Today was a funeral for Dan, an Amish neighbor of ours. He was only 74...way too young...but he passed away on Tuesday after a very brief illness.
Amish funerals are typically held in the home of the deceased. As soon as the obituary is listed in the newspaper, visitation begins. Family, friends and neighbors stop in any time during the day to pay their respects. Yesterday we walked down to Dan and Emma's. We talked to one of Dan's sons, who was outside with some of the children. He told us where to go in, so we made our way inside. The men and women sit separately around the edges of the open rooms. It was very quiet, and we weren't quite sure what procedure we should follow, but we made our way around the first room where the women sat, shaking hands as we went...that's the way they greet each other. When we got to Ruth Ann (Dan's daughter in law), she quickly stood and graciously made us feel welcome and comfortable. I think she sensed our unease, and she took us into the room where the casket was. Her husband saw her do this, and he and his brother (another neighboring farmer that we know well) joined us. After a few minutes of quiet talking, we made our way home again. The buggies and cars rolled by all day and into the evening.
The funeral was this morning. (Amish funerals are by invitation only, and are in German, so we wouldn't have understood it anyway) By 9:00 the driveway was full of buggies, and the road lined with vans...some of the English drivers waited in the shade until the service was over.
Around lunch time, we knew that the procession to the graveside was about to begin when a police escort drove by and stopped traffic at the end of the road. I took these pictures from an upstairs bedroom window...
The Amish hearse...
If you enlarge this picture, you can hopefully see the #10 written on the side of the buggy with chalk. They do this so that the person directing traffic knows when all of the buggies that are part of the procession have passed. There were 29 or 30 buggies today. Jenna was watching from the porch and she counted them...
While the family and close friends were at the graveside, there was work going on back at the house. Within 45 minutes or so, the benches were cleared away and loaded into this wagon. This young man is likely taking the wagon back to the house where the next Church services will be held...
Tomorrow will be another day...life will go on. But it will be different for their family and for the neighborhood. A new normal. Dan's thirteen children and fifty grandchildren will miss him. We'll miss seeing him standing along the road, letting his horse graze on the road bank. He was a good neighbor!
