Mercy
by Rachel—Age 32—Madison Lake, MN
I skip work on a Thursday morning to meander through a Renaissance painting exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Rooms of angels, Jesus, saints in ecstasy. I’m reminded of my Catholic upbringing, when statues of the dead peered down at me every Sunday morning.
Then, one painting stops me, forbids me to move forward. An artist I’ve never heard of—Matthew Sweerts from Holland. A title, “Burial of the Dead.” I stand there for a minute, two, five, because my dad buried the dead. And here, two men doing the same, four centuries before.
They clearly struggle; their faces pinch. An older man grabs the corpse under the arms. A younger, stronger man, muscles straining, takes hold of the feet. A white cloth threatens to slip off the newly dead, and his head slumps. This act, this reverent burial, was considered a good deed by the Catholic Church, one of Seven Mercies.
It is mercy that describes my dad’s job, though I haven’t thought of it in those terms until I see this painting. Dad labored over his graves. He scooped out most of the dirt with a backhoe. But he always jumped down into every hole, hundreds of them over a 14-year career, to carve the corners with a shovel, to make the sides precise and straight. After the graveside service, Dad used the shovel to pitch dirt into the crevice between the vault (with the casket inside) and walls of the grave. Then he jumped in again, soil compacting under his 220 pounds. This way, the dirt would not settle, no unsightly sinkholes to later puncture the cemetery landscape. Dad replaced the sod on top, and I helped water grave grass all summer to keep it fresh and green. Within a few weeks, no one could tell a grave was dug. The ground subsumed the dead.
The dictionary defines mercy as an inclination toward kindness. That’s how I saw Dad; kind to the earth, kind to the people going into the earth. He gently guided bodies to their final rest, just as the men in Sweerts’ painting. And when it was Dad’s time to sink into the earth, his friend, the gravedigger from the neighboring town, saw to it to be merciful as well.
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