The Cooling Board

"When I got there, she was layin' on the cooling board." - Son House's song "Death Letter"

I have been listening to a ton of White Stripes lately. One of the songs I enjoy hearing was their cover of the above Son House song "Death Letter". The song was a very powerful narrative of something that happened to an unfortunate young man back in the early 1900s. In those days, there were no phones, no Internet. He had a long distance relationship, and so when the girlfriend suddenly died, he found out by the relatives writing a letter sent via US mail and telling him to go see her/attend her funeral at once.

The story is similar to a story that my maternal grandfather told me. Previously, I knew that Grandpa Nachreiner's mom died when he was about 12 or so. Then his father remarried, but sadly, it was to the proverbial mean stepmother (how many stories have we read about the mean stepmother who afflicts the surviving kids?) . So my grandfather left home and became an adult in his early teens. In those days, you could do that. He began smoking at 14, 15 yrs. of age and died when he was 95.

So, we can say that not only did Grandpa's mother die, but at that same moment so did his childhood.

One Sunday, I think in the late 70s, without being prompted, he talked about his mother's death. He didn't explain what she died from because in this story that wasn't important; it was the fact that she was no longer going to "mother" him or be there to guide him and soothe his fears and misfortunes as only a mother can do.

He explained that one of the first things they did after she died was remove her from the house. It was during the summer. Now since this happened sometime between 1903 - 1905, there were not morgues and if there were, Grandpa's family surely could not afford to have his dear mom in one.

They laid his mother on a cake of ice. By keeping her cool (remember the song above talks about the "cooling board"), she would not decompose and literally smell dead. However, it was a hot summer, and she laid dead, outside the house for well over a day. By the time of the funeral, when she finally was given the dignity of a coffin, she was laying not in a cake of ice but a puddle of lukewarm water.

Grandpa never cried in front of me before or after that story. Even though it happened to him over 75 years earlier, the memories were still raw enough for him to well up with tears at the end of the story. What a way to lose your childhood!