Give Thanks...The Piper's Story

 We parked the van and saw the canopy and open grave waiting for the casket that would arrive soon. 

We also saw a lone man standing back, in the shade, dressed in a kilt and playing "the bones," his bagpipes. It made total sense. My cousin's first husband Zach, was as Scottish as a man not born in Scotland could be. Our family gathered at that same exact spot December 2008...to an open grave where kilted men and bagpipes prepared to say good-bye.

I thought, it must be a friend of Zach's saying good-bye to Zach's sweetheart.

I was right, but then again, there was more to the story.

At the end of the graveside service, the piper explained why he--and others--play at funerals. He said the piper's song allowed the spirit to (I'm paraphrasing, he was much more eloquent...) leave those gathered at the grave and continue on. The music gave permission, in a way, to depart...a bittersweet explanation.

He then played his song, Going Home.

We watched him walk away as he played. The music stopped. He stowed the bagpipes in his truck then started off. Before he left the cemetery, I flagged him down. I wanted to thank him for what he did. Bagpipe music meant so much to our family when Zach passed and when Zach himself played his bagpipes seventeen-months earlier at my mom's graveside service.

The piper stopped. I thanked him. I asked if he knew Zach. He said he was one of the people who taught Zach how to play the bagpipes decades earlier. He then told me that he was asked to play at this funeral, but he did not know who it was he was being honored. He did not recognize Kris's name because she had re-married. When he found out the person who passed was Zach's wife, it meant so much to him. Years earlier, the piper had planned to play at Zach's internment, but he had emergency surgery the day before the funeral and spent that day watching the snow fall wishing he could say good-bye to his friend.

Even though it was over twenty years late, at a funeral last week he finally did.