Each Little Bird That Sings: Chapters 1–2

Uncle Edisto always told me, “Everybody’s kin, Comfort.”

Great-great-aunt Florentine had just sneaked her ritual piece of bacon from the paper-toweled rack by the stove. “I’m off to the garden, darlin’s!” she said. “I feel a need to sing to the peas!”

And there I was, lying on the kitchen floor with a sixty-five-pound dog in my face. He stuck his shaggy snout into my neck and shivered. An obituary headline flashed into my mind: Local Girl, 10, Done In by Storm and Petrified Pet!

And there I was, lying on the kitchen floor with a sixty-five-pound dog in my face. He stuck his shaggy snout into my neck and shivered. An obituary headline flashed into my mind: Local Girl, 10, Done In by Storm and Petrified Pet!

Into the middle of all this commotion clomped my little sister, Merry, wearing Mama’s high heels and a red slip that pooled around her feet.

“I’m okay.” My head hurt. My plans were ruined. My dog was overwrought. But other than that, I was fine.

Dismay immediately detached himself from me and scuttled for the grand front staircase to find Tidings, who was bigger than I was and who offered more protection.

Great-uncle Edisto extended a knobby hand to me and winced as he pulled me to my feet. He gave me my baseball cap, and I used both hands to pull it back onto my head.

Great-uncle Edisto always talked like that. Everything, even death, served us, according to him. Everything had a grand purpose, and there was nothing amiss in the universe; it was our job to adjust to whatever came our way.

I could tell by the rhythm and tone of his voice that he was working up to his grand finale: “Open your arms to life! Let it strut into your heart in all its messy glory!”

“It’s an apoplexy!” she hollered. “Stroke!”
Everyone came running. We picked up Uncle Edisto from where he had landed, put him into bed, covered him with one of Aunt Florentine’s lavender-scented quilts, and called Doc MacRee.

Mama sat on one side of Uncle Edisto’s bed. She held Merry on her lap and looked exquisitely sad.

Tidings stood at attention next to Daddy, with his hand over his heart and a devastated look on his face.

Imagine the shock and sadness all over Snapfinger, Mississippi, yesterday, when Edisto River Snowberger, patriarch of the Snowberger’s Funeral Home Empire, died just before taking a nap after a failed picnic attempt due to a surprise thunderstorm.

The entire Snowberger family sprang into action (that is, after we took a little time to sink into despair).

When the sawmill went kaput due to hard times and poor management, Edisto and Allagash looked around them and saw a town full of old folks sitting on sidewalk benches, swinging on front porches, and sleeping in church pews, and they said to each other, “What this town really needs is a funeral home.”

Edisto created the Snowberger family motto, “We Live to Serve,” and Allagash engraved it on the Snowberger’s Funeral Home sign.

Edisto’s sayings will be chronicled in the forthcoming book A Short History of a Small Place: Snapfinger, Mississippi, written by Comfort Snowberger.

Edisto’s sayings will be chronicled in the forthcoming book A Short History of a Small Place: Snapfinger, Mississippi, written by Comfort Snowberger.

Allagash died eons ago, and Edisto is survived by his uncle’s wife, Florentine Snowberger, and the rest of the Snowberger clan, including especially his favorite niece, Comfort Snowberger, who was also his picnic companion.

Bring your favorite picnic foods (and recipes), as we will spread blankets and cucumber sandwiches around the newly opened “Bread of Heaven” section of the Snapfinger Cemetery, where Edisto Snowberger will enter into his well-deserved eternal rest.

Of course, if your house is also the funeral home, you never really rest. You’re always on call, just like the fire department is always on call. You never know when calamity will strike.

She had a serene look on her face. “Angelic,” Mama later said. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling as if to say, It’s everything I’d hoped it would be, here in heaven!

I hugged Dismay first—he was so alive and full of good feelings—and I skedaddled for the house.

Mama nodded and looked grim—even grim looked beautiful on Mama. “Well...," she said, “she was ninety-four years old, and she died doing what she wanted to be doing.”

Tidings ran his fingers through his hair and gave his scalp a little scratch. “I’ll bring the hearse around.”

My parents smell like a mixture of gardenias and embalming fluid, even in the evenings after their showers.

Merry had lagged behind the rest of us. She had been distracted by the squash plants. (They were blooming again from a late summer planting.) She had been picking the tender squash blossoms and sticking them to her cheeks until she was festooned with them.

Once again, I wrote the obituary.
Special to The Aurora County News
(Mr. Johnson, this for the September 4 early afternoon edition.)
Yet Another Untimely Death at Snowberger’s!!!

Eggs Florentine Snowberger, matriarch of the Snowberger’s Funeral Home Empire, has died at the ripe old age of 94 after a long and (extremely) colorful life.