Grandma Lima's Funeral

submitted by Morton Charnel

Clinton: It's been said of the Lima Family that between them all there wasn't a full set of teeth. And that they were a few spokes shy of a wagon wheel. And that they knitted without a needle. Stories aplenty circulate about the region coloring the Lima Family's perilous exploits. There was Grampa Clyde's sheep stampede and fire at the Clinton County Fair in 1901. And Karl Lima's vain attempts to assasinate President Calvin Coolidge by mailing poison to the White House in 1924. And there were the frequent hunting accidents that thankfully culled the more feeble family members. But when folks talk about the Lima Family, they speak of the family at its most resourceful, most innovative, and most gruesome undertaking: the funeral of Grandma Katrinka Lima in 1937.

     The Limas got their start in Schuykill County, PA where Grampa Clyde Lima was found to "lack the common sense to aim his rifle" by a county military examination board and was released from military service in 1863. He set out for Iowa, settling in Orange. In May, 1866, he married Katrinka Blucher, a local blonde beauty of no complexity. The two soon spawned a raging brood of 14 hairbrained offspring, 3 of which perished in their late teens one January night in 1872 while trying to pull their frozen tongues from the rails of an oncoming freight train.

     In July of 1937, only 6 of the Lima Children survived, 2 girls and 4 boys. Two of the boys remained on the family farm with their mother Katrinka who turned 92 that past June. Katrinka had taken to her bed just after Christmas, having contracted a fever when she over-turned the outhouse while trying to festively decorate the inside. She died in her bed on July 12, 1937.

     Torrential rains pelted the house the day she died, and as both her sons had gone out early that morning and not bothered to look in on her-figuring to let her sleep-they didn't find her until much later that afternoon. Karl and John arrived not only to find her dead, but stone-cold dead. Stiff with rigor mortis and sticking to the urinous sheets, the two sons vainly tried to shift her rigid bulk from the bed. Unsuccessful at the titanic effort, Karl decided to go for a doctor, leaving John to watch over the body. After five minutes into his vigil, John left to deliver the news to his two sisters and brothers who lived in the surrounding area.

     As John slogged his way through the downpour, he began struggling up the mud-slicked lane leading over the hill and into Orange. Half way up, he lost his footing and slid back to the bottom. Covered in thick mud, he rose to his feet only to be bowled over by his brother Karl as he too came sliding back down the hill. Unable to climb the hill, the two slogged back to the house. There, they closed off Grandma's room and decided to wait for the rain to abate.

     Early in the morning on the third day, Karl shook John awake, and complained to him about the loud buzzing noise coming from their Mother's room. The two approached the room and listened at the door. There indeed, a loud, tremulous buzzing emitted from the room beyond. The two debated whether or not to open the door, or to go downstairs and hope it would end by itself in time.

     It should be noted that Grandma Lima's room faced east and every summer morn, the sun's golden disk flooded the room with brilliant radiance. Grandma Lima preferred, however, to loll in bed with a pillow clenched to her head to ward off the annnoying glare. Only a few weeks before, she croaked in rage at being roused so early by her sons' noisy morning stumblings and threatened to haunt them after her demise.

     So, Grandma's curse loomed large in their minds as the two talked themselves into opening her bedroom door early that morning.

     The portal silently swung open. Their eyes were met by such bright light that they held their hands up to block the near-Biblical brilliance. The room pulsed with buzzing. Only after a few seconds did they glimpse the vague shimmering, almost-human shade churning in mid-air before them.

     Terrified, they shut the door. Skittering down the steep and narrow steps, the brothers fled the house in cold fear. After sometime, they at last stumbled into the office of Orange's sole physician, Doctor Emory Schatz.

     The brothers confided their ghastly encounter with the vengeful spectre to the doctor. Schatz, long aquainted with the Lima Family, accordingly took the brothers tale with a block of salt. Packing his black bag, he soon returned with them to the farm and made his way up the cramped stairway to Grandma Lima's room. It was now late morning and as he opened the door, the brothers cowering behind, a thick black cloud rose up buzzing before them in the center of the room just over the body.

     Covering his nose with his hankerchief to avoid one wiff of the doubtlessly noxious death stench, Schatz threw open the large eastern window. That done, he began to shoo the black, surreal cloud of flies from the bloated carcass with his top hat. The doctor made a hasty examination of the obese corpse to confirm the cause of death and hurriedly wrote a death certificate. Business concluded, he offered his condolences, offered to tell the other brothers and sisters, and offered his advice that they organize the funeral for sooner than later.

