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    Clark-Kirkland Funeral Home

    3.0 (1 review)

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    9 years ago

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    Blackburn Funeral Home

    Blackburn Funeral Home

    (1 review)

    The last time I saw my grandfather, it was here. In the twenty years since, I feel fortunate that…read moreI've never been back. It was in seventh grade, just before lunch when I was told to go to the principal's office. Instead of seeing the principal, I saw my mother and stepfather when I got there and they told me my grandfather had passed away. A quick jump in the car and we drove from Columbus to Dayton, away from Jewett, away from Blackburn Funeral Home. My aunt was on a plane with her college basketball team when it happened. There was no way to get a hold of her, and she didn't have a car so we had to drive her back home. We stopped at Wendy's for lunch. The curious thing was that everyone who seemed to follow us into the restaurant was an older man who could've been my grandfather. I kept thinking maybe the next one would be him. Maybe this was all a joke. Or maybe it wasn't a joke, but maybe one of these men could replace my grandfather instead. I pointed one of them out to my mother. He was wearing a hand carved wooden arrowhead necklace just like one my grandfather had in his dresser, "Doesn't he look like grandpa?" I hear tragedy does things like that to people. I hear it's normal. Another hour and we were picking my aunt up from the airport. I think she knew as soon as she saw us. She cried a sparse few tears, told her coach she had to leave, and got into the car. It didn't help that the airline had lost her luggage. I remember the last time I spoke with him, my grandfather. It was in the hospital. My mother warned me that it was going to be bad, but that he wanted to see me. The truth was that it wasn't that bad, and today I'm grateful that I had a last chance to speak with him. We left Dayton and four hours later we ended up here, at Blackburn Funeral Home. The ceremonies themselves run together a bit in my mind. In a humble room that likely seats no more than one hundred, it was standing room only. Hundreds of people filed past the body to pay their respects, more than the entire population of Jewett. I never knew the names of most of the mourners, but I still remember many of their faces. My father was there for a reading with the Masonic lodge. He couldn't look me in the eye without tearing up, and constantly looked at the floor instead. At some earlier point I had called him and told him what happened. My parents had been divorced for two years, but my father and grandfather didn't share any animosity or love loss over that. It was odd to me, however. Not Blackburn's which is a small, humble funeral home in the Appalachian foothills, but the grief. Or maybe the lack of it. I remember feeling that it was almost bizarre that we were even assembled. There we were, gathered together to shed painfully few tears, to express little about what we were feeling, but rather to show how strong we were in the face of tragedy. No one pounded on the coffin. No one ripped out their hair. No one expressed the volley of painful, vibrant emotions which resided just below an otherwise calm surface. I didn't cry at all. I wanted to, but somehow felt it was wrong. Somehow I didn't know how to cry in the face of tragedy; twelve years old and divorced from my emotions, from feeling, or (heaven forbid) self-expression. Instead, as our culture and history mandates, I felt little more than a sense of loss and alienation, and even then I didn't know how to express it except through avoidance. Instead, there were occasional glances at family members, or even strangers, followed by weak smiles. I was twelve years old and scrawny, but I was a pallbearer. They had a little handle on the back that I lifted. I honestly don't remember the ceremony at the grave, but I still remember Blackburn's, etched in my mind. My grandfather lived the majority of his life in Jewett. My grandmother was born there, as was my mother, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, and my great aunts. I lived in Jewett for two years myself. I'm always glad to go back, but I'm relieved to say that in two decades I haven't returned to Blackburn's, and I can only hope that I won't need to go back for at least two more.

    Clark-Kirkland Funeral Home - funeralservices - Updated August 2026

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