Mississippi Funerals

Since we moved to Mississippi 9 months ago, I have been to 3 funerals. I think this is a lot considering I’ve only been to a half dozen funerals in my life up until now. Funerals in Mississippi have been an educational experience for me.

The first funeral I attended was 2 weeks after we moved here, a woman that worked at Ernie’s plant was driving one Sunday when her car was hit by a motorcycle and she and the motorcyclist were both killed. This funeral was held in a small town called Prentiss. (A quick aside- because Mississippi is somewhat “off the grid” as I like to call it, GPS readings are often not accurate here so we got horrendously lost). After literally driving on dirt roads Ernie and I arrived in the small town of Prentiss, running 30 minutes late and found the small Baptist church. It was filled to capacity, so we both thought that we would just stand in the back with all the other people that didn’t have a seat. However, since we had called the church for directions, they were expecting us and a woman found us and ushered Ernie and me (in the middle of the service!) down the front aisle, right up to the casket, around the pulpit while the preacher was preaching, and then seated us up on the stage in the choir seats with the deceased woman’s closest friends. There was no good way to blend in since we were the only white people there. So we sat up in the choir seats and listened to probably the most talented keyboardist in the world do an amazing job improvising a sound track to the preacher’s sermon. It was my first introduction to “the Vapor Doctrine” as the preacher kept shouting about how our lives are but a vapor and then they’re gone. The congregation definitely made some noise and there was constant murmur of “amens” and “that’s true” coming from people. As the grieving family approached the open casket we all sang a refrain of “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” and the family went hysterical. Two people fainted and then they had to drag the dead woman’s mother off the casket. I cried even though I’d never met the woman, because it was all just so sad. The sermon offered some hope, but it certainly was not the Plan of Salvation.

The second funeral took place a couple months after the first funeral, at the end of the summer. A supervisor at Ernie’s plant, right at the beginning of first shift, fell to the ground dead. Ernie was there with the AED machine and put the charges on him while everyone else stood there and watched. The paramedics arrived and took him to the hospital where they confirmed that he was dead. The man was in his late 20s and had a great career ahead of him, a fiancée, and a 2 year old son. His family buried him in Oxford, Mississippi which is up in the northern part of the state, so Ernie and I drove 4 hours there and then 4 hours home to attend that funeral. We weren’t alone, there were a lot of people from the plant who attended the funeral and made the drive to pay their respects. This was a well loved man. The funeral was certainly more restrained than the first, and this time Ernie was invited to speak. He quoted scripture and got some “amens” of his own from the congregation. Again the Vapor Doctrine was prevalent in this one and truthfully, this preacher offered a lot less hope than the first one.

The third funeral was the one that I attended today. It was for the mother of a dear friend and this time the funeral was LDS. It was very southern and there were lots of anecdotes about “Miss Jewel” (dear Jewel Crosby who passed on). The church is surprisingly really strong here in southern Mississippi and when we made it to Red Star today- which is a really small town 2 hours from Hattiesburg- the church ended up being on a road called: Morman Trail (no, that isn’t a typo- it was really spelled like that). The thing that surprised me the most was the small LDS cemetery on the side of the small church building. I’ve never seen an LDS church with it’s own cemetery before (I really wish I’d taken a picture!). After the service finished in the chapel, we all walked outside and over to the lawn where the casket was sitting and folded our arms and closed our eyes while they dedicated the grave. I liked it. I liked that it felt so personal- to be surrounded by stones with the names of families that have known each other and married each other for almost a hundred years. I liked that it gave a sense of place. People here are not nomadic like Ernie and I are, and they know who they are, what’s expected of them, and where they will be buried. People from Mississippi marry other people from Mississippi and truthfully the only outsiders who marry in are missionaries who serve here and then come back and marry a girl from one of their areas. People do move here like me and Ernie, but 60% of the people in our ward can claim a direct relation to  80 year old Grandma Trussell who is the matriarch of the Hattiesburg area. Grandma Trussell bears her testimony every month and begins each time by saying, “Isn’t it great to be a Latter-day Saint!”

I know that people like to make fun of the South sometimes and when they do they like to make fun of Mississippi in particular, but I like it here. A lot. And I like that funerals here are community affairs, and treated as an open invitation to express love and support for the grieving family.