by Ira Wagler
I slept fitfully that night. The next morning, I got up. It was Monday, April 28, 2014. I immediately checked the messages. No news. Mom was still with us. I got ready and drove to work. And I remembered my talk with God the night before. And I remember exactly where I was driving when I muttered to God that morning on the road, “Yeah, I’m still mad. You can take her home. Why don’t you? Just do it. Right now.”
And it turned out that pretty much right that moment, when I was muttering to God to hear me, He did.
I got to work and parked. Walked in. We were shorthanded that morning. Only two other office workers and me. And they both asked, “Any news about your mom?”
“Nope,” I said. “She’s real bad and sinking. But her heart is strong. She’s still here with us.” And just about then, a few minutes before seven, I heard the ping. A text. I’d been jumpy about those for days. I pulled out my iPhone. And there it was on the screen. A message from my brother Stephen: “Mom died at 6:42 a.m.”
That was it. And I felt it rushing through me, a huge wave of relief, mixed with a whole lot of other emotions. “She’s gone,” I half shouted to the others. “Mom is gone. She just died a few minutes ago. At 6:42.”
What can you possibly remember about a moment like that? Or try to write? But I focused in. The next thing I needed to know was when the funeral would be. They had told us, the Aylmer people, that there was a wedding on Thursday. Weddings take precedence over funerals, as they should. So depending on when Mom passed, the funeral would be on Wednesday or on Friday. And it was getting real tight on a Monday morning to have it on Wednesday. I texted Stephen back. “When is the funeral?” And then I sat at my desk and tried to focus on my work. That was impossible, of course.
And my cell phone started ringing, right along. My sister Rachel called. And Magdalena. I’m not sure who all else. They got it decided pretty quick, up there in Aylmer. The funeral would be on Wednesday. The day after tomorrow. That wasn’t much time to get up there. By three, I was on the road. My rented Charger pulsed along silently. And my phone kept ringing as I was driving. My niece Janice called. She wasn’t going to get into Buffalo until eleven. And I mentioned to her that I figured to get a room at her motel. “Oh,” she said. “I have a lot of points saved up. Let me see if I can get you a room.” And she called back a bit later. She had booked a room for me at the Courtyard by Marriott right by the airport. The place where she was staying. “Just walk in and tell them your name,” she told me. “They’ll have a room for you.”
I thanked her. “We’ll connect tomorrow morning,” I said.
And right around eight thirty p.m., just as my GPS had claimed, I pulled into the Courtyard by Marriott parking lot. Just a little over five and a half hours from home, that’s how far Buffalo is from me. It was a very fancy place, the hotel. Large and new and gleaming. The nice lady checked me in, camo jacket and all. I almost hadn’t brought a jacket with me. It was warm back home. But at the last minute, I took the light camo jacket from my truck and threw it in the rental. It was the only coat of any kind I took. And I would come to regret that, big time.
I settled in my room, then walked down to the little Bistro in the lobby. Sat at the bar and ordered a sandwich and a scotch. Janice had texted earlier. Her flight was delayed again. She wouldn’t be in until close to midnight. After relaxing with my food and drink, I walked back to my room. Tomorrow would be a different kind of day. A very different kind of day.
There had never been a death of any kind in my immediate family. Never. Dad and Mom had eleven children. From nine of those children came fifty-nine grandchildren and ninety-eight great-grandchildren, as of 2014. And out of all those people, none had died. My family had never had any funeral of any kind, not to where the others would come. Sure, I think there were four stillbirths along the way. But those don’t really count, because those stillborn children never lived or breathed. And that’s pretty astounding, any way you look at it. All those children, all those grandchildren, and all those great-grandchildren. And no funerals for any of them. It had to be some sort of record, I thought to myself. Or close to one.
