1978
Soon after the Miracle on the Rio Cobre incident, in fact, just two days later, I officiated at my first Jamaican funeral. As Borge Langerud, the missionary, was preparing to leave for Canada (leaving us in charge of the entire missions organization and the church for a month) he said, “Oh, by the way, you’ve got a funeral to do in a couple of days. But it’s no problem, Brother Hamilton will show you what needs to be done.” And then we drove him and his wife to Kingston’s Norman Manley Airport and they flew away!
Early on the morning of the funeral, Brother Hamilton (one of the church elders at the Ewarton Gospel Lighthouse Church) showed up at the mission house and said, “It’s time to get started!”
Here’s how it played out…
We took the truck (A 1968 three-quarter-ton Chevy pickup, with a canopy on the back), and went to the the coffin maker’s shop to pick up the coffin (Which was made of local wood, covered in lavender fabric, had a glass viewing window in the lid, silver-colored hardware, and was almost, but not quite finished). When the coffin was ready, we loaded it and the coffin maker and his two assistants into the truck and drove to the hospital in Linstead (five miles away) to pick up the body of the departed.
When we arrived at hospital, we went directly to the morgue, a tomb-like (I know, right?) concrete room at the back of the hospital. The morgue had a steel shelf all around the walls, and because the refrigeration was broken, the steel shelf contained ten or more corpses in canvas bags with tags on the toes protruding from the bags. Blocks of ice were placed strategically.
The body of the woman whose funeral I was to officiate in a couple of hours was lying on an elevated slab in the center of the room. We had to wait while the woman’s daughters dressed her in her burial dress. When that was done, we brought the coffin on a gurney to the side of the slab and shifted her body off the slab into the coffin.
At that point we discovered that the coffin lid wouldn’t close because the woman’s body was more “portly” than the coffin was constructed to contain. The coffin maker complained that the woman was too fat. I observed that it would have been good to check on her size before building the coffin. But what do I know? I’ve never built a coffin!
Imagine four men, Brother Hamilton, myself, the coffin maker, and the coffin maker’s assistant, pressing down on the coffin lid while trying to tighten the four screws to secure the lid. Imagine the sound of the hammer pounding some nails into the lid to help take the strain. Imagine the cracking sound when the glass viewing window (see above) broke under the pressure. There was some discussion in English and Jamaican Patois about whose fault it was and what to do next. We decided to cover the woman’s face with absorbent material we found on a shelf and make it a closed casket service!
We wheeled the casket on the gurney out to the loading ramp and backed the truck as far as we could down the ramp. Now picture those four men, two of whom (In this case, not Brother Hamilton and me) were somewhat inebriated because they’d been drinking Overproof Rum all morning, pushing the gurney up to the back of the pickup on a slight incline and sliding the casket off the gurney into the truck bed. Picture the man holding the gurney on the sloped ramp losing his grip on it and the gurney starting to roll down the slope just as the casket was half on the truck and half still on the gurney! Picture the two sober men (Brother Hamilton and me) scrambling to catch the casket and heaving it far enough into the truck bed that it didn’t fall to the ground and explode! We couldn’t put the tail gate up, so the two assistants rode in the back of the truck to hold the casket from sliding out.
We uneventfully drove the five miles to the Gospel Lighthouse Church in Ewarton, backed the truck up to the front door, and six strong men carried the casket to the front of the sanctuary, just below the pulpit, and set it on two wooden chairs placed to the sides facing each other. Whew! We made it!
The church was filling up, I was rumpled (I’d been wearing the suit in which I was to conduct the service through all the activities I’ve described here) and sweaty. I sat alone on the three-foot high platform and tried to look ministerial and get myself prepared to “officiate”!
The service began. I was the Master of Ceremonies, the officiating minister, and the visiting pastor from overseas. Brother Hamilton coached me as things trundled along. We sang songs, the eulogy was read, the service was moving along, and it was almost time for me to speak. I think this is going to work!
We had decided that, due to the things that had happened at the morgue while securing the lid of the coffin (see “viewing window glass breaking” above), it would be a closed casket service. Suddenly the town drunk stumbled in through the open door, staggered down the aisle to the coffin and threw open the “viewing window”! Much to my relief the absorbent material had absorbed as we had hoped and overall, it didn’t look too bad! Then the entire congregation got up and rushed in a more or less disorderly manner to the front and viewed the body. We sang another song.
Then I preached the funeral sermon. I have no idea what I preached about. It was probably about life and death and heaven and hell and God and Jesus. But we got it done and prayers were said, and I had the folks stand. Brother Hamilton organized the men to carry the casket to the truck, I dismissed the congregation, and we were off to the cemetery!
When we reached the cemetery, about half a mile away, we found the grave dug and ready for its inhabitant. Inside the grave was a concrete vault, poured in place and open on top. The casket would be lowered into the vault by the bearers. They brought the casket from the truck, which had nearly burned out its clutch on the steep pull up the hill, and we prepared for the final interment.
As it turns out, no one had brought any rope for lowering the casket into the vault! Was I was supposed to have done that? I sent people in all directions to find some rope while we sang hymns on the cemetery hillside. Within a song or two we had pieces of rope which we tied into two sections, ran the ropes under the casket, then lifted the casket (eight strong men at this point, two on each end of each rope) and carefully lowered the it into the grave. When it was down and safely settled, we couldn’t get the ropes out! We couldn’t leave them, they were borrowed! So the smaller of the two coffin maker assistants crawled down into the grave, lifted the coffin, first one end, then the other, and we retrieved the ropes.
I said what I hope were the appropriate “laying to rest” words. Then the coffin maker’s assistants brought split bamboo, straw, large tropical looking leaves of some sort and actually mixed and poured in place, a concrete cover for the grave. That took almost an hour. We continued to sing songs.
The crowd of nearly a hundred mourners began to drift away and eventually the grave was sealed, the people were gone, and my first Jamaican funeral was in the books.
A funeral is one of the important passages in life. It’s serious and sobering—a time for reflection. But this one had its moments! On the plus side, I’ve never been particularly stressed by funeral ministry since that day.
And that’s what I remember about that!
As always I’d love to hear from you… You can comment by replying to this email or in the comment section on my blog page.
Grace to you today! Jim Stephens