning her loss . . . on a hillside . . . facing the river . . .

About the author:  Lisa Shackelford Thomas is a fourth generation member of a family that’s been in funeral service since 1926.  She has been employed at Shackelford Funeral Directors in Savannah, Tennessee for over 40 years and currently serves as the manager there.  Any opinions expressed here are hers and hers alone, and may or may not reflect the opinions of other Shackelford family members or staff.

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