And now a funeral was coming. As funerals should come. Children burying a parent. Not the other way around. It had come close to being the other way around, though. My brother Titus comes to mind, with his accident back in 1982. He almost died. He would have after another twenty or thirty seconds under the water. And he was wounded, very much so. But he didn’t die. My brother Joseph got real sick, too. He had almost died a few months before, from pneumonia. And I was just coming out of my own heart problems right around the time Mom passed. I could have died. But none of us did. We all hung on. There never was a funeral before Mom’s, not in my immediate family. Not a funeral for a real live person who had lived and breathed. That was all coming up real soon, though. Those were the thoughts I had that night at the Courtyard.
Janice got in real late. And I went to sleep before she ever arrived. The next morning, we met down at the Bistro. She was groggy and a bit hungry. I ate some yogurt. She ordered French toast and gave me a slice. And then we were off in the Charger. I had to gas up first before we got into Canada. They charge crazy prices up there for petrol. I told Janice, “I can fill up here, and it’ll be enough to get us there and back.”
We filled up at a station. And then it was off to the border. The rain started coming down, hard. The Charger took it all in stride, though. There’s no better car to drive through the rain than a Charger. And soon enough, we arrived at the border. A glum guard took our passports. “What are you doing in Canada?” she asked.
“Going to my mom’s funeral,” I said. She made no noises of condolence at all. Just handed back our passports and waved us through. And then we were off, into the rain.
And we pushed our way along, in and out through the traffic, and on and on and on and on. And soon, Aylmer loomed. Our destination. The place where Mom was. I was calm as we approached the area. The flat earth. The little groves of trees, scattered here and there on the land. “This is the area where I grew up,” I told Janice. “This is the land I knew as a child.”
We drove along, straight south. Aylmer was coming right up. And then we arrived. And headed right on west to Saint Thomas and our motel. The rain subsided. Saint Thomas finally was before us. And the Comfort Inn, where everyone was staying. We pulled in and parked. Other vehicles from all over sat parked. We met some of my nieces and nephews from various places, all milling about, getting ready to head out to the farm where Mom was.
Thirty minutes later, Janice and I had changed into funeral clothes and were ready. I felt it stirring inside, the moment that was coming. Yeah, I had felt mostly relief when Mom passed. Huge relief that she’d suffer no more on this earth. But now, now I was actually heading out to see her. It just felt very strange. “This is a new place for me,” I told Janice.
“It’s a new place for all of us,” she said.
We arrived at Joe and Rosemary Gascho’s farm, where my parents had lived in their little Daudy house for the past few years. We parked over to the south of the house in a little lot set off for cars. Everything was muddy, everywhere, from the rain. And now the wind was blowing hard. Lester, Rosemary’s son who had taken over the home farm, met us outside. We followed him across the planks laid down over the muddy yard and garden, up to the old redbrick farmhouse.
It was probably one thirty or so in the afternoon. They had eaten at noon but saved some food for us. “We’ll go in first, to see Mom, then we’ll come back to eat,” I told the cooks. They smiled patiently. And Janice and I walked up the steps from the washhouse into the kitchen. There weren’t many people around right at that moment. Mostly my siblings, and a few neighbors and friends. Dad was nowhere to be seen. He was upstairs, taking a nap, they told us. My sisters and my brothers Jesse and Stephen came to greet us. We all hugged each other unashamedly.
They all looked exhausted. But Rosemary smiled in welcome. “We’ll take you in to see Mom,” she said.
And they led us into the little bedroom in the northwest corner of the house. A small room, really. It had been Rosemary and Joe’s bedroom for decades. We walked through the door. The coffin was set up in the middle of the room. There was no furniture except for a dresser on the far north side by the wall. On that dresser sat a small mantel clock. Stopped at 6:42 a.m. The moment Mom had died.
I approached the coffin, Janice beside me. The others stood around close. And there she lay. Mom. Small, shrunken, impossibly frail, in a new black dress and a new large white head covering. Lying there in the white-lined coffin, her head resting on a small new pillow. I stood there, beside the coffin, and just looked at her. Here was Mom. Here was death. So real and so final. It was here, in this room. Janice stood close, her arm around me. I felt it all deep down inside, and the tears trickled out. My sisters wept with me. Mom. Right here. Gone. She would never suffer on this earth again. But still. She was gone.
