Broken Roads

by Ira Wagler

  And Jerry told me, “That was your dad’s work, right there, those communities with the higher morals. That’s the vision they had at Pathway. That’s what they were trying to do.”

  After the youth sang at the viewing, we stood around the coffin one last time as a family and sang a few verses of another song. Alvin Yutzy led us as we sang: “As I dream of a city I have not seen.” And after that, we all headed to the motel. The crowd was bigger than the night before. There was food and feasting. And much noise again. I think they kept it down that night, so no one got kicked out of anywhere. I went to bed a little late. Set the alarm for early. Tomorrow was the day. Tomorrow we would return my father to the earth.

  Sunday. The big day. I got up before six. Cleaned up and shaved and dressed in my black suit. The one I’d gotten married in. I couldn’t get the thing on for years there, back when I was drinking hard. Way too much bloated weight. After eating one meal a day (OMAD) for a few months, I fit right into it again. Well, and after quitting drinking. I buttoned up a clean white shirt. No tie, though. I like to wear a tie to church at home, and to other places where it’s fitting to do so. A lot of ex-Amish won’t wear a tie to an Amish funeral. There’s just something about it. The people at home, your people, they’ll know you’re just showing off if you wear one. Getting a little fancy there, eh? No one would say anything. But they’d think things. And this is one of those rare instances where you don’t do something you otherwise would have, purely out of respect for your hosts. I am free to not wear a tie. That’s how I see it. And that’s how I dressed. Black suit, with folded-back English lapels, of course. White shirt, buttoned to the top. And no tie. I shrugged into my trench coat and walked out front to the lobby, where a good many of my family were flitting about, eating breakfast and making noises to go to a funeral.

  My nephew Ivan Gascho had stopped over in London that morning to pick up my brother Nathan. They were coming to the motel, and Nathan was driving out to the funeral with me. They arrived, and I hugged my brother. Welcome. He spiffed up a bit in my room. It was time to go. We walked outside into about three inches of fresh, fluffy snow. It had come down the night before. And now a chill wind blew. I huddled in my trench coat and buckled the strap across my waist. Nathan and I boarded Amish Black. It was cold, it was wet, and the roads were slick. Thank God, now, for my Jeep. We turned north off the highway to bypass Aylmer and kept pushing east. East, through the community. East, to the funeral.

  We parked and got out and walked in. The winds whipped cold around us. Nathan had invited his old friend Juanita Staken to the funeral to sit with him. She had already arrived. We took our seats with the family. I looked around. The great warehouse was filled with people. Benches and benches and rows of people. The little plywood viewing room had been dismantled, that space was now covered with benches. Over by the eastern wall sat the preachers in a row. Dad’s coffin was there in front of them, covered with a clean white cloth. People filed in and filed in. It seemed like everyone was seated. It was ten minutes before nine. All was silent, and the place was full. And then the first preacher stood to preach.

  It was Simon Wagler, my cousin and Dad’s nephew. The one who drove with Dad past the graveyard, when Dad said he could hear them calling him, the people buried there. The family had picked Simon to have one of the short first sermons. There would be three preachers, two would preach short and one would preach long. There are some politics involved in choosing who gets to preach at an Amish funeral. And that’s about all I got to say about that. Anyway, the family had decided to ask Simon to preach, because he had been so kind to Dad over the years. And the day after Dad passed, I was dispatched to go track Simon down and ask him.

  I’d pulled into his drive sometime around late morning. Someone there told me that Simon had gone over to one of his other farms to drop off some things. I knew where it was, so I headed over. Just a half mile down the road. A truck was parked outside close to the shop. And I heard someone banging around inside, moving things. I walked in. Simon looked over and recognized me. We shook hands. Visited a bit, then got right down to business. I told him then. “I was sent here to ask you a favor. Would you preach at Dad’s funeral? It’ll be the first sermon or the middle.”

  Simon acted very surprised and humble. “Well,” he said. “There are certainly others who could do it better than I could. But if you ask me to, I will be willing to preach.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’s what I needed to know.” We shook hands again, and I left to tell my family, “Simon agreed to preach. I asked him. He said he would.”

