Old South Rising

Today, I sat under a tarp in a cemetery and watched as my grandfather was lowered into the ground.  It was hot and not just to the point that it was uncomfortable.  I mean "feel like your skin is burning when the sun touches it, hair clinging to your neck after 5 minutes of being outside" hot.

My grandfather lived in the Lowcountry of South Carolina- the land of Spanish moss and people who smell the pluff mud and think of it as a sort of "Welcome Home" from the land that they are so tightly tied to.  The people who live here are a different breed- they consider you family once you've sat down and had a meal with them, they live and breathe the land that they work so hard to help yield the livelihood of their families, and they always find someway of leaving an everlasting impression on your heart- no matter where you head to after you leave.

As I sat there, surrounded by family (blood and "adopted"), I couldn't help but soak in the wonderfulness of the life of a Southerner.  My grandfather's remaining brothers and sisters (4 of the original 12 are still living) sat together, acting as if they had never left eachother's side, and all the grievances that they held had melted away when they heard one of their youngest brothers was sick and needed their help.  My "highfalutin'" great aunt held her head high, almost regally, as she rested her hand on her older brother's knee as he wept into her shoulder.  On the other side of him sat the other brother, who traveled the world and settled in Texas, making deer sausage and writing postcards to the family he left behind.  They did not try to hold back their tears, but in true Southern fashion, they remained as reserved and proud as the pastor spoke of their late sibling.

People were sniffling and crying, and tissues were passed around, as much for the tears as for the sweat that trickled down the chins and the throats, making the grief only seem more real.  I looked at these people, who drawled their soft "r's" and who would suffer a blizzard to watch one of their fellow kinsmen be committed to God, and thought of how much the Old South still survived.  And as an African American sergeant folded the flag that rested upon the coffin that held my grandfather and sat it in my grandmother's lap, I watched her cover his dark hand with her pale one, thanking him for honoring her husband; I realized that maybe some of it had died and something more beautiful had been born and was growing in its place.  (They still have a long way to go, but prayerfully the lines of race that have marred the life of Lowcountriers for so long will finally start to fade.)  The pastor boomed his wonderful, deep southern voice across the yard, teetering on the edge of comfort and the fire and brimstone that only men from the southern part of the country can achieve.

I was comforted by these people, my people, and the things that I saw.  I thought "How blessed I am for getting to experience a life such as this."  I will miss the South; it has been ingrained in my soul in such a way that I know I cannot ever fully leave it behind.  And today, I knew that I would never want to.