     That evening, the siblings Otto, Hanz, Magdelena, and Abbigail arrived to discuss the funeral. They stumbled into a decision after a marathon of shoulder-shrugging and 'I don't know-doesn't matter to me-what ever you think's best is fine'. That next morning the body was to be taken to Anton Pennyroyal's Funeral Parlor in town. Meanwhile, Karl and John had some small success keeping flies from the body by placing a large tub of fresh hog manure at the foot of the bed.

     Now, Otto and Abby were the eldest siblings and of morbidly practical natures. Since Karl and John had a hog that was ready to go to market and they needed the money to cover the funeral's expense, the two older siblings recommended that said hog could ride to town in the wagon with their mother's body. After another hour or so of more shoulder-shrugging and 'I don't know-doesn't matter to me-what ever you think best is fine's by Hanz and Maggie, it was agreed.

     Early the next morning, John and Karl set about removing the hog manure fly-lure in preparation to removing the body. John had the untenneable task of bearing the tub its lowest end as they descended the stairs. Starting down, John naturally turned his head away from brimming vat of dung as it lurched towards his face. So doing, he mistread a step and slipped. Instinctively pulling on the tub of turds to regain his balance, he wrenched the entire thing from his brother's grip and fell clattering and spattering down the stairs, coating himself, the floor, and walls with fetid, slimy dung.

     Hearing the racket from the house, Otto rushed in from hitching up the wagon team to behold his younger brother struggling at the foot of the stairs with the still dripping tub over his head. The two brothers soon got into an abusive arguement and then slippery brawl, which resulted in John breaking his arm and Otto skittering across the slick floor and knocking himself out. Abby and Magdelena quickly cared for the slime-streaked injured. Karl fetched Dr. Schatz, who arrived within the hour to set and sling John's arm. Otto regained consciousness, but remained unsteady on his feet. Schatz proffered his help, but Karl refused saying it was fitting that their mother should be taken from her home by family. So, Karl and the youngest brother Hanz went upstairs and set to the odious task of wresting mother from the house.

     Stuck to her bed sheets, Karl and Hanz wound the linens around her and hefted her from the bed only to promptly drop her to the the floor with a loud thump. With further thumping and muffled curses, the two sons brought her to the verge of stairs.

     Now, the cramped and twisting stairs resembled a trecherous wooden goat track. In the area of a broom closet, they dropped ten feet to the main floor below by twisting under each other at right angled turns on cramped landings. While alive, Grandma Lima managed to navigate these stairs, though with some difficulty. Through decades, she brushed the walls on either side of the stairs with her ample frame, ultimately wearing smooth ruts in the plaster down to the lathe underneath.

     Karl took up the legs and Hanz the head and shoulders. Straining, they raised her and started down the steps. Karl reached the first landing when she fetched up hard against the walls like a barge on a shoal. Always stubborn and quick to anger, Hanz kicked his mother's head in a frustated effort to dislodge her. Only Karl's outraged shouting got him to stop. After some more tugging and shoving, the two drove it down the stairs until at last her feet scraped against the landing's wall. But the body refused to bend around the landing's corner and got stuck again. The brother's angry shouting brought Otto and John. Soon, they had the body back up into the bedroom where the excercise had started.

     It was Otto who suggested taking Grandma out the big bedroom window. With little effort, the brothers removed the windows and made ready for their mother's flight into the wild blue yonder. Otto, always thinking ahead, recommended positioning a matress on the ground to cushion her landing and keep the Undertaker's job easy.

Coffin.jpg     Now, the window looked out onto the front porch's small steeply pitched roof-an obstacle Karl and Hanz believed they could clear given a fair wind-up and perhaps a favorable breeze. So, when Otto got down below and postioned the matress with some fastidious care, Karl and Hanz hefted the corpse one more time and got her swinging. On the count of three, they her launched out the window. It was a glorius sight. For one brief instant, they beheld their mother's body fly with the clouds and butterfles, yellow stained sheets flapping about her like an angel's wings. Suddenly, her foot caught the porch roof's gutter and that sent her cart-wheeling wildly through the æther. She sailed over Otto's mattress and thumped face-first on top of the hog already loaded already loaded in the wagon. The poor beast squealed, scaring the horse which bolted down the lane, hauling the clattering wagon behind. The rough jostling nearly dumped Grandma Lima out of the wagon but her bedsheet caught onto a stout nail head sticking up in the floor. Instead, she was dragged face-down through the mud and gravel for about a hundred yards until Hanz and Karl caught up and stopped the horse.

     Everything else progressed smoothly and simply. With Otto, Abby, and Karl up front and Hanz, Magdelna, and John riding in back, they got hog and Grandma into Orange without a hitch. It wasn't until they returned to the home that they all suddenly realised that they had dropped the wrong load off at the funeral home.





Back to this Issue Contents

3sigil2.jpg