| A Word Edgewise by Mary Joe Clendenin |
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| A Word Edgewise by Mary Joe Clendenin |
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PEOPLE MAKE ODD CHOICES FOR SHROUDS
I considered writing about the heat--but what hasn't been said already? My retreat into an air-conditioned house and reluctance to stir from it makes me wonder how we lived for years without some cooling system. We didn't even have electric fans, just a big porch that family and friends escaped to, where on the southeast corner you could always feel whatever breeze might happen to be stirring. Evenings after supper we sat out there and listened to the sounds of the dogs scratching fleas under the house, the frogs calling for water, the crickets singing tenor, an occasional night bird. No motors to distract from nature. The less movement, the less generated body heat. We visited.
In an effort to get the creative juices flowing, I read an interesting article in a CURRENT LITERATURE magazine, dated 1903. Deciding to risk the teasing of Ray Darrell who says I write about gruesome subjects of death, grave yards, ghosts all the time, I want to tell you about what I read.
An undertaker told about peculiar requests he had received concerning burial garments. It was somewhat of a custom back then for women to be buried in their wedding dresses. One woman made the request to be buried in her wedding dress, complete with veil, because she heard it brought good luck. The undertaker asked who was to receive the good luck. She didn't know for whom, but she insisted it was a lucky move. He made sure that her requests were carried out when the time came.
Another woman found a way to settle an argument and keep peace in the family-- she hoped. The lady had a beautiful mink coat, hat and muff. In her declining years an argument among nieces began about who would get the furs after the death of the owner. She settled the argument by being buried in the fur coat, hat and muff. Hopefully, she rested comfortably in peace.
Feeling himself the victim of many crooks, being often taken advantage of, one man had a plan of how to finally get even with his tormentors. He requested that he be buried in a sheet. The undertaker said, "You mean a winding sheet." "No, no," assured the man," I mean an ordinary sheet. I plan to come back and haunt those mean people, and I don't want to be caught without a sheet."
The undertaker complied with all requests he received. Most were for burial in the subjects Sunday best. One woman wore her favorite hat on her journey to the hereafter. Wonder what the undertaker requested?
From another source, STRANGE STORIES, AMAZING FACTS OF AMERICA'S PAST, I learned the strangest of all. Mrs. Frances Hiller, during the 1890s in Wilmington, Massachusetts, planned and lived only for her spectacular funeral. She displayed her $30,000 coffin in her front parlor, frequently climbing into it to show visitors how she would look when she was finally laid out. Later she added a life-sized wax dummy of herself dressed in a $20,000 funeral robe.
Perhaps her fascination with funerals derived from the fact that all 23 of her children, including seven sets of twins, died in infancy. Whatever the cause, she had a fixation on funerals. Her husband, Dr. Henry Hiller hired a renowned wood carver to fashion ornate caskets for the couple.
Dr. Hiller had made a fortune in patent medicines he had invented and indulged his wife's eccentric tastes. She owned hundreds of hats and much fine jewelry which she wore gardening. Poor Henry died before expected. His coffin with the hand carved vines, angels, Cupids, dragons, bats, and a lizard crawling out of a skull's eye socket, was not finished. His body was kept in a vault until the coffin was completed so that in it he could be the featured object in a funeral procession including a military band and 2,000 people carrying lighted torches.
Mrs. Hiller's funeral in 1900 was just as ornate. Her casket was so heavy, a duplicate of Henry's, that it took ten men to carry it. In 1935 the ostentatious Hiller mausoleum was declared an eyesore and destroyed. The fancy coffins were buried with only a pair of urns and single bronze plaque to mark their new location.
As the caption said in a cartoon showing a caveman sitting by a fire watching a boiling pot. "Ice boils down to nothing. Snow boils down to nothing. Water boils down to nothing. Everything boils down to nothing."
Thanks, Ray Darrell. I had my say. Now I will talk of more pleasant things, such as the blessings of air-conditioning--or to quote the walrus from ALICE IN WONDERLAND,
"The time has come," the walrus said, "to speak of many things. Of ships and sails, and ceiling wax, and cabbages and kings. Of why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings."