Bringing their mother home to be buried on family land was the easy part. Together, they had to figure out the what, when, where, and how.
Words by Laurelyn Dossett
Photos by Molly McGinn and J. Scott Hinkle
My mother died on a bright Tuesday afternoon in August 2021. My three brothers and I brought her body home in the Prius and buried her behind the vegetable garden. My car, the gravesite clay, the tomatoes, the rims of our eyes — all red.
Our queen Lola Weldine, our lady of gumbo and chocolate pie, lived 80 full years. We were saddened by her leaving, but also glad that her suffering was over. Her 18 months in assisted living coincided with both the global pandemic and her personal struggle with Parkinson’s. We had not been able to care for her in person — so when she died, all we wanted was to bring her home.
I live on 40 acres in rural Stokes County, North Carolina. My three brothers, John, Bill and Jim, had come in from around the country to take turns sitting with mom during her last week. They quickly got on board with my idealistic suggestion of burying mom on my property, but they had reasonable questions about legality and logistics. If they also questioned my sanity, they didn’t show it.
I had known for some time that mom’s death would be coming sooner rather than later, and I had done my homework. There is nothing in North Carolina state statutes prohibiting home burial. The Stokes County Health Department sent me an email stating that no permit was needed and there was no minimum acreage requirement, but that the grave needed to be 15 feet from the septic tank, 50 feet from the well, and 10 feet from the property line. I think we would have figured out those bits about the well and the septic tank, but it was good and concise information, nonetheless. It was looking like bringing Mama home and burying her was not going to be illegal, as good a story as that might have been later.
The logistics of the burial were another matter. An early question was, “What do we bury her in?” The county had no opinion on this, either. I suggested wrapping her in only silk fabric or a quilt and laying her in the ground. But Bill adamantly replied, “It has to be a box.” I should have known that. Our father built fine furniture and had taught each of his sons his wooden art. There could be no better project for my brothers to do together than to build this vessel for our mother. Of course, I had all of the necessary tools, being my father’s daughter, but didn’t have any suitable lumber on hand.
When you think of neighbors helping during a family loss, you think of chicken casseroles and chocolate cakes. Not my neighbors. Wendi and Mark came by and insisted that I call if we needed anything at all. I am sure they meant to offer groceries or run errands, but they didn’t miss a beat when I asked them, “So … do you have any spare lumber lying around? My brothers are going to build mom a casket.” They offered us beautiful oak fence boards, heavy and brown with age. After they were deemed perfect, my brothers set about designing and building mom’s casket that very day.
Then there was the question of where exactly to dig the grave. My property is near Hanging Rock and Moore’s Wall, beautiful exposed granite rising up out of the green foothills of North Carolina near the Virginia line. That same granite sits not far beneath the surface of my land, except for this one particular spot where I also have a vegetable garden. Mom was an avid gardener, and this spot also overlooks a mountainside of mature oak and beech with an understory of mountain laurel and rhododendron. We decided this would be a fitting resting place, and we would be unlikely to hit solid granite.
Casket and gravesite solved, there remained the question of how to dig the grave. My brothers had some experience with this since they had helped dig the graves of our rural Alabama grandparents many years before. Depth of the grave was also unspecified by the county, and we were aware of the common “6 feet under” reference, so 6 feet it would be. John said we needed shovels with longer handles. My neighbor and handyman, Clifford, agreed. He was also on standby with his backhoe if we ran into a renegade boulder. He gave us more sage advice. “Dig it deep enough but not deeper than it needs to be. And don’t dig before it’s time.” So, we waited.
There was one last logistical problem to consider. We didn’t know how long the digging would take. And it was August in North Carolina. I spent a restless night obsessing over how we would keep her body cool between the time she died and the moment we laid her in the ground. My worry was for naught. We had a big rain on Sunday; the ground softened.
Death comes so slowly, and then it comes so fast.
The Tuesday morning of her death, Jim was with Mom. I rose with Joni Mitchell’s “Sweet Bird” looping in my brain. We made grits and eggs and later went down to the creek to see if Sunday’s rain had left us any chanterelles. It had. While we walked and talked and foraged with our Aunt Ellen, two hospice aides — or were they angels? — bathed Mom, brushed her hair, and sang to her, with Jim’s tender help.
