Funerals and family filled our Fourth of July weekend. Yes, I did say funerals. Two aunts died this spring. Both lived hours away from family burial plots in the farming district of upstate New York. Since few could afford to travel the distance twice, the families planned the funerals on Saturday and Sunday. Various family members flew or drove from Arkansas, Maine, California, Arizona, Colorado, Virginia and Maryland.
Arriving after dark, my husband said, “I think we just passed Susie’s place.”
I looked for the one-story ranch where my grandparents lived that came next. Through the dark, I saw a shop, a two-story house, a couple of country stores and a lot more trees than I remembered. “I don’t think we passed it.”
I searched for a familiar shape until I concluded, “You’re right. We must have passed Susie’s place.” We drove back and found her house.
The next morning, I saw the major overhaul on the farm since we buried my father 14 years ago. Country stores and houses had been added. It startled me to realize that not only had my dad’s childhood home burned down, but the huge pine tree in front of it had been totally removed and the basement foundation filled and seeded with grass. I saw no trace of the old farmhouse. Only the lilacs remained. It had grown way beyond the sheltering arbor where we once camped.
Many familiar sites had changed. The two-story K-12 Jasper school where my mother, sister and brother had graduated looked the same. However, last year’s flash flood had pushed four feet of water into the classrooms just before school began. The district reopened another closed school building for classes last year. Jasper Central sat silent for the first time since the 1940s. I heard rumors of the possible destruction of my old alma mater.
On our way to our final family funeral meal, (the extended family ate several meals together), we passed through the small village of Freeman. As a baby I attended my first Day Vacation Bible School there in a playpen. Memories of the little white, country church with its tall steeple flooded me as we entered the village. I anticipated seeing the church again.
It was gone. In its place sat a house and car. Nothing remained of the auditorium where I learned to sing ”Jesus Loves Me,” the stage where I proudly recited my lines in childrens’ programs, or the pew where I sat beside my grandmother wiping away tears the Sunday after my other grandfather had died. Only pictures in albums and fleeting memories in aging minds remain of the church my dad once painted.
I knew from previous visits home that familiar features disappear. One visit we drove around the area to show spouses where we lived only to repeatedly discover, “Wait, it’s gone! It burnt down.”
With my aunts’ years reaching to their ninth decades, and reports of declining health, we knew we would not have them forever. We saw it in their Facebook pictures.
I already knew that the little church in Freeman struggled to stay active. Still, I expected it to be there – someone would come along with a vision for the little white church in the vale. I never imagined my grandparents’ house would ever rise above one story. I never considered losing the huge pine tree.
Reality check: believers left and built a bigger church on top of the hill. The growing family added a second story. The tree succumbed to old age. A flash flood damaged small and large buildings including our school. I can’t go home. It’s all gone. An end of an era. These changes and more leave only my own fading memories from childhood. This weekend of funerals we memorialized my two aunts’ lives, but I also put to rest the idea of my being able to “go home” again.