Mammy's Funeral

Last Wednesday we had a memorial service for Mammy in Memphis. She was from middle Tennessee but for the last 15 years of her life she lived with my parents in Memphis.

It was a great testimony to her life to see how many people were there. It was pretty amazing. Many people loved her.

The next day we drove to middle Tennessee for her funeral.

It was both a time to say goodbye as well as a celebration of her life. There were songs at her funeral and we had a time of sharing. Many of her grandkids got up and shared what Mammy meant to them. There were tears and laughs as we shared stories. It was a special time.

We were able to see cousins that we had not seen in almost 20 years. It was great seeing everyone and we even talked of starting some kind of yearly or every two year family reunion. We all agreed that we didn't want to wait 20 more years before we saw each other again.

We forget sometimes that our kids aren't used to American ways of doing things in many situations. I guess I just assume, since I spent 30+ years in the states, that my kids would just automatically know the American customs with funerals. I was reminded last week that they did not. Some of the things they said or did were funny and some of the things that they saw just intrigued them.

My mom and dad took Bronwyn, Garrett and Carys to the funeral. They left a lot earlier than the rest of us did. By the time we got to the funeral Bronwyn relayed a story to us that had happened when their group arrived. They got out of the car and saw this:Our oldest son said, "Sweet......a limo!"

We don't have anything like a hearse in Brasil and he had never been to an American funeral so naturally he thought it was a limo. Bronwyn said she kind of whispered an apology to my parents but they both kind of chuckled and said it was okay. They understood that there was no way for him to have known what it was.

Another thing we don't have in our city are big open field cemeteries. You would never see the following picture in our city at a funeral. You can go here to read about our teammate Jennifer's first experience with a Brasilian funeral. It's much different than American funerals.

So, even the idea of digging a hole, lowering the casket and then filling the hole back up was intriguing to our kids. They had never seen anything like that. We took this picture because Carys literally stayed in this position watching the men until they finished filling the hole. The funeral ended with my cousin's husband playing Amazing Grace on the bag pipes. It was a great ending to a celebration of Mammy's life.