If I Die Before I Wake

When I was little, I had a pillow embroidered with the "Now I Lay Me" prayer/poem known by millions around the world. But just in case I'm wrong about this, here it is below:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

However, the version on my pillow did not mention death. The last two lines were:

Guide me safely through night
And wake me with the morning light

I knew the other version from books and movies, but I preferred my version. It wasn't as scary. What little kid really wants her last thoughts at night to be about her possible death? Certainly not me.

But with the death of Grandpa Hibbard, I've thought more about it. At least, I've thought about what my funeral should be like and what Grandpa's should have been like.

The funeral home was nice as could be, truly. But the whole thing had such a canned aspect to it. It could have been anyone's funeral. The generic music (instrumental, blandly classical in nature with no real feeling), the tepid prayer service (the deacon who held the family prayer service was just lame, sorry, but he was). There should have been Grandpa's beloved square dance music. We should have set up tables to play cards! Card-playing played heavily in the reminiscences of friends and family. That's how they interacted. That's how they socialized. We should have had bowls of nuts from the woods. He loved to crack nuts. We could have made up the Grandpa Hibbard Memorial crossword puzzle. Now that would have been really cool and very Grandpa. I might make one yet.

The funeral was nice. The songs were songs Grandpa and Grandma liked to sing in church. I read one of his poems and his friend Fred read the memorial the family put together (and I polished, edited, and labored over and over trying to make it perfect). At the cemetery--on familiar land near the old farm house--we were surrounded by the stones of old Hibbards and Parrotts and Browns. It was a home-coming. He got his 21-gun salute. Grandma was presented with the flag. There were flocks of wild turkeys and herds of deer in the fields (hunting season's over--it's safe for them to be out!). It was Grandpa.

Now I'm back at work in the thick of things, processing donations, putting out reports, printing innumerable thank you letters and holiday cards. I should stay late tonight, but I'm not quite ready yet. I'm still adjusting to a post-Grandpa world. It's funny because it's not like I saw him every day or talked with him that often... but there's a change in the landscape of my inner-world view. I have to adjust in the change of vista.