Iowa Burying
Iowa Burying
Harris B. McKee Copyright 2017
An essay on disposing of cremains by IHS classmates
Deanna was one of my wife’s best friends growing up; she and I sat across the aisle in Miss Harvey’s sophomore algebra class when she and my cousin were going steady. We had plenty of reasons for maintaining contact through the years. On a business trip to Illinois about 50 years after our high school graduation we got together for lunch near her home to reminisce and share tales of our grandchildren. The discovery that we shared tales of final resting place for our parents provided a lift for the day.
My mother died in January 2003 in Des Moines, Iowa. She was a practical woman with a flair for the proper show. Accordingly, she had prepared for her own funeral by inviting not one but two ministers to preside and specifying an open casket service at Scotch Ridge United Presbyterian Church followed by cremation. Her expectation was that she would be buried in the “Church Yard” i.e. cemetery immediately east of the church in the plot beside my father (the granite marker needed only the addition of her date of death). The burial request was faced with two obstacles.
First, my brother had a flight back to Washington, D.C. the morning after the church service. Secondly, the ground in Iowa in January is frozen several inches deep! Although I offered to get pick and shovel and meet him at 6:00 a.m. he declined to venture out in the frozen morning so the cremains stayed in the urn. I thought he was just trying to avoid a very chilly morning task but his reasons may have had more to do with propriety. He was a United States Foreign Service Officer and may have not wanted to be involved digging in the cemetery, a task restricted to an “officially constituted” crew.
Mary and I came back to Warren County in May when the frost was out and the weather much more amenable. We got Blake Blakesly, one of the selected ministers noted above, to join us at the family plot. We brought a spade and the urn; Blake watched as I dug the hole and inserted the urn in the ground. We covered it together, Blake provided a brief prayer and all three of us joined in singing a hymn. We were not accosted at the time nor later by anyone purporting to be “official crew”.
Deanna had some of the same concerns about avoiding “officially constituted” crew but her issue and that of her two brothers was of avoiding official policeman. Their father had been an avid golfer and long-time member of the Indianola Country Club. They felt the most appropriate place for his ashes was on that favorite golf course. Not wishing to interfere with any golfers and not expecting that permission would be given, they determined to scatter the ashes after dark. Just as they arrived at the golf course parking lot, a police car joined them; without incident, they proceeded on through the parking lot and out. A few blocks away, they waited for a few minutes until they guessed the police car would be gone, and then went back. This time, they posted one brother in the parking lot to watch for police; Deanna and her brother started down fairway number one. They realized that they were not alone. A couple wrapped in a blanket lay in the middle of the fairway; they seemed more interested in their own nocturnal activity than paying attention to another couple walking down the fairway. Just as Deanna and her brother finished spreading the ashes, they got another surprise.
The sprinkler came on watering in the recently deposit and they hastily escaped. I have no information as to whether the water reached the afore mentioned blanketed pair but Deanna and her brothers left with their mission accomplished and without any police interference.
Deanna and I shared these tale of Iowa Burying and had hearty laughs about our avoidance of “officially constituted” staff.