  And now he stood, facing the crowd in the large warehouse, hands clasped to his chest. He never was a magical speaker, not golden tongued, like some. But he spoke loud and clear. And he spoke of some of his memories of Uncle Dave. “Now our brother has passed on.” He mentioned the graveyard incident, how Dad had heard the voices calling. Simon was taking Dad somewhere in the buggy, and they passed the Amish graveyard. Dad turned to Simon, tears running down his cheeks. “I can hear them calling me,” he said. “I can hear the voices calling me.” The clock was on the wall just above the preacher’s head, where everyone could see it except the one who was standing and speaking. I felt a little bad for Simon as he stopped and turned his head and craned his neck to check the time. He spoke for around fifteen minutes. Then he shut down abruptly and took his seat.

  Next up was my cousin Kenny Wagler from Daviess. I’d met Kenny and his father, Wally, before. Back a few summers ago. Full-blooded Daviess people, they are. Kenny preached in a loud clear voice for about fifteen minutes or so. He quoted a lot of Old High German hymns and other poems. He craned his neck, too, to look at the clock behind and above him. Every preacher should be able to clearly see some sort of clock. Oh well. These guys all made it through OK. Kenny took his seat then. And the third and final preacher stood and faced the assembled people.

  Sam Schrock had come with a van load from Bloomfield, Iowa, the place we’d moved to when we’d left Aylmer many decades ago. Sam and his family had moved to Bloomfield long after I’d fled the place. From somewhere in Oklahoma, I think. Sam is a bishop there in Bloomfield, one of many. He knew Dad from when my parents still lived there a dozen years or more ago. They were friends. He had many memories of Dad. He spoke in a clear, cutting voice that reached every crevice of the vast warehouse. He preached for a solid hour. That’s a long time for a funeral sermon. I figure the presiding bishop probably told Sam to just go ahead and take his time. Talk for an hour. The thing is, Dad would have approved. He liked long sermons, or claimed to. A trait that bypassed most of his children, I think. It was all good, I guess. There is no testimony after an Amish funeral sermon, except in some odd places like Kalona, Iowa, where the preachers ramble on incessantly. Not in Aylmer. After a final, rather lengthy prayer, Sam wrapped it up sometime around ten thirty. Then the casket was opened for the official viewing. And the people started filing through.

  A preacher stood off to the side and read Scripture aloud in German. And then another preacher read some old German hymns. People filed through by the hundreds. It’s always fascinating to me, how the Amish will bring their young children to a funeral. Death is a part of life. It will come for us all. This is stamped into a child’s mind from earliest memory. And I saw it again here. A father or a mother lifting a young child so the child could see the body. My father, in this case. The little children stared and stared, then moved on with their parents. I’m sure some psychologist somewhere would say this is not healthy for young children, to see death up close like that. It’s how the Amish have always done it. I respect that tradition a lot.

  I never heard an official count. Offhand, I’d guess there were around eight hundred people there. Hundreds more had walked through in the two days of viewings. Old Bloomfield was well represented. The people who had lived in Bloomfield way back when we first moved in. I won’t go naming names, because I’d miss someone. Another time and place, maybe. The family had looked fo
rward to welcoming Mrs. Rachel Graber, Dad’s younger sister and only surviving sibling. She was ninety-four and lived in Kalona, Iowa. At the last moment, the widow Rachel had some sort of spell, and she couldn’t make it. We were of course disappointed. She would have been given a seat of high honor. Had the funeral been in the states, where people didn’t need to hassle with getting over the border and back, I’d guess there would have been a lot more attending. You can’t know for sure. But I’d say there would have been. The lines filed through. And then it was time for the family to get up and see Dad one more time.

  I hadn’t paid any attention to how this would all come down. I know my sister Rachel badly wanted each of Dad’s children, one at a time, from oldest to youngest, to view Dad with their spouse and children. That hadn’t happened at Mom’s funeral. Not sure why. Like I said, I just never concerned myself with any of those matters. I figured me and Nathan could always go up together, or something. Anyway, that’s how they decided to do it. One complete family at a time. Rosemary got to her feet. Joe stood, too. They walked the few steps to the coffin and stood looking down at Dad. And their children and their families came up and surrounded the coffin with their parents. A few families at a time. Joe and Rosemary had a lot of offspring there that day. The most of any in the family. It took some minutes for everyone to circle through. Then Joe and Rosemary sat back down.

