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Taking the Toe Tag Off of Death
Hey mom, thanks for softening the edges of awfulness
It didn’t help that they were dear friends who loved to laugh. Ruth had one of those laughs that pulls you in even if you don’t know why she’s laughing. However, this situation wasn’t anything to be laughing about, but they were, uncontrollably. The pressing question lying on the table before them was, “Do we remove the toe tag?”
As fate would have it, Ruth held a leadership position at church and was asked by a grieving family to help dress the dearly departed matriarch for burial. Unaware that this task was part of her “holy” job description, her knee-jerk was, “I didn’t sign up for this.” But the God-guilt nudged her right in line. One hard swallow and she was ready.
Who do you ask for help when faced with something you haven’t done before?
Perhaps the ideal person is a dedicated and often duty-bound friend with past experience working in a mortuary playing songs on the organ for funerals. Of course that’s who, and that person happened to be my mom.
These compadres had camped together, sang together, and raised large broods of kids. They even traveled across the Mexico border to secure a 200 pound bag of sugar during an alleged U.S. sugar shortage in the 1970’s. The friendship was…
