During the cold, gray days, I thought more and more about her calling. I remembered the night when I went with Aunt Flo to the Paulsons’ and how my opinion of laying out the dead had changed since then. I was afraid to ask the question that burned inside me. It took me a good part of the winter to get up the nerve.
I finally posed the question on a dreary day as I sat near the stove and practiced knitting, with one long line of white yarn stretching down to the floor by my feet. Aunt Flo stood nearby, mixing a batch of biscuits on the table, her thick hands pushing the flour into the mix.
“How does a person know if she should be a shrouding woman?” I asked.
“I don’t really know,” she replied. “I followed in my mother’s footsteps. It seemed the natural thing to do.” Aunt Flo looked down at my stitches. “They need to be closer together,” she advised me.
“How did you decide that you were that type of person?” I asked as I accidentally dropped a stitch off my needle.
“It is something you know as you grow older.”
“But what if you are mistaken?”
“You will know that, also, with time.” She stopped mixing the biscuits and looked at me with curious eyes. “Why do you ask so many questions about it?”
“I want to learn.”
“There is only one way to learn.” She leaned over. “I am in need of an assistant.”
“Oh, no. Not me.” I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure I could do it,” I admitted.
She glanced sideways at me, a half smile on her lips. “I think otherwise.” She reached up and brushed a hair from her face with her floury hand. “You consider it awhile. You will certainly have all your questions answered that way.”
I mulled over her offer. Aunt Flo didn’t give false praise. If she said that I could do it, then she honestly felt that way. If I helped her, I would certainly learn more about shrouding.
After a week of pondering back and forth like a seesaw, I decided to satisfy my curiosity.
“I’m ready to become your assistant,” I announced to her after dinner.
“You must watch first,” she said. “Watch and learn. Then you can help.” She sighed. “God willing, I won’t be called this winter.”
But less than a week later, a young Scot came to fetch her. His father had fallen through the ice on their pond. I accompanied Aunt Flo to the shrouding and watched, staying out of the way while she worked her simple magic.
In the middle of January, Aunt Flo was called to another shrouding, and this time she allowed me to assist her a bit from the side. In a cradle I saw a baby boy who looked like a little doll, with a porcelain face and long lashes. I didn’t dread looking upon him, though. I handed Aunt Flo her coins, mixed the herbs and spices into the water, and gave her the delicate lacetrimmed gown to dress the baby. The baby’s mother held the small bundle one more time before he was laid into a miniature coffin.
Two weeks later an old woman died. Her small, shriveled body looked to be near a hundred years old. I recited Scripture from the Bible as the woman’s relatives crowded around the small cabin. This pleased many of the folks who couldn’t read. I saw the comfort it gave them as they bowed their heads, a calm look coming upon their faces. Aunt Flo said that I had a natural compassion, something that couldn’t be taught.
Maybe I do have a talent, I thought.
I watched Aunt Flo carefully, noting how she put a smattering of rose petal dust on the woman’s cheeks and her forehead. I studied her moves as she folded the hands in a certain way and set the sticks at a specific spot under her chin.
Papa made Aunt Flo a “cooling-down board” to lay the bodies on while she prepared them for burial, but it wasn’t long enough for tall people. The fourth shrouding I attended was for a tall German farmer. His relatives had to take down a door to use in place of the board.
Aunt Flo started to make a name for herself. It wasn’t just the townsfolk and neighbors who visited. People from all over the county called upon her to do the shrouding duties. Sometimes they paid her with food or small gifts, but mostly Aunt Flo refused payment. She said her work was a gift from God and therefore should be offered up to God. I now understood what Edward meant when he said that it was a fine talent.
By the following March, I was a few months shy of twelve and Papa noticed a change in me.
“You are growing into a young woman,” he commented as he polished his boots and nailed a loose heel back into place. This was the second time the heel had come loose and Papa had returned from the barn with wet feet.
“Your mama would be proud of you for helping Aunt Flo and especially for all your work in the garden.”
I nodded and looked out the window at the snowcovered garden.
“This year the garden will be different,” I told Papa.
He looked up from his polishing. “How’s that?”
“I don’t think Mama wants me to work it alone. There’s more than one person can handle.”
“Oh, yes,” he replied, and a faint smile crossed his lips.
A New Shrouding Woman
With the spring rains came a new beginning.
“Aunt Flo, hurry,” I said as I rushed her outside one sunny morning. “I have something to show you.”
“What is it?” she asked, her voice expecting the worst.
I took her arm and guided her to the spot. There, on the large shriveled corn plant left from last year’s crop, I had tied a pink ribbon.
“What is this?” Aunt Flo raised her eyebrows, a look of bewilderment on her face.
“It’s a gift for you.”
“You’re giving me your garden?” Aunt Flo stared at me for a long second, then her eyes became misty. “This is the garden your mother gave you. You cannot give it away.”
“I want to give it to you.”
She shook her head. “But why?”
“So that I can help you with it like I helped Mama.”
