It was drizzling rain last Friday as about two dozen of us stood on Merton’s front lawn to spread his ashes and say good-bye.  He was a good man, a simple man, a man of few wants and needs.  Merton was in his glory when there was a John Wayne marathon on one of the cable movie channels for the weekend. “My weekend’s all planned! Stagecoach!, The Sons of Katy Elder, McClintock, True Grit, Rooster Cogburn, The Shootist.  Who could ask for more?”

(See my post entitled "The Old Farmer" to learn more about Merton.)

When Mary Ellen and would ride by his place on our horses, we’d wave at the window where we knew he’d be sitting, watching the world go by.  A hand would appear there, waving back.

As I stood there on Friday, I looked down on the thick, lush grass and smiled.  The grass was SO thick that it would clog my mower blades and snap expensive John Deere drive belts.  I spent many a Saturday afternoon flat on my back under my mower in this front yard, replacing those belts and cursing a blue streak. Merton would come out, stand over me, and attempt to strike up a conversation as I scraped my knuckles and felt my patience being pushed to the limit by the damned machine.

Every time I finished with the lawn, Merton would come out on the back step, wheezing laboriously from the strain of walking. He would sit down on the stoop, and I would join him, and we would talk…about anything and everything. (He was lonely, and he was housebound. Nobody visited him except for Mary Ellen, her son Rich, the home health nurse and the town-provided cleaning lady.) So I would sit and visit for a while and listen to his stories over and over again.

Mary Ellen took good care of Merton.  He signed over to her power of attorney.  So she took care of all of his legal matters and banking matters. She was also the first one who was called when he took his multiple ambulance trips to the hospital the last few years.
It was she who, two weeks ago in the nursing home, had to tell him that the doctors said he would never go home again. It was then that he decided "no heroic measures are to be taken." Then she held his hand, and they both cried together. Merton died the next day.

When he died, we became aware of the fact that Mary Ellen and her son Rich were the sole beneficiaries to his estate.

In accordance with his will, Merton’s body was cremated. At that time, his sister, who kept in touch with Mary Ellen almost on a weekly basis over the past year or so, said that she would like to have his ashes spread on the front lawn of his house in a small ceremony. She said that she would be responsible for notifying all of Merton’s kin.

Merton never spoke of family other than his sister.  So everybody, including the visiting nurse and the cleaning lady, assumed that he had none.

Mary Ellen and I drove to the funeral with Mary Ellen’s son Rich and his wife. When we pulled into Merton’s driveway with his ashes, we were amazed to find about thirty people standing on his front lawn. There was the cleaning lady, the visiting nurse, the minister, Merton’s sister…and his OTHER sister, his forty-year-old nephew (who lived only a quarter mile from Merton’s house) and other assorted relatives!

At one point in the short service, the minister asked if anybody had any memories of Merton that they would like share.  One woman spoke up and recalled that she and Merton always fought over who would get the pickled cauliflower pieces at Thanksgiving. That struck me as odd, since, for the twenty years that I knew Merton, he always spent Thanksgiving alone. He would have been alone on Christmas Eves too if Mary Ellen and I didn’t bring him to our family’s celebration every year.

Another relative spoke up and asked what happened to  the big tree that used to stand in the corner of the front yard.  I answered, saying that Merton, Rich and myself took it down...fifteen years ago!What I didn't say was, "Where the hell have you been?"

As the service progressed, my gaze wandered from face to face in the crowd, and my anger for these people grew larger and larger by the minute. 

Thirty relatives.  All living within a fifteen mile radius of Merton.  Never once visiting the man. Not caring. They had no right to be there.  Where were they when his lawn needed mowing? When he needed somebody to take him to the doctor’s? When he needed somebody just to sit with him on the back stoop and chew the fat for a half hour?

We were there on that rainy afternoon two days ago to spread the ashes of a lonely and wonderful old man whose best and most trusted friends in life were the visiting nurse, the cleaning lady, the neighbor woman (Mary Ellen) and her husband (me) and her son.   And we were the only ones there with tears in our eyes as Mary Ellen opened the container and spread the old farmer’s ashes onto the soil that he loved so well.

Good-bye, old friend. I truly hope that there is a Heaven, and that you are happy.