The Combine at My Father’s Funeral

Thursday

On Thursday, the day before the funeral, we spent the morning at the funeral home with Sandra.

When we drove home at noon, there were three combines in the Hanson quarter.

Ole’s, and two of the Schroeder boys’ machines, and a line of grain trucks at the field approach where Dad had been headed with his last load.

The Schroeder boys are three brothers, Mike and Tom and Steve, and they are not boys anymore. Mike is fifty.

They finished Dad’s last field by dark. They hauled it to the elevator under our name.

Somebody had brought the tractor and grain cart back to the yard and parked them in the shed, square to the wall, the way Dad always parked.

I walked out to the field approach that evening and stood there looking at all that stubble. The whole quarter, done.

I did not know who to thank, so I took off my cap and said thank you to the field.

The header

Friday morning was gray and cold, with a fine drizzle overnight that left the gravel roads wet and the sky low.

I was out in the yard at seven taking the header off Dad’s combine. You do not take a combine down a gravel road with the header on.

Then I took a bucket of warm water and a rag and washed the chaff off the glass, and wiped down the steps, and swept out the cab.

I left the coffee stain on the floor mat. I could not bring myself to scrub it.

When I turned around, my son Ben was standing in the yard watching me.

He had on his good white shirt and the clip-on tie Jill bought him for his cousin’s wedding, and his church shoes, and his hair was wet and combed flat.

Ben is ten. He is the middle of our three, between Emma, who is fifteen, and Katie, who is seven.

“Are you driving Grandpa’s combine to the funeral?” he asked.

“I am,” I said.

He looked at the combine, and then at me. “Can I ride with you?”

I had to look away for a second. When I was ten years old, I rode beside my father in an old combine with no cab heat and a radio that only got one station, and I thought it was the finest seat in the world.

“Yes,” I said. “You can ride with me.”

The church

The service was at one o’clock at the Lutheran church in town. The church was full.

Pastor Greg led the liturgy, and he did it well. He was a decent man, in his fifties, with a quiet voice.

He had told Sandra that our church keeps the funeral service to the liturgy and the sermon, so the remembrance part, the eulogy, would be at the graveside.

We sang “Beautiful Savior” and “How Great Thou Art.” Ben stood next to me and sang every word of both, because Dad used to sing them in the tractor with the windows shut so nobody could hear him.

Pastor Greg’s sermon was about the parable of the sower. It was a good sermon.

Sandra sat in the front pew in a black dress with her hands folded in her lap.

She did not cry. I watched the back of her head the whole service, and she did not move it once.