On Sunday afternoon, on the 3rd of March, 2013, my grandfather passed away in Tyler, Texas. His name is Ernest Edwin Atkinson, though we all call him Boppa. He had fallen last winter, and his Osteoporosis and the fall had taken its toll. When he died, we were waiting; he had been suffering for some time, and had not walked since Christmas.
I was at my apartment in Austin, waiting. I had gone home from work early, in hopes of heading up to east Texas. I had told myself that I would go see him and my family soon, but due to scheduling I couldn’t be gone too long, so I had yet to leave. I was playing a computer game, distracted, and in the back of my mind, I was just waiting for that phone call. When someone is going to die, particularly someone who has been suffering, you’ll find yourself holding your breath. So I let out a sigh when I got the call, and cried with my mother and grandmother over the phone as they told me the news.
My girlfriend, Lauren, came over to my place that evening, and even though we are both on a diet, we had consolation-pizza and cookies, and went for a walk. The air was clear and cold that night. Even though I had cried when my mother called and told me about Boppa passing, I didn’t really feel sad yet, not really. There was, and still is, a distance between what I know in my head and what I feel in my heart.
In the back of my mind, I was thinking about my grandfather’s machete. When I was a child, I would always want to play with it; he got his machete while doing mission-work in Costa Rica, and it fascinated me. I wanted to swing it about, to pretend to be someone else, somewhere else, on an adventure. He would tell me, “When I die you can have it, but you’ll have to fight Jim for it,” or something similar. But now that he’d actually passed, I just wanted to put it up on my wall, to remember him by.
Monday started out with prep for the trip. I met with my brother Jim afterward, and we unsuccessfully clothing-shopped for the funeral. Then we picked up Lauren from her apartment, and decided to have lunch at my cafe, Cafe Java, before we left. We arrived in Whitehouse, Texas, well after dark; the trip up was filled with the usual deep and theoretical conversation that Jim and I usually get into. Lauren listened, and slept, in the back seat. We weren’t sad or distant; we were normal, as if it were any other road trip.
I found my family to be as tired as I felt, yet everyone was calm, relieved even. Very few tears were shed, and there was plenty of hugging, laughing, talking, and planning. On Tuesday, after lunch, we went through some of Boppa’s belongings. Meema seemed to want to get rid of, or give to us, as much of his things as she could. We were obliging, and personally I wanted something to remember him by, thinking about my machete. Jim and I personally took a collection of books--all theological texts--and I took an old thermos, two scarves, an old wallet, and a gold watch that he had worn for a short time.
While we were looking, I mentioned Boppa’s old machete, feeling childish and silly as I did so; my family responded with sympathy, however, and helped me look for it. We searched the garage, the study, the bedroom, and all the closets. Nothing turned up. My mom thought that perhaps he had given it to Baylor University’s public archives, like he had done with some of our old family photos--something he was prone to do, to his family’s chagrin--and my aunt Elena said he probably just got rid of it, thinking it dangerous. Either way, there was no machete. Later, after shopping, I went home feeling uneasy, feeling even more childish than when I asked for the machete. Simple expectations can yield simple disappointment, unfettered by wisdom or understanding.
That night I talked with my father--who was going to lead the funeral services, as I expected--and I shared with him a passage written by Henri Nouwen that I believed Boppa would have appreciated--Nouwen was one of his favorite authors. The passage was about celebrating life, and death, and about how they’re intrinsically interconnected. I was too shy to ask, but my dad beat me to it: he suggested I read the passage at Boppa’s funeral the next day, and I agreed to do so. I thought it would be fitting, and I wanted the responsibility, wanted to be a little more like my family, like my grandfather.
Boppa was a man of incredible intellect and drive, yet he sought a spartan life, admiring monks and scholars most. I have always looked up to him for that, though I myself don’t crave solitude and simplicity enough to pursue them outright. But we all know Boppa for his faith and his eccentricities, of which he had many. Even now I feel like I am who I am because of who he was, and if Boppa taught me anything, it’s not to be afraid to be a little weird, and to never stop learning. As Boppa himself put it in an oral history interview he did for Baylor University in 2000, “I’ve been a student all my life.”
The funeral was in Ennis, where my grandparents had lived for a time and purchased plots there in Myrtle Cemetery. The family caravaned there from East Texas. Lauren and I dressed in our funeral best and drove the two hours to Ennis. Friends and well-wishers met with us at Keever Mortuary; I met a few of my grandparents’ friends for the first and perhaps last time there, and we all spent part of an hour sharing and mingling. Boppa’s casket was open, and he looked better now than he did when he was alive. It feels, in some way, like we were all having our introductions and conversations right there with him, as if he was just listening in, as he often did. When it was time, we headed to the cemetery.
