Decoration days

For us June is a month full of homecomings – cemetery decoration days, and gathering funds for upkeep. In acknowledgement of that, a poem from 2010.

In a graveyard. (February 12, 2010).

1. Gone but not forgotten
Engraved upon the stone,
But the stone was broken
And lying all alone.

2. Who here beneath the ground
Sleeps in this silent tomb?
And shall we, too, be found
In such a lonesome gloom?

3. Gone and soon forgotten
As mem’ries fade away
Time goes on a-marching
And night replaces day.

4. Lying, unremembered—
Yes, O, how sad to see!
Nay, how glad unnumbered,
If God remember thee!

In memory of Adelaide Vaughn (1915-2018)

Yesterday I moved my Mother’s name from next year’s sick and shut-in list – that I try to keep up for the East Texas Sacred Harp Convention – over to the Deceased list. “There is no discharge in that war” (Ecclesiastes 8:8).

Funeral services for Mrs. Adelaide Chapman Vaughn, 103, of Laneville, will be held at 2 p.m., Saturday, November 17, 2018, at Smyrna Baptist Church with Brothers Charles Williams and Matthew Gholson officiating. Burial will follow in Holleman Cemetery under the direction of Crawford-A. Crim Funeral Home in Henderson. Family will receive friends 1-2 p.m. on Saturday, November 17, 2018, at Smyrna Baptist Church.

Adelaide Chapman, daughter of Robert Lee Chapman and Mariah Loutisha Holleman, was born on April 6, 1915 in the community of Oak Flat, Rusk County, Texas. She was the youngest of ten children. She joined Smyrna Baptist Church by profession of faith in 1933 and was baptized in the Stockman Spring by Elder W. G. Griffith. Adelaide married Charlie Leroy Vaughn on January 9, 1937 in Laneville, Rusk County, Texas. She passed away Tuesday, November 13, 2018 at her home. According to her hopes and desires, she avoided the nursing home and dodged the winter she hated to see coming.

Adelaide grew up on a farm, and knew the cotton culture all too well. As children “How tedious and tasteless the hours” was sometimes drafted by her and a sister to service their complaint of the thankless task of chopping cotton (and other like duties). She graduated from high school (11th grade) in 1934, married, raised children, kept grandchildren, sewed for various people, as well as her children and grandchildren. She was handy at many crafts and was an excellent cook. Her chicken-and-dressing was a notable favorite at local homecomings. Crosswords and Sudoku became favorite pastimes. She loved to read widely, from history to poetry, and often quoted poetry she had memorized in school. Her favorite poem was “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. She could recite it verbatim until she was 101 years old. After that, she began to miss some words and phrases now and then!

Mother was born to singers, lived in a singing community, married a singer, and gave birth to singers. Her Great Uncle Joe Chapman (her grandfather’s brother) was a leading figure in the community Sacred Harp singings and keyed the music until his health no longer permitted him to participate. Her Uncle Joe Chapman (her father’s brother) was an active singer who also served as an area agent for the early Cooper editions of The Sacred Harp before his early death in 1912. “Daddy Bob” Chapman (her father) was also an active singer in his younger years, though some circumstances of his later life seem to have driven his primary singing venue to his front porch! Mother attended singings (Sacred Harp and “Little Book”) almost all her life, supported and cooked for singings – but never was a singer herself. She was hard of hearing at least from in her 40s, which progressively got worse. She wore hearing aids. At singings she was always a listener, and a pretty inconspicuous one at that. If you didn’t know her, you may gone to singings with her and never knew it.

When Mother was a young girl, her father would lay on the porch, leaning against an upended straight-back chair, singing Sacred Harp songs. He made some effort to teach her, but she said she just wanted to run and play. She was the “baby” of the family likely a little bit “spoiled.” Not paying attention as a girl, not singing as an adult, nevertheless the notes one of her favorite songs – one that her Daddy tried to teach her and probably never knew he accomplished, Return Again, No. 335 in The Sacred Harp – were indelibly etched in her memory. She might not sing at the singings, but she could (and would) sing at home “fa-fa-la-la-fa-fa-sol-fa-la; fa-fa-la-sol-fa-fa-fa” from memory into her 100s. She and I sang it together (words, too) at her house several times, sitting side by side in the easy chairs.

Mother’s three song choices for her funeral reflect some of the spectrum of her musical preferences and interest. A grandson will sing The Pearly White City. The congregation will sing What a Great Day, a song written by her late husband and daughter. Those in the congregation who know the “4-notes” will sing the notes of Return Again, and all the congregation will be invited to sing the words.

All who come will be welcome and appreciated. Those who can’t come will be respected and appreciated. We thank you all for your prayers and well wishes.

Online obituary at Crawford-A. Crim Funeral Home web site.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Remembrance of Sins

"I think those are the sweetest moments in this life, when we have the clearest sense of our own sins, provided the sense of our acceptance in the Beloved is proportionally clear, and we feel the consolations of his love, notwithstanding all our transgressions. When we arrive in glory, unbelief and fear will cease forever: our nearness to God, and communion with him, will be unspeakably beyond what we can now conceive. Therefore the remembrance of our sins will be no abatement of our bliss, but rather the contrary." -- John Newton, in answer to a letter from a friend

Each life is like a song

A life is like a song we write
In our own tone and key,
Each life we touch reflects a note
That forms the melody.
We choose the theme and chorus
Of the song to bear our name,
And each will have a special sound --
No two can be the same.
So when someone we love departs,
In memory we find
Their song plays on within the hearts
Of those they leave behind.

--Author Unknown

Longfellow: A Psalm of Life

The human mind is a strange and wonderful thing. I'm no doctor or scientist, but apparently everything  that has ever been downloaded into it is still in there somewhere, even if we can't always consciously access it. A crossword puzzle clue often evokes an immediate memory of a word or name that I could not have recalled with 3 hours of consistently racking the brain. Just the other day the word "Hidy" (the greeting, not the woman's name) drew up something from Cheech & Chong I hadn't thought of in 40 years (and I'd hit the delete button on that, if I knew how).

My mother is 98 years old. She may be a little forgetful at times, but she is still very sharp. On Tuesday she quoted to me the whole of Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" (or which you may think of as "Footprints on the Sands of Time"). She didn't stumble through it, but quoted it with expression, as she had learned it. She learned it over 80 years ago for a county school competition and still remembers it. Several weeks ago my daughter recorded her quoting and posted it on YouTube. [Two corrections: 1. Mother just learned the poem in school, but not for the county school competition. That was something else. 2. My daughter posted it on Facebook, not YouTube. But now it is on YouTube: Mawmaw recites Longfellow]

Here's Longfellow's Psalm of Life:

A Psalm of Life
What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
   Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
   And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
   Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
   And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
   In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
   Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
   We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
   With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
   Learn to labor and to wait.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, first published in 1838

Syrup in the buttermilk

On a number of occasions I heard my Dad tell of one of his grandfather's habits. He said at meals (mainly supper, IIRC), Grandpa Vaughn would always have two glasses of buttermilk. The first he drank "as is", but to the second glass he added syrup. This was ribbon-cane or sorghum syrup, raised on his farm and cooked at his syrup mill.

Last night I found myself with a glass of buttermilk in hand and a jar of sorghum syrup on the kitchen counter. This memory raised up and tempted me to try it -- sorghum in the buttermilk. I must say it wasn't bad. Not nearly as bad as I imagined. In fact, I could grow to like it.

This whole thing got me to wondering. Was this concoction just my great-grandfather's peculiar quirk, or was that possibly some old bygone Southern favorite?