Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

         Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

         The short and simple annals of the poor.

From Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard,” 1751

White buggy at the Belleville auction

Melinda Yoder, sister to the Amish bishop, has died. Since the church does not practice embalming, she must be buried within 24 hours. I have never met Melinda, but I have been living for several months in the home of her nephew, Eli. Today I go to her funeral, accompanied by Shirley Renno, one of her distant Mennonite relatives.

We drive into the barnyard on a bitter cold day to find some snow on the ground and many white buggies parked near Melinda’s farmhouse. The smell of tobacco drifts over from where some older men stand near the barn rolling cigarettes and smoking. They all wear black hats, long-sleeved pullover shirts and brown pants and coats. Lacking suspender or belt, the pants are snugged with lacing in the back. We walk into the house to see a wooden coffin resting in the middle of the living room on two saw horses. I remove my hat. The Amish are a closed society, but sometimes a funeral draws many English (non-Amish) people. In this case, Shirley and I are the only outsiders.

People line up to view the body—men walking along one side, women along the other. Melinda’s ninety-year-old brother, Bishop Sam S. Yoder, sits hunched in a corner chair, silent, holding his wooden cane. Because he is bishop, he wears gray pants and a gray frock coat with tails. Sam lives in Eli’s “dawdy house” (a built-on room) since his wife died, and eats at Eli’s table, as I do. Sometimes I visit him in his little apartment and watch him stoke the fire in his potbelly stove with dried corn cobs. He smiles when he says, “I’m collecting interest on the farm mortgage.”

In Melinda’s living room, I join the men’s line that slowly moves toward the coffin. It is a diamond-shaped, unfinished pine wood box, made by a member of the church. Half of the lid is folded back to view the body. As is customary, Melinda is dressed completely in white, including her full white prayer covering neatly tied under her chin. The mourners pass in silence.

After viewing the body, we sit down for the service, men on one side, women on the other. A deacon “lines” the first line of a German hymn, then the congregation joins in a capella, slow-paced singing using the Aiusbund, one of the oldest hymnals still in use. Then another bishop, John J.S. Yoder, rises to preach in German for forty-five minutes. He’s had no special training— he was selected by lot from the men of the congregation to serve as their bishop, an unpaid, lifelong post.

After the funeral service, we file out into the cold courtyard and form a large circle. Some of Melinda’s relatives walk around, serving each person a glass of homemade dandelion wine and a slice of homemade bread topped with a thick piece of cheese. Shirley and I eat, shivering in the cold. After about half an hour, the men start hitching up their horses to form a funeral procession. Melinda’s coffin lies on a John Wayne-style buckboard with a brown canvas thrown over it. Eventually, the slow procession exits the farm and winds their way to the cemetery, following back roads. We drive along behind at five miles an hour.

It takes almost an hour to arrive at the cemetery. It sits in a bare patch of land on a low, windswept hill and is only distinguished by its fence and a few small limestone markers. I see no grass or trees, and no flowers are allowed. People are buried here, not in family units but rather in the order in which they die. The men who act as pallbearers lift the coffin from the buckboard, carry it over to the gravesite and set it down on two-by-fours that have been placed across the grave hole. Men hold their hats vertically on the side of their heads to shield their faces from the bitter wind as Bs. Yoder speaks a few words in German to the shivering mourners who stand around the grave. Then some men place ropes under the coffin, lift it gently, slide the two by fours out of the way, then slowly lower it until it rests at the bottom of the grave. There is no cement vault. Then they take shovels and begin filling in the grave, mounding up the dirt. When they finish, we all depart.

As Shirley and I drive away, I have much to ponder. Who is a funeral for? For the deceased, of course. Every person is loved by God and all persons deserve to be memorialized. And it provides accompaniment and comfort for relatives and friends. But it also serves to put on display some of the deepest values of a culture—in this case, the value of the gathered church community and the beauty of simplicity.

Most funerals I have attended display the body in an elegant casket covered with flowers. The horror of death is masked with artificial grass and a tributary gravestone. People leave before the grave is filled in.

But here, in death as in life, simple custom, sparse appointments and sober ritual underscore Amish values. The plain coffin (they never call it a casket), the stark graveyard, the buckboard-hearse—all these proclaim a simple life lived out in a close, caring community.

I reflect on the meaning of this death. It is a profound tribute to Amish faith and strength in the midst of a loss of one of their own.