Aunt Flo embraced me tightly. I hugged her back. Aunt Flo wasn’t the same as Mama, but she didn’t try to be. I knew that Papa missed Mama. Maybe Papa didn’t need Aunt Flo just to take care of us. Maybe he needed her to take care of him for a while, too.
That thought seemed to grow on me until I was certain of it. Even though Papa was still sad, he wasn’t as sad as before. He started each day with a smile on his face, and I heard the rocking chair less often at night.
In a few weeks’ time, Aunt Flo and Mae and I decided to plant a huge garden. We tilled additional land and mixed manure into the soil. We separated the flower seeds that we had dried out last fall to form a border. The ground cherries were already sprouting amid the wet, cold soil. Aunt Flo and I created a special herb section where we would grow shrouding and medicinal plants like onion, thyme, basil, chamomile, and germander, as well as lily of the valley for color and dye. We would raise flax to spin into linen for our petticoats. Papa put in a cottonwood tree off to the side.
Mae and I mapped out just how our garden would look. We scouted out flat white rocks to use for a walkway. Papa made a small wooden bench to set in the middle. We even planted scores of lilies in memory of Mama. I couldn’t help but think that it would be the greatest garden in the county. Papa said it was a work of art.
The prairie created its own garden with a canvas of tall green grasses and colorful wildflowers like the black-eyed Susan, whose dark center peeks out from its bright yellow petals.
I had come home from school, eager to gather a bouquet of scented flowers, when I saw Papa waiting for me with the horses hitched to the wagon.
“Aunt Flo left to do a shrouding on the other side of the county this morning, and she won’t be back for another day and a half,” he announced. “But a child died of pneumonia while traveling with her family. They would like someone to prepare her for burial even though they won’t have much time, as they still have a long travel ahead of them.” He paused and looked at me.
Papa cleared his thr
oat before he spoke again. “I told them you would do it, Evie.”
“But I’m not a shrouding woman,” I objected. “I just help Aunt Flo.”
“If you don’t do it, who will?” Papa asked.
I hesitated. “You said it is a girl?”
Papa nodded. “About three years old.”
I turned and went inside to find some of Aunt Flo’s ointments and powders, a brush and some coins, all of which I rolled into a handkerchief. I grabbed my Bible. Then I left with Papa.
Several miles south of town we spotted two dusty wagons packed full of furniture and provisions. At the side of the wagons a man, a woman, and three small children were gathered around a figure laid out on a blanket. The children were clinging to their mother’s skirt as she wept above them. The man’s face held a look of shock and remorse, as if he had failed to keep his daughter safe. I glanced down at the child. Her hair was blond and her features fair.
My throat tightened and a sudden fear crept upward. I was too young to do this.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Mary Elizabeth,” the woman answered.
I took the mother’s hand. “What dress would you like her to be buried in?” I asked her gently.
Tears filled her eyes. “Her favorite is a white frock I made last Christmas. I’ll get it.”
She fetched the frock, and the family left me to tend to my duties. I unwrapped the handkerchief and carefully took out each item. There wasn’t time to wash the child’s hair, so I took a damp cloth and sponged her face. “She has brown eyes like me,” I said as I fought back my own tears. “Aunt Flo, why aren’t you here?”
I struggled as I thought of Mary Elizabeth’s family, who were counting on me to help them through this time.
I concentrated on what I had learned and tried to imagine Aunt Flo close by. I removed Mary Elizabeth’s gown and put on her dress. I brushed out her tangled hair. Then I used my fingers to apply powder to her skin, rubbing it in as naturally as I could. I closed her eyes and placed a coin on each one. I took the ointments and smoothed an especially fragrant one around her neck, using a forked twig to prop up her small face. When I was finished, I looked down at her. I didn’t fight the tears that filled my eyes.
“She deserved better than this,” I quietly cried. “She should have had an experienced woman lay her out instead of me.”
I opened my Bible and recited several verses for the family before they buried the child under a maple tree next to the road. Then they marked her grave with a wooden cross that had her name and birth date.
Before they left, Mary Elizabeth’s mother took out a small shell on a dainty chain. “Mary Elizabeth picked this up on the beach along the Atlantic shore. I know that she would like you to have it,” she said as she placed the shell in my hand. “We will remember your kindness always. Thank you.”
The Tradition
Sunday, after service, we visited the cemetery where Mama was buried. Papa picked out the long grass crowding up from the edge of the stone cross that marked her grave. Mae sprinkled timothy clover around the sides. Aunt Flo read a Scripture passage from the Bible.
“I miss you, Mama,” I whispered, bowing my head. I knelt down to place a bouquet of lilies on her grave. When I looked up and squinted into the sun, there, in the distance, was an animal staring at me from the shadows of a tall pine. It looked like a fox. And I could have sworn I saw a white tip on its ear.
Several months later I sat alone on the bench in the middle of our garden. It was a quiet time in the late afternoon. Mae was asleep under the cottonwood tree, and Aunt Flo was busy in the kitchen. Papa was out in the fields. I was surrounded by the scent of herbs combined with Mama’s lilies.
It had been a year since Aunt Flo came into our lives, just a little more than a year since Mama died. I looked up and saw Mama’s image, hazy in the afternoon sun, bending over the cabbage, her bonnet catching the light just so. I rubbed my eyes and realized it was a tree branch catching the shadows and playing tricks on me. Her bonnet was the foxglove and purple verbena bending in the breeze. But Mama was here. I could feel her presence just as I could feel the wind on my face. She was part of this garden, just like Aunt Flo was now part of the garden and Mae and Papa and me, too.
I fingered the shell that I wore; I hadn’t taken it off since Mary Elizabeth’s mother gave it to me. As I sat there, I realized how much shrouding was like gardening, each offering a bit of peace for the living and the dead. Mama said the earth brings forth life. Aunt Flo said the earth takes back life. Both of them were right.
The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth, The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.
—EMILY DICKINSON
Author’s Note
My great-grandmother grew up near the Crooked Creek Valley in Saratoga, Minnesota. “Little Grandma” often told stories of her large family, of getting a whipping when she wandered too far from home, and of the death of her five-year-old daughter. The greatest discovery in my research was the diary of my great-great-grandmother Rachel Cornelius, whose record of daily life in Caledonia in the 1870s helped me understand the everyday concerns that Evie would have faced.
The Crooked Creek Valley attracted pioneers from Scotland, Germany, and Norway. The rich area provided an abundance of wild turkey and fish. Blueberries and raspberries were plentiful in the summer. The people of Caledonia took pride in the fact that their town was progressive and had been founded five years before Minnesota became a state.
The Minnesota Farmer’s Diaries and the journal of pioneer Dave Wood helped me understand the difficult life of a farmer and his dependence on weather. But those journals also recount that pioneers still found time for pleasure and church, and I wanted Evie’s story to reflect that as well.
I first read about shrouding women while sitting in a hospital room as my son recovered from surgery. At the time, I was somewhat shocked by the idea, but I was equally fascinated. While not much is written about the tradition, it is mentioned in many prairie journals and appeared to be a common practice.
Up until the late 1800s, when a person died, people called upon a “shrouding woman” or “layer out of the dead” to prepare the body for burial (or if a shrouder wasn’t available, a kind female neighbor offered the service). Most often a casket was built by a family member. There were no funeral homes or undertakers, so providing for the dead was a part of everyday life for the pioneers.
Viewing of the body took place at home in the parlor. Families didn’t leave the dead unattended because of superstition, rats and other animals, and the slight hope that the deceased would come back to life. Occasionally a person would start breathing again before burial. This was rare but caused some mourners to tie a string around the finger of the deceased that connected to a bell aboveground, in case of premature burial.
The word shrouding comes from shroud, a cloth wrapped around a body for burial in ancient times. The custom of women preparing bodies for burial can be traced back to the time of Jesus. The art of laying out the dead was passed down from one generation to the next. Most shrouding women were not paid but were treated as honored members of the community for performing this “last sacred duty to the dead.”
Georgeanne Rundblad, professor of sociology at Illinois Wesleyan University, studied the tradition of shrouding and shared her findings with me. Many women, like Martha Ballard who lived in New England in the late 1700s, combined their laying-out duties with those of a midwife. Other women, like Willie Mae Cartwright’s mother who lived in the South in the late 1800s, were a select few who performed only the tasks of shrouding. Like Evie, young Willie Mae accompanied her mother on several occasions and served as an assistant. Girls also took on the duty of sewing mourning pictures of family members who had died, much like Evie’s needlework
memorial.
During the Civil War, the technology of embalming was developed, and funeral preparation turned into a profitable business. In a field that was once dominated by women, laying out of the dead quickly became a male occupation, and women were suddenly seen as frail and not fit for this line of work; however, the rural parts of the country still continued the ritual for many years. The Shrouding Woman gives voice to a rich tradition that has been overlooked in this century, a tradition whose place in history is significant.
Henry Holt is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Text copyright © 2002 by Loretta Ellsworth. All rights reserved.
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Publishers since 1866
115 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011
www.henryholt.com
eISBN 9781429932462
First eBook Edition : June 2011
Illustrations copyright © 2002 by Gabi Swiatkowska
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellsworth, Loretta. The shrouding woman / Loretta Ellsworth. p. cm. Summary: When her aunt Flo comes to help care for eleven-year-old Evie and her younger sister after their mother’s death, Evie wants nothing to do with her and she is especially uncomfortable with her aunt’s calling to help prepare bodies for burial.
[1. Aunts—Fiction 2. Death—Fiction 3. Frontier and pioneer life—
Minnesota—Fiction. 4. Minnesota—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.E4783 Sh 2002 [Fic]—dc21 2001039930
ISBN 0-8050-6651-9 / EAN 978-0-8050-6651-7
First Edition—2002 / Designed by Donna Mark
The Shrouding Woman Page 7
