The Red Flannel Rag

looking around for the lemon meringue pie.” One of the granddaughters quipped, “Now

she’s asking who made the coconut cream pie because it doesn’t taste right.” At the very

end of her life, Mom was still taking care of her family. Her final smile and Hilda’s

comment softened the fact that this was our last moment with her.

Suddenly we realized we needed to make funeral arrangements. Who would

preach her funeral? She had never let us talk with her about whom she might want to

preach or what kind of funeral she wanted. I asked, “Has any preacher been to visit her

lately? Larry said, “Wendell Henkel has been in the hospital to see her. He was just in

there last Thursday —the day before she came home.”

Suddenly I knew what kind of funeral she would want. It was so appropriate.

Wendell’s daddy had hauled her cow’s milk to the processing plant for years. After

Charlie Henkel died, Wendell took over his business for some years, and he hauled her

milk to the dairy. She had a life-long connection to Wendell Henkel who was now a lay

Presbyterian minister. I suggested that we call him, and everybody agreed that he was

the only one she would want to preach her funeral.

Sometime after her last breath, the undertaker arrived to remove her body. This

was a very difficult moment for me. She had always loved her home, and I knew this

was the last time she would go out the door as she started her journey to the cemetery to

sleep next to Dad forever.

I walked to the back yard as far as I could get from the hearse so I didn’t have to

watch her body leave the house. Just at the moment her body was carried across the

front yard, someone called my name. I looked up as the undertakers walked past the

lilac bush and started to put Mo m’s body in the hearse. At that very moment, a few

drops of rain began to fall. My mind immediately returned to when I was five years old

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