  Magdalena and Ray Marner were next. And Janice, who had flown in the night before. Magdalena had whispered to me when we got to our seats, “You and Nathan and Juanita can come up with us. We’re only a few people. So now I stood. Nathan stood, too, then Juanita. Janice came walking from a little way across the aisle. And we all gathered around my father’s coffin. We huddled in a group and held each other close. We looked down on that strong, stern visage, and we all remembered. A minute or two, and we turned and walked back to our seats. Joseph’s family was next. His sons pushed him up in a wheelchair. Then Naomi and Alvin and all their children came. Then Jesse and Lynda and their sons, Ronald and Howard. Then Rachel and Lester and all their sons and daughters. Then Stephen and Wilma and all their children. Then Titus and Ruth with their sons, Robert and Thomas. And then Marvin and Rhoda at the end with their children. It took some time. There were tears, but they were mostly quiet tears. After the last of us was seated, the pallbearers stepped forward. Four of them. Youngish men, in their forties, I’d say. They stood at each corner of the coffin as it was closed. Then they lifted it by hand and carried it past us, out the door to the west.

  We milled around then as the body was placed in a hearse buggy and the procession slowly drove out to the road and headed west. I got in my Jeep and drove south around the block. Then up the main drag west, then back north to the graveyard. I was among the first to get there. I parked Amish Black directly across the road. Just a bit back from even with the gate. And there I sat. It was bitterly, bitterly cold outside. I dug into a pile on the back seat and found a big thick stocking cap. I would take that with me, in case my head got too cold. Other vehicles flowed in then from both directions and parked all around on the side of the road. Huddled in my trench coat, I walked out to the grave and stood there with a few of my brothers and nephews. The hole had been covered overnight to keep the snow out. The men lifted the plywood and the planks and set them aside. We stood, looking down at the rough wooden box that would hold the coffin.

  My brother Jesse and his sons had stopped the day before, when the men were digging the grave by hand with shovels. Jesse and his boys got down and helped dig for a bit. When I stopped a few hours later, the hole was pretty much done. The four Amish men showed me, there at the bottom. Dad’s grave was very close to Mom’s, a mere two feet away, if that. The earth had caved in down at the bottom. The men pointed it out to me. You could easily poke a stick in there and hit the rough box that held Mom’s coffin. Not that anyone did. It never occurred to me that anyone would. Wasn’t tempting at all. Still. That’s how close my parents would rest together in the earth. David L. Wagler and his wife, Ida Mae (Yoder) Wagler.

  And way up north, around the corner, came snaking a long, slow line of buggies. The lead buggy got there eventually and pulled off to the side a little, just outside the gate. The buggy stopped. Some men emerged. One held the horse. The pallbearers came and opened the rear door. They pulled out the coffin. Timothy Stoll, the funeral director, took the two sawhorses from the buggy and led the pallbearers into the yard. About halfway across, they stopped and set the coffin up. There would be one last quick viewing in the bitter December cold.

  The coffin was opened, and people filed through one more time. The last time. They walked by on both sides, so it didn’t take long. And here, I’ll say this: pretty much everything that happened to me on this trip was unplanned. You can’t control events. You just walk. I was sitting in my Jeep across the road, staying warm and watching things. Watching people file past and gather over on the left by the gaping hole in the ground. About then, my nephew Titus Aden Yutzy came strolling by. Rachel and Lester’s second son. A talented auctioneer, he is in high demand in his home area. A good auctioneer is like a good preacher. It’s easy to listen to either one. Titus had flown in late the night before, because there was a wedding back in Kansas in his wife’s family. As soon as he could get away, he hopped a plane to Detroit and drove over. He was determined to see Grandpa Wagler one last time.

