Straight From The Hart
By Joan Rowden Hart
I appreciated the article in Friday’s paper on the Holman-Howe Funeral Home.
Not only have I lost many family members in my almost seven decades of life, but I have spent 28 of those years in ministry and have had far too many occasions to be involved in funeral services in one way or the other.
Lebanon is so blessed to have two beautiful and graciously staffed funeral homes where services are conducted in a most professional manner, and I never realized how fortunate we are in that regard until I pastored a church in another town for a while.
The greatest culture shock I had was with regard to the funeral services I attended or conducted there. Don’t get me wrong, the owners and staff were nice but they just didn’t provide the special sense of reverence and professionalism to which I had grown accustomed here in Lebanon.
Visitors were not greeted at the door by a professionally dressed person escorting you to your seat. You were never handed a memorial leaflet. In fact unless you remembered to ask for one, you never received one.
Pallbearers were not escorted in and seated. At some services the lid on the casket was shut and sealed with a big handle while the family and friends sat and watched. I never got used to that.
Flower cards were not read to the family and friends during any part of the services. They were apparently just removed and handed to one member of the family. I finally stopped sending flowers after I learned that none of the family members ever knew I had sent them, or what they were.
I have always found this part of the visitation services provided by our funeral homes here to be very meaningful, knowing our friends and extended family share our grief, and I really missed it there. I am constantly amazed at Marcia Shadel’s knowledge of flowers and how she describes them so quickly and accurately. I tend to be with flowers the same way I am with automobiles, knowing nothing about them except the color, so this is a skill which really impresses me.
Sometimes we need a little humor to brighten up the most solemn occasion, and I found that in one of the funeral homes in the other town. There was a local pastor who seemed to always be around the chapel and I guess he was there to volunteer his help when needed. Apparently he had done it so often he could recite the 23rd Psalm so fast that it only took him 10 seconds from beginning to end but nobody could understand what he said.
One of his designated jobs was to help load the flowers into the hearse and then drive the hearse and pastor out to the cemetery. He never seemed to really think ahead so I would wait for him in the hearse while he loaded the flowers. Then he would jump into the driver’s seat quickly and then jump out again just as quickly when he saw me in the hearse. He did not like women pastors and refused to drive me just for that reason.
As the writer of the LDR article mentioned, funeral services and customs have changed over the years. I vaguely remember the first funeral I ever attended. I’m not sure if it was at Holman’s or Palmer’s. It would have been in the late 40’s because I was just a little girl, not in school yet, and I was taken in and left alone in the chapel area while my family was attending to the needs of the grieving family.
I remember the room being very dark and I was seated in a small black metal folding chair in the middle of the row. I wasn’t sure what was going on, I could just hear very loud sobbing from another room. I don’t remember being scared, just confused as to what was happening there..
As a parent and a grandparent as well as a pastor, I firmly believe that in most cases, children should be allowed to go to the funeral home when there is a death in their family, and have their questions answered. Death is a reality of life and hiding it from children probably isn’t good. I understand this is a controversial issue - just explaining my own position on the matter.
Many families have used the same funeral home for generations. Holman-Howe has always been our family funeral home although as I said earlier, Lebanon is blessed to have the Shadel family providing very professional services also.
When my youngest sister, Kay, was killed on Highway 32 in 1964, it was Kenny’s dad, Dorsey Howe, who called us and then came to the home to deliver the sad news and be with us until other family members could arrive. That’s the way things were done in those days.
When my daughter Mila Jo was assigned to write a school paper on a subject dealing with her home town, I suggested she talk to Dorsey and make him the subject of her essay. I took her to the funeral home and he gave us a tour and gave her more fascinating information and history than she could ever use. He was a great man, extremely compassionate, sensitive and caring.
The Holman-Howe Funeral Home has ministered to me and my family through the death of my sister, Kay, and my brother, Denzil, as well as my grandparents, Everett and Nellie Dame, my stepfather, Clarence Lindsey, my Uncle Loran and Aunt Geraldine Dame, and Milan’s parents, Brennan and Pauline Hart, and in the language of the funeral business, “a host of other friends and relatives”.
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