And I whispered to Janice, “Is it OK if I touch her face?”
“Yes, yes,” she whispered back. “It’s all right.” I reached down and gently stroked her cold and leathered cheeks. Mom.
And my sisters and brothers told me of how it was, the details of Mom’s journey in those final days. How she had passed peacefully in that last hour. They had been there when she died. Staying up with her. Her hands had gotten real cold in the early morning hours. And they knew it was coming. Jesse said she wouldn’t die until the day broke. And she didn’t. When the time came, they saw her breath of life giving up. From her chest on up it came. Then through her throat. And then to her mouth. The breath of life expired, right there. That’s what they told me.
And there are always the stories, the stories that come. It’s such a part of Amish lore and tradition. Always there are stories, the stories of dying. And there, as we stood looking down at Mom, Rosemary and Naomi told me a very special one.
Back the week before, as Mom was sinking, the nurse that came out to check on her told my sisters, “It’s important that the family releases your mother. You must tell her it’s all right if she goes. Otherwise, she may hang on for longer than she has to.”
So on Thursday, Rosemary and Naomi cleared everyone out of her bedroom and closed the door. They stood on each side of her bed and held her hands. And Rosemary spoke to Mom. “We are here, Naomi and me. We want to tell you that it’s all right for you to go. If you hear Jesus calling you, go to Him.” And she talked some more, about what a good Mom she had been and how she was loved by all her children. And at the end, she told Mom, “Now, if you heard what I said, can you squeeze my hand?” And Mom squeezed the hand that Naomi held. It was her strongest hand, the one that Rosemary held was barely functional anymore. So they figure she heard what Rosemary told her. And understood.
The Amish have stories, and they also have dreams and visions, especially at such a time when death approaches. It’s just part of the culture. And Rosemary told me of one such dream. On the Saturday night before Mom passed, the neighbors came around to be with her, too. There was someone at her bedside twenty-four hours a day. And that night, at midnight, Junior and Wilma Eicher came to take their turn. Junior was the son of my childhood preacher, Jake Eicher, and Wilma was Junior’s wife. They came to stay from midnight until six in the morning.
Wilma was very tired, so she retired on the bed off to the side of the room. And drifted off into deep slumber. I don’t know how she heard what she heard. But she told the others that she heard beautiful, beautiful singing. Mom’s voice, joined by a man’s, startlingly clear and utterly beautiful. That was what she claimed she heard. When she stirred a bit later and came out of the dream, she asked her husband, “Were you singing with Mommy? I heard beautiful singing. And there was a strong voice singing with her, from a man.”
And Junior told her, “No, I’ve been awake. There was no singing, not that I heard. She’s lying here, just the same as always.”
Dreams and visions. Who knows what was really going on? Maybe those were angels singing with Mom. Or maybe it was just a dream from the exhausted mind of an exhausted woman who slept by the deathbed of my mother. They take comfort from such dreams and visions, the Amish do. This time, it was a dream of Mom singing. Of angels singing. And right at that moment, when I heard about it, that dream gave me comfort, too.
We walked back out to the kitchen, then. There were no flowers anywhere. That’s one thing you’ll never see at any Amish funeral. It’s just the way it’s always been. It’s a somber time, a funeral, and not a time for flowers. A row of chairs was set up in front. A bench along the back wall. Facing all that, just outside and to the right of the bedroom door, there was a comfortable office chair. For Dad. And a single chair beside his. Dad wasn’t around right then. He was still upstairs, taking a nap. And soon enough, the word came down from Dorothy, Janice’s older sister. They had told Dad, “Ira and Janice just got here.” And right away, he wanted to come down. Right away. He wanted to see Janice.