  I rolled down my window as he walked up. We chatted. And he kind of grinned at me. “Are you going to put a pen in Grandpa’s hand?” he asked. I just looked at him. It didn’t register for a second, what he was saying. A pen? In Dad’s hand? And it hit me. Yes. What a grand idea. A pen. The writer would be buried holding a pen. Dad’s older sisters would be pleased that it wasn’t a mini-typewriter, or something scandalous like that.

  “You know what?” I said. “That’s a great idea. I have a pen right here.” I had carried it the last two days, along with a little notepad from the Belmont Inn in Abbeville, South Carolina. I had stayed there a few years ago when my nephew Steven Marner and his wife, Evonda, had their wedding reception there in town. It was an artsy little notebook with a plain little artsy pen attached to one side. I had actually taken some notes the last few days, a thing I rarely do. I just knew the event was too huge to try to recall from memory later. Now I had a pen for Dad. “I’m going to do it,” I said to Titus Aden.

  Minutes later, most of the crowd had passed through. A few still lingered. A few more minutes and the hinged cover would be closed forever. The screws would be driven down hard, hard and final. I walked through the gate into the yard. Janice met me there. I told her, “I’m putting this pen in Dad’s hand. Where’s Howard? Is he close?” Janice went to find my nephew and her cousin Howard Wagler. Jesse’s youngest son. He came over with Janice, and the three of us walked across the trampled snow up to where my father lay. We stood around close. No one seemed to notice. I reached down and slipped the pen into Dad’s hand. I thought about it as we were turning away. It’s in his left hand. That’s the wrong one.

  The crowd ebbed and flowed past the coffin. I kept thinking about that pen I had stuck in Dad’s left hand. And I watched for my chance, waiting until no one was close. Then I walked up alone and picked up the pen and placed it carefully in Dad’s hand again. The right hand this time. It seemed like the right thing to do. Either one would have been OK, I learned later. Dad was born left-handed. He was forced to use his right hand, trained that way as a small child. That was probably a brutal thing for him. I didn’t remember knowing that before.

  Timothy Stoll stepped up to close the cover. I watched intently from nearby, just to make sure nobody snuck that pen out of there. A last glance at my father’s face, and then the door was firmly shut on Dad’s dark new house. The screws were turned by hand and driven in tight and hard. It was almost anticlimactic. I had seen and felt so many things so intensely that this moment seemed surreal. The family hovered around the open grave. Outside the fence, a large van had pulled up close an
d parked. Titus sat in the passenger seat and watched from the warmth.

  The pallbearers approached. The four men who had carried Dad out from the service. They now picked him up with crossed boards and carried him over to the open grave. They set the coffin above the hole on those boards and placed their straps under. They lifted ever so gently, the boards were removed, and down, down into the earth went the wooden box that held my father. Back came the straps, and down went the lid of the rough box the coffin was placed in. I waited for two of the men to step down into the hole, on the box. They always hand down the first shovels of earth and gently place it all around. It didn’t happen. First time I saw that at an Aylmer funeral. The men took shovels and threw in the dirt from the top. Gently at first, until the box was covered. Then they shoveled hard. And then the family stepped in to help.

  It was random and relaxed. I took a turn, then Stephen and Jesse did, too. And a bunch of the nephews and nieces. Some of my sisters stepped up, too. And we got Dad settled into his dark new house, where the winds are always silent (paraphrasing Thomas Wolfe, there). After the grave was filled, Bishop Peter Stoll spoke briefly in a great booming voice. That man can sure preach. He spoke loudly and solidly and clearly for five minutes or more. The crowd drifted away then. We stood around and sang some songs, the family and a few others. The old hymns that Dad loved. We sang them to him for the last time.

  After the last person had walked out of the graveyard, my brother Jesse stood by the gate. He swung it shut and wrapped the chain around the post and latched it back. A symbolic gesture from one of my father’s sons, the oldest son who was physically able. The gate had closed. It was the end of an era.

  We all returned to the big warehouse, where a noon meal was served. I sipped black coffee and mingled. And I couldn’t help thinking about it. The Aylmer Amish community came through. They were weighed, the people there, and not found wanting. They sure know how to host a large funeral in that place. They also know how to offer hospitality. I thank every single person involved. All the cooks, the people behind the scenes, the pallbearers, and the preachers who preached. It was a big deal to get my father buried.