Uncle Ben's Death

  

I sat far enough out in the yard so that the thick black mop water missed me as the ladies swept it off the back porch of Uncle Ben’s old house.  I was crouched down digging in the dirt, looking for doodle bugs.  They were those little bugs you could find under pine trees.  Doodle bugs made a tell-tell inverted cone in the sand where they had gone round and round and buried themselves.  I sang the song as I stirred the hole with a pine straw.  “Doodle Bug, Doodle Bug, come to my wedding, Doodle Bug, Doodle Bug come to my wedding, Doodle Bug, Doodle Bug, come to my wedding, early in the morning.”  And after that if he was in the hole, he would appear.  He sort of “scooted” backwards and tried to bury himself again.  I was intent on occupying myself as the ladies were on getting the house clean for the mourners that would come.

I heard the phone ring and heard Mama talking to Grandma Polly earlier that morning.  I knew whatever it was, it was big!  We had gone over to Uncle Ben’s house as soon as the people had taken the body away, so that Grandma Polly and Mama and the other ladies could clean the house (which I don’t think had been cleaned for a while).  They were getting it ready for the wake, which I knew was where the funeral home delivered the body back to the house and people would come and sit with it all day and night for three days before the funeral. 

Mama had brought her own broom and mop and they stirred up some dirt that must have been there for years, because after they wet it, it was thick and black, almost as thick as molasses.  I had never seen anything so disgusting.  It smelled too!  Like old!  The house had no air conditioning and you could just smell the death in it too.  I guess that’s another reason I stayed outside. 

Wakes were a big deal in McNeill.  Everyone came and brought lots of food which sat out on a long table for the whole time.  They'd put a cloth over it to keep the flies out.  Thinking back, I wonder why people didn’t get sick from that food, but I guess they never did.  As they gathered together at these otherwise sad events, they would laugh and tell stories about the deceased person. 

 Yep, wakes were a big deal in McNeill!