Prairie Gothic: The Story of a West Texas Family

Chapter Twenty-three: Grandmother's Funeral

178 Chapter Twenty-three: Grandmother’s Funeral Kris and I drove down to Seminole the next day and joined some of the family at Grandmother’s house. Around six, we went to the funeral home and viewed the body. The gray metal casket had been placed in a small room, and I stayed for half an hour or more. I had not yet gotten a feeling of death about Grandmother. I looked into her face and marveled. After she had lived eighty-five years on the Llano Estacado, braving wind and blizzards and sand storms, her face showed hardly a wrinkle and was still as smooth and white as alabaster. This was no trick of the undertaker’s trade. Mrs. Curry had preserved her beauty through constant care . . . and some quality of the spirit that I don’t claim to understand. Only her hands showed the wear of years, and the undertaker had covered them with satin. I moved the fabric and looked at them. They reminded me of the gnarled shapes of cottonwood trees that have been sculpted by wind and storm. I touched her hands and face, and left the room, knowing that she was no longer with us. By the time we returned to the house, all the immediate family had arrived: the Pattersons from Houston; the Harters from Amarillo and Lubbock; the Cieszinskis from Roswell, Santa Fe, and Lubbock; and the Ericksons from Perryton and Amarillo. Aunt Mary Curry was there too, she the only Curry girl who had never married. She had driven from California where for some years she had belonged to a religious cult run by a woman named Clair Prophet. My father said that when Aunt Mary 179 Grandmother’s Funeral arrived in Seminole, she had to borrow a few dollars to buy gas for her car. She had several gold bars hidden in her luggage, each worth about thirty thousand dollars, but no cash. I had never gotten close to Aunt Mary, and I doubt that many people had, even her sisters. Aunt Bennett said that in her youth, Mary rode the wildest horses and drove the fastest cars, and before she left Seminole, she had dusted up a scandal or two. She seemed to have inherited all the eccentricities from both sides of the family and then added a few of her own. That night, the grandchildren spent the night at Grandmother’s house, while the aunts and uncles found quieter lodgings at the Raymond Motel. After brushing my teeth in the bathroom, I noticed a little note in Grandmother’s handwriting taped to the tank of the commode: “Please watch after you flush. Sometimes it hangs. The water will run until you shake the handle.” I had to laugh. Mrs. Curry had not quite given up her hold on the house she had occupied for sixty-two years. Around nine the next morning, the Sherman contingent from Roswell arrived for the funeral: Sam and Edward B. Sherman, the sons of Uncle Forrest and Aunt Mary D, and their wives, as well as Uncle Roger and Aunt Bessie. They were almost strangers to me and I wasn’t sure why. Mother had said, “They’re very Sherman,” which I took to mean that they kept to themselves and steered a course around family entanglements. There may have also been some lingering bitterness about Joe Sherman’s opposition to Uncle Forrest’s marriage to Mary D Ramsey—good heavens, more than fifty years ago. I introduced myself to Uncle Roger and Aunt Bessie, although they knew who I was: Anna Beth’s boy. Uncle Roger wore a dark suit and tie and carried his eighty-one years with dignity. Aunt Bessie must have been a few years younger than Uncle Roger, and was as cute as a button. Dressed in the traditional black funeral dress, she had sparkling dark eyes that missed nothing, and she greeted all the nieces and nephews with a smile and kind words. I wished that I could steer Uncle Roger off into a quiet corner so that I might ask him some questions about his 180 Chapter Twenty-three father, but the opportunity never presented itself. And I doubt that he would have said much anyway. At nine-thirty we loaded into cars and drove to the South Seminole Baptist Church, where Grandmother taught a Sunday school class for many years. By then, we...