I am a singer. I sing for strangers for a living. I also sing for friends and family, and I have often sung at the bedside of the dying. It’s not an easy job, but I have witnessed the peace it brings, the easing of the dying one’s breath, the connection-without-speaking. I have watched a dying woman swim back from across the River Jordan to say goodbye to her family. I was prepared to sing my mother over to the other side, but it would not be so. Every time I started to sing, she got agitated. My mother had been my biggest fan, but now my voice only made things worse. Her mind was addled with the Parkinson’s and the pain. Hers was an unquiet death, marked by periodic writhing, stiff contortions, and crying out. Not even morphine completely comforted her. But that Tuesday morning with my brother Jim, after the bathing, the singing, the anointing, she was finally calm.
When I arrived after lunch to relieve Jim, he headed to Tuttle Hardware to buy the shovels John had ordered up. A few minutes later Mom’s head pulled forward, she gasped, and I, afraid her pain had returned, rang for an aide. I sat on her bed telling her everything would be all right. A few more gasps and she was gone. Her color left. Her breath left. Her pain left.
I called my brothers and they arrived within the hour, as did the hospice nurse to declare her death. Then we did as we had planned with the staff — we rolled her bed down the hall to the front door, lifted her, wrapped in sheets, onto a soft pile of blankets in the back of my car, and drove her home. We didn’t plan for this to happen during the weekly gospel sing in the assisted living lounge. Mama got a karaoke angel band to sing her out the door. It was hilarious and perfect.
I have driven my mother to a thousand appointments and shopping trips. Driving her home in my Prius didn’t feel much different, but I was glad John was with me. For some reason, I drove pretty slow, like I didn’t want to jostle her. We pulled the car into the barn next to her beautiful casket and waited a few minutes for the rest of the family to gather from around the property. We lined the casket with a red silk blanket — the color my mother always wore. She was regal. She was a queen. We carefully laid her in the casket and wrapped her up. Then, we all went to the gardens and brought back a bit of everything growing there. Verdant August in North Carolina: sunflowers, sage, passionflower, cotton, hibiscus, rosemary, basil. We covered her in red silk and flowers. Again, we took turns sitting with her in the barn. Ellen played Mavis Staples and Emmylou and the digging began. You don’t dig until it’s time.
It took about three hours. It took snacks and beer. It took all of us taking turns. There was one renegade granite boulder, but it was not too big for my brothers to manage. Jim walked up to the barn and rechecked the measurements of the casket. Dig it deep enough but not deeper than it needs to be.
Someone mused that it didn’t make sense to clean ourselves up before we placed her in the ground. We were going to have to cover her up as soon as we were done, so we didn’t. Our funeral finery was aprons, denim, and work boots covered in red clay. We took turns hammering the top boards over her aromatic flowers and crimson wrap. As the sun began to set, we put her in the back of the truck and rolled down the hill to the garden. We carried her to the grave, placed the casket on cross boards, and lowered her down with ropes.
Some of us spoke and some did not. There was no preacher. There was no funeral director. It was just Mom, her children and grandchildren, her sister-in-law, and a few close family friends. There was nothing between her and us. We took turns returning the dirt to the hole. That didn’t take as long as the digging. My sister-in-law, who had been cooking all day, and my daughters and niece got dinner together, and my brothers and I went down to Big Creek. We washed away the red clay. We washed away our tears.
I don’t know if we will mark her grave permanently. John planted two dogwoods, and that renegade granite boulder sits at her feet. I have a new understanding of grave-tending — it is not simply decorative wreaths and flowers. Time and a few heavy rains went by and I had to add dirt to the grave as it settled. If she were to have a headstone, it would have to be big enough to hold these truths. She loved us all very much. She was a dear friend to many. She loved to cook for people and make them feel welcomed. She loved animals and birds and flowers. She loved books and music. She loved old houses. She really, really loved Jesus.
In the months since we buried our mother, we have talked about how fortunate we siblings are to have each other, and how lucky we are that all four of us were on board for this unusual family project. We were finally able to care for her at home, cooking, building, creating, gardening, outside, together. With our hearts and with our hands.
Laurelyn Dossett is a singer-songwriter who lives and writes in Stokes County, North Carolina. Her songs have been featured in the film “Ain’t in it for My Health” and the series “Hell on Wheels,” among others, and have been recorded by many artists, including Grammy winners Levon Helm (“Anna Lee”) and Rhiannon Giddens (“Leaving Eden”). She has written the music for seven plays that appeared at the Triad Stage and the PlayMakers Repertory Company. As an activist, she has written songs for various protest movements and remains a voice for social justice and environmental activism in North Carolina and beyond. She has taught songwriting and singing at the Augusta Heritage Center, as well as at many universities, workshops, and festivals.
More from The Bitter Southerner