For the first time in my life, and completely unscheduled, I was a pallbearer. My brother and I and a few others carried Boppa to his grave. When everyone assembled, there were only about twenty or so of us, and the graveside service was short. The wind was chilling, but the sun was warm. Afterward someone rhetorically asked why it was always so windy and cold at funerals, and I said, “because there are no trees around to block the wind.” I’m pretty sure I’m right about that, and that the biting cold has nothing to do with how we feel when we lose someone.
My uncle Benny, Elena’s husband, spoke well, and so did my father. I have spent my life watching my family--my father, several of my uncles, my mother, even my brother--speak well in public. I am the youngest in my family, and when I got up to read my Nouwen passage, I felt like it. My voice was small and shaking, my emotions suddenly high, and I couldn’t even get through all two pages of it, though I was aware enough to at least skip the middle and read the closing. When I was through, and my father was through, my cousin Elizabeth closed out the funeral by leading us all in singing Amazing Grace.
Then there was food at Tabernacle Baptist. Everyone was ready for it. In my passage that I partially read at the funeral, Nouwen talks of celebrating death. It sounds morbid, unless you’re there, or you’ve experienced it. But that’s what we were doing: celebrating. The conversation was happy, not awkward, and the coffee was perfect. We all spoke of memories and good times. The ham was sweet, the mood calm, and the dessert wonderful. We had thrown a little party in Boppa’s name, and I think he would have approved.
When we finally left the church, where we had been graciously fed, we all parted ways. We hugged, we smiled, we thanked one another, and we did not cry. I promised to my grandmother Meema that I’d be down to see her soon, and it wasn’t an empty promise. Before Lauren and I left Ennis for Austin, we went with Jim and his wife Emma to go by and see our grandparents’ old house. It was nothing like we remembered. Someone remarked that things always seem larger, farther apart, when we look back on them as adults. Nothing could be more true, as we navigated the narrow roads of the crowded suburban neighborhood.
Lauren and I had a pleasant drive home alone, stopping for both ice cream at Braum’s and pastries at the Czech Stop. There went our diets for the week. But life gives you time enough to stop and taste the roses, as it were. I will always remember my grandfather, for many reasons, least of which was his love for the simple things like food, friends, conversation, and family.
We got a little lost driving back, as we sped down dusty roads and crept through tiny central Texas towns. When I realized I was lost, I smiled, and Lauren googled a route home. I felt alive then, unafraid of the unknown. I was happy to have been with my family, and now I was happy to be lost with my love. It felt then like the start of something new, and it feels now like I have an example to live by. I will travel, I will finish my education--though I will never stop learning--and I will learn to live a life worth celebrating when I’m gone.
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Below is a link to the oral history interview my grandfather participated in, and below that is a re-posting of his obituary from the Ennis Daily News for the sake of posterity.
Oral History Interview:
http://contentdm.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/buioh/id/2040/rec/8
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"Ernest Edwin Atkinson, 89, passed from this life to his new home in Heaven on Sunday, March 3, 2013, from Tyler, Texas. Ernest was born in Jessup, Georgia, on July 15, 1923, to James Nicholas and Ruby (Bass) Atkinson. He grew up in Baxley, Georgia, and graduated from Baxley High School. On August 21, 1948, he married Martha Sheffield in Pelham, Georgia. After moving to Texas, he received a Bachelor of Arts from Howard Payne University; a Bachelor and Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; a Doctorate of Ministry from The Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He served in the United States Navy from 1941-45. As a missionary for 40 years with the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, he served as pastor of Spanish speaking churches both in Texas and Florida and also served as professor, librarian, and Dean for the Mexican Baptist Bible Institute from which he retired in 1988 after 28 years of service with the school. He is survived by his wife, Martha Atkinson; two daughters: Elena and husband, Benny Petty of College Station; and Becky and husband, Ray Davis of White House; along with three grandchildren: Jim Davis and wife, Emma; Elizabeth Petty; and Joshua Davis. He is preceded in death by his parents, two brothers and one sister. Visitation will be on Wednesday, March 6, 2013, from 10 am. until 11 a.m. in the J.E. Keever Mortuary of Ennis. Graveside services will be held at 11 a.m. on March 6, 2013, in the Myrtle Cemetery of Ennis with Dr. Ray Davis officiating under the direction of J.E. Keever Mortuary, Inc. In lieu of flowers the family requests any donations be made to the Heart to Heart Hospice of Tyler, Texas, in memory of E.E. Atkinson. www.jekeevermortuary.com"
http://www.ennisdailynews.com/obituaries/ernest-edwin-atkinson/
