So, yesterday, my fingers flew over the keyboard, trying to recount the wonders of the Rosie Road-Trip at the Holiday Inn Express north of Columbus, OH. The whole Rosie delivery saga still had me energized- jazzed, in fact- and damn the expense. I had to be in Ohio anyway. I checked the Google Earth algorithm to see what my timing was going to be for the funeral. It looked like a little over an hour, and I looked at the placard on the door to determine check-out time, which was noon.

I fetched my good duds from the car where they have been waiting the last week and buffed myself up as much as possible and rolled out with what I hoped was plenty of time. After the wild weather ride to Indiana, Jinny must have specified a spotless day to go to her rest- it was cool but glorious in the real heartland of the Buckeye State.

Jinny was the 5th generation to be of this rich soil- we told that to Katie the bartender at the lounge-that-used-to-be-a-bank off the prim Victorian square in the heart of Medina, OH, where she grew up.

I was way early rolling into Seville, which is not far from where my Mom grew up, first in little Dillonvale, and then Belleaire on the big brown Ohio River. I had to pee, and once I found the cemetery and got oriented, I turned around and drove up to the gas station by the Interstate and filled up the car and emptied my bladder in the rest room of a genial, insular little country store where a couple old men sat nursing their coffees. Then back to the Mound Hill Cemetery, where a celebration of life was going to happen for the lovely woman whose hands, nails impeccably painted in bright red, lay in her coffin, the convertible top up at a jaunty angle.

My family is not much for public viewing- normally we go to the great beyond in urns or modest containers, so walking into the spare new chapel, I was sort of startled. Jinny was there, big as life in death, dressed to the nines as she always preferred. I walked over and took it all in: her brown hair lustrous, an enigmatic smile on her now-unlined face, the two little boxes that contained the ashes of her favorite two dogs on her lap.

She looked good, considering she had passed more than two weeks ago, and had traveled across the country. I didn’t look that good, and my journey had been much less. There were friends and family, mostly from her husband Barney’s clan, though there were representatives from Naval Intelligence and the kin of her second companion, Rex.

I was wearing one of the Admiral’s old sweater vests under my sport jacket in commemoration- Jinny had given it to me after his passing in 2010.

I mostly hung out with Tony, the former Director of Naval Intelligence and his lovely bride, though we talked to everyone. The former Governor of Oklahoma was supposed to be coming, and the minister stalled as long as he could, glancing out the window periodically, and to string things out, he asked for testimony from those attending.

The family shared Jinny’s remarkable passions, and since the marriage to Barney had been childless, her boundless energy had been spread across a wide swath of extended relationships. She was a woman in full.

At some point, it was apparent that the Governor was not going to make it, and the Minister invited all to a fellowship at the Methodist Church on Main Street. Tony looked at me, and I looked at him and we decided that a drink on the square in Medina was the fellowship we needed, once we knew that Jinny was safe. The nice men from the Murray Funeral Home busied themselves with the final details at the coffin, tucking the satin covers over Jinny’s bosom, and then reaching up to close the lid of the casket.

I stared at them as it came down. Her beauty would not be seen in this world again, and I wanted to leap up to protest against the darkness of eternity that would come upon her when the latches clicked shut. But it was done in a trice, and that was that.

The crowd thinned out for fellowship, or the road, but the hard core stayed. We were not going anywhere until Jinny was done and home.

I have a lot of appreciation for the blue-collar end of death. My people were of this soil, railroad men, mostly, and the casket was rolled up to the concrete vault in which it slipped neatly after an intricate maneuver with hoist and pulleys and a frame that slid out to accommodate the transfer of the lovely blue casket into the plain concrete vault.

The frame was on a motorized mule, and the Sexton in her black dress and severe hat gathered up the flowers and asked me to walk with her in escort behind as we walked solemnly up the hill. All the rain had left the rich green turf saturated, so we followed the gravel path around the gentle hill that the Indians had thrown up a thousand years ago in this place.

The gravediggers were pros, and I admired their skill. The grave itself was dug with precision. The mule was precisely navigated between the rows of stones, touching none of them. The Governor had arrived, finally, with his entourage, and we gathered to admire how this all would be done, the vault perpendicular to the grave, then suspended and swing around to be lowered perfectly into the deep brown soil. The gravedigger in his Carhart work-clothes jumped down and removed the cables from the grooves that had held the vault secure, and then compacted the frame and navigated the mechanical mule gracefully out from the garden of stones.

If the Digger had shown grace and elegance in the placement, the Backhoe guy was a pure artist. The soil that had been excavated with care was scooped up with precision, and then placed, bucket by bucket, over the vault, and smoothed with care in level layers across it. The Sexton appeared suddenly with a pale box that had discolored slightly over the years, and placed it on the dirt layer over Jinny’s vault. I looked at her, arching an eyebrow, and said: “Barney?”

“Yes. Captain Martin.”

She placed some of the flowers atop it, and the backhoe swiftly completed the job, leaving a nice mound to settle atop our friend. There was no formal end to the interment, as there is at Arlington, where the cemetery representative thanks you for attending and that the matter is over, waves brusquely and bustles away. Tony and Beth and I drifted off towards our cars, parked on the circular drive around the modest chapel.

“Medina for a drink?” asked Tony. “That is where Jinny grew up, and painted the names of the local boys serving overseas in World War II.”

“Jinny would want it,” I said. And that is how we wound up at the bar-that-used-to-be-a-bank on the square. Katie was the bartender, and a splendid lady. I had a couple vodkas and stopped, since I needed to get a ways down the Turnpike toward home. There was some food available- I wasn’t hungry- but it was a unique combination of fries, melted cheese, corned beef and sauerkraut and a burger treated the same way. It is an Ohio thing we wouldn’t really understand in Washington.

But the afternoon was largely gone, the clear brilliant light lowering in the west and I knew I wouldn’t be driving after dark. Tony had to work the next day, but Beth was going to drive since she had wisely gone to the pottery store down the block. We parted in good spirits, or good as could be, all things considered. I shivered when I recalled the “snick” the latches made when the funeral director closed the lid.

Man, I thought, firing up the Panzer and pointing its sliver snout on the road east. This life thing is pretty amazing. I will miss Jinny, at least until i see her and everyone else at Fleet Landing on the other side.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com