There always was a special bond between Dad and Janice. She was his favorite grandchild, or certainly one of them. It was because she had worked hard over the years to build a good relationship with him. And it could not be denied. She also reminded him a lot of her mother and his daughter, Magdalena. We walked into the living room and opened the stairwell door. Dorothy was helping Dad down the steps. It was a little tricky with his cane. Janice went halfway up to help them both. And I met them at the bottom. He shook our hands and greeted us. Then he walked into the kitchen and sat on his designated chair. Janice sat beside him. And the two of them just talked, oblivious to the clamor of the room.
I had wondered, on the way up to Aylmer, Sure, my clan will come in force. But will the others come? Mom was just a few months shy of her ninety-first birthday when she died. How important will it be to the other families? Dad’s nieces and nephews. They’re scattered all over creation. How important will it be to some of them to come? And that afternoon, there wasn’t a whole lot going on. Not a lot of people around, except immediate family. And it seemed right then like there wouldn’t be that large a crowd showing up.
After visiting with Dad for half an hour or so, Janice got up. I went and sat on the chair beside Dad. He looked old and very tired. The man was almost beside himself with grief. But he was there, with it. He fully grasped what had happened. And he told me little snippets of his memories of Mom. How she was always so helpful and kind to everyone. And how she worked so hard. “She didn’t have a slow speed. When she walked, she almost ran,” he said. His voice was slow and very heavy. He was alone now, all alone. And the realization of all of that was pressing in on him hard.
Janice and a group of my other nephews and nieces headed back to the motel to rest up a bit for the evening. I wanted to go along. I was beyond tired, almost exhausted. But I figured I’d better stay with the family. This is Mom’s funeral. You have to stay and absorb all you can. We sat there, and people trickled through. By late afternoon, Titus and Ruth arrived with their boys. We got Titus inside with the portable ramps he had brought along for wheelchair access to the house. We got him comfortable in the kitchen. We all went with him into the room where Mom was, and my sisters told him the stories they had told me. Dad came in, too. He stood there forlornly beside the coffin. He suddenly reached down and covered Mom’s folded hands with his own.
Supper was served at five, and the grandchildren came back for that. After we ate, the siblings lined up, pretty much by age, on the chairs and benches in the kitchen. And all at once, it just seemed like the floodgates opened. People began arriving from all over. Strangers, total strangers, at least to me, from the nearby Amish communities of Lakeside and Mount Elgin. Plainer places. These people came because they knew and remembered Mom. And the relatives poured in, too. Uncle Abner Wagler’s children came—the locals and some from far away. Yeah, the clans would make it. I needn’t have fretted about that. As the people filed through and shook our hands, I thanked each one for taking the time and making the effort.
“Oh, we wouldn’t have missed it,” they said.
Dad’s younger sister Rachel Graber got there early that evening. They had traveled from Kalona, Iowa. (Every living member of Rachel’s family made it to the funeral. That was a huge honor to my family.) Rachel hobbled up to Dad with her cane. He didn’t see her until she was close. And he struggled to his feet to greet her. The two of them were all that remained of all their immediate family. Everyone else had moved on. And they stood there and just talked. I could not hear the conversation—too much noise and too many people. I saw Dad leading Aunt Rachel into the bedroom where Mom was. My sisters followed, and they shut the door. The memories flooded in for Aunt Rachel, too. They had even shared their wedding day, she and Mom. A double wedding. And she just stood there, bent over her cane, and looked down on Mom with gentle grief as the memories swept through her.
People just kept coming and coming. Rosemary and her family had removed every stick of furniture from the bottom floor of the old redbrick house. And set up rows and rows of benches in every room. After visitors had filed through the bedroom where Mom was, they filed past us, Dad and the children. And then into the back rooms, where they were seated on the benches. A steady hum of voices buzzed through the house. Two van loads of people arrived from Daviess County, Indiana. Mom’s younger sister Annie’s children and a dozen or so Amish relatives, cousins and nephews and nieces and such. There is something pretty distinct about the Daviess people. Their dress and their features. You can tell if someone comes from Daviess. I thanked each one as they filed past us. Thanks for coming. Thanks for honoring my mother.