This article is about respect.

I want you to notice our 15 year old grandson, Connor, as he is shown here in the middle carrying Granny’s casket.

The reason that this picture means so much to me is that he had never done this before and was very nervous about it. We told him that even though Granny was not a heavy person that the casket would be heavy. He thought it would be fine until he saw it on the first night of visitation. He commented to me that he needed to stand on the left side as his right arm was the stronger one and that he was going to go and lift a few weights when he left that night to strengthen himself.

The part that got me the most was knowing that Connor is an avid soccer player and that he was supposed to be in Gatlinburg this same weekend for a big tournament and also knowing that college scouts would be there watching the different teams play. He gave all of that up to carry Granny to her final resting place and that speaks volumes to me!

We like to criticize our youth a lot of times in this fast paced age of ours and sometimes think that they will not give us the time of day.

Granny was the very first visitor that came to the hospital the day Connor was born and she was never anything but joyful and pleasant each and every time she was around him.

At Christmas we do a thing before we open gifts where the oldest person in the room reads the Christmas story from the Bible before we open our gifts. Granny was that person that did the reading many, many times.

Granny pronounced words like flairs (for flowers), furnityuer (for furniture), Oleo always (for butter), tators (for potatoes) but was never made fun of by any of us but just remembered for the special way she said things.

My oldest brother-in-law said it best when he said that she was a kind, simple person but that the world would be a little darker and colder without her in it. Simple……. meaning her and Pa Poston probably only went through 5th grade in their respective schools but each of them had a world of common sense and could do many gifted things with their hands and their minds.

Mark and I grew up in an age where respect for elderly people was taught just like reading, writing, and arithmetic. We got spanked more than once for not obeying that rule.

Mark made fun of a lady that was a close family friend when he was a little boy. The lady just so happened to be hair-lipped and when she said “Come over here and give me a hug ” in her hair-lipped voice, Mark answered her back in his mocking hair-lipped voice and said, “I don’t want no hug”. D. T. Poston about wore his backside out over that one!

My grandmother Huddleston was trying to whip me one time and I ran and got under the bed. She was a heavy woman and I knew that she couldn’t get under there so each time she tried to grab at me I would roll to the other side of the bed. When she walked to the back side of the bed, I would roll to the front again. This went on for a few seconds and then my Dad walked through and saw what was happening. He was tall and skinny and he jerked me out from under that bed and wore my hide out! I would never ever try that again.

As we were driving in the funeral procession the other day to the grave site, I kept seeing all of these vehicles that we were meeting just pulling over to the side of the road and stopping and even one man took his hat off of his head in respect. I was riding with my daughter-in-law and remember saying to her that you wouldn’t see much of that in some places.

It is respect. It is the old ways of doing things but I feel like in this modern day sometimes it is still the best way!

I am proud of how things are done around here in my home town and how we were raised and I hope that it never changes.

The Bible in 1 Timothy 4:8 (KJV) says it like this:

For bodily exercise profiteth little; but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.

Yes, Connor missed out on possibly getting seen by some college scouts and playing soccer in college is most definitely his dream but I could not have been more proud of him for choosing to give all of that up and show his great grandmother respect by carrying her to her final resting place.

I would call that respect!