Free Then Sings My Soul by Amy K. Sorrells

remembering others. Old teachers, shop owners, neighbors, parents of her schoolmates, couples, widows and widowers of Jakob’s coworkers from Brake-All—each person reflected how Catherine spent her life devoted to raising Nel and loving Jakob. The number of attendees was not overwhelming, and in other settings some might have been disappointed in the turnout. But Nel thought it was all perfect. The people who’d come mattered to Mom, and Nel knew Mom mattered to them.
    Then she saw David Butler. She hadn’t noticed him arrive, but he sat in the back pew, adjusting his tie in a way that made it obvious he wasn’t used to wearing one. His face was ruddier than when they’d been in high school. He’d aged well, the years adding definition and a sort of wisdom to his once-boyish features. His hair was dark, nearly black like hers, except for around the temples. She hadn’t realized she’d been staring at him until he nodded at her and grinned. She raised her hand and waved—Waved? How old was she, sixteen?—then snapped back around in her seat, annoyed at herself for blushing and acting like a teenager. The over twenty years that had passed since their senior year had done little to dampen her infatuation with him.
    Mike approached Nel and Jakob. “Excuse me a moment, Reverend. Jakob. Nel. Does anