Death and Religion on the Mountain
Death is such a mysterious thing, regardless of what you may or may not believe. Being married to a minister, I have witnessed the moment of death many times. There is that transforming second when the body becomes an empty tent, and it is so obvious that the living spirit is gone. We saw death in many forms on the mountain. Sometimes we came across dead animal carcasses in the woods or pasture. Pigs and chickens were killed to be eaten. Baby calves sometimes died, as did little kittens or puppies when they were born. The shells of dead insects were abundant. Unlike children today, who have a steady diet of death and violence on television, in video games, and in movies, we had little real exposure to the realities of human death. In our world people died and went to heaven to be with Jesus. We were sheltered from the suffering and grief that so often accompany death.
Winford Scott Bullock, Grandma Pound’s brother, was probably the first dead person I ever actually saw. I was only about six or seven when Uncle Scott died, and I went with my mother and grandmother to his funeral in Dover, Arkansas. Uncle Scott’s casket was in the living room of their home, and the funeral was held there with another service at the cemetery afterward. I remember playing outside with other children most of the time and being inside the living room where the open casket was for only a brief moment. That brief moment made a huge impression on me, and I became aware of the physical reality of death for the first time. My older cousins discovered a song that really bothered me. Singing it was payback for all my tattling. It went something like this:
“Now don’t you laugh when the hearse goes by cause you may be the next to die.
They’ll wrap you up in a big white sheet and drop you down about fifty feet.
Then, the worms eat in the worms eat out; the worms play pinochle on your snout.
They drink the snot inside your nose and eat the gooey between your toes.”
I think a curiosity about death and what happens to us after death created in me an interest in religious ideas. The farm was a perfect place to be exposed to all ideas religious. My mother took us to the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Alma. Little hell, fire, and brimstone was talked about there, just God’s great mercy, grace, and love. Having adopted the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ beliefs concerning prophecy, Grandma Pound talked a lot about Jesus returning. She told me she was so old that she would not be alive when it happened, but I might be. We figured out that I would be fifty-two in the year 2000 when they believed he would return. I really liked the idea of living until he returned and not having to die first, (I was afraid of those worms in that song) but fifty-two sounded really old to me then. Grandpa talked a little bit more about that place called hell where fire burns forever and forever. He had definite beliefs about how saved people were supposed to act. It didn’t include short shorts, rock and roll music, movie stars, or disobedience to parents, or any adult for that matter. Then, there were all our neighbors who attended the Mountain Grove Missionary Baptist Church on down the road. They were constantly asking us to attend services or come to vacation Bible school. Every service, even Bible school, ended with a call for repentant sinners to come forward and be saved before it was everlastingly too late. I was acutely aware that it was very easy to slip into the fires of hell if you did not mind your Ps and Qs.
Whenever there were visitors at the farm, it was not uncommon for lively religious discussions to take place around my grandma’s kitchen table. My Uncle Bob loved to argue with my Aunt Audra who was a firm believer in the necessity of baptism for salvation. She was not sure that any Baptist who didn’t think baptism was as necessary as faith was going to make it to heaven. Aunt Eliza was a Cumberland Presbyterian and firmly believed that no decent person did any work on Sunday. Whenever she was visiting, we always got Sunday dinner ready the day before. Uncle Wib and Aunt Speed were Jehovah’s Witnesses and careful to keep their religious discussions with Grandma Pound away from Grandpa Pound. He was never accepting of Grandma’s conversion from Primitive Baptist to Jehovah’s Witness. There were several varieties of Baptists from Missionary to Freewill. Uncle Pat and Uncle Glen were more open-minded and tended to be more pragmatic. They never argued for any particular doctrine. It was a long time before I was able to bring all these ideas together in my own head and learn to live by my own faith, but I know what a blessing it was to grow up around people who believed it was important to seek out the truth of God.
The amazing thing was it all happened in a good-natured manner. I don’t ever remember anyone getting angry or offended. For a Primitive Baptist, a Presbyterian, and a Jehovah’s Witness to live together in the same house and still love and respect each other seems nearly miraculous to me. I once asked my mother why we never had a Christmas tree. She told me it was because Christmas trees were against Grandma Pound’s beliefs, and we could enjoy the Christmas tree at the Presbyterian church all the more.
“We don’t do things that offend the people we love,” she said. I think that simple statement was the key to all the happy living that took place on my grandparents’ farm. It was all about the love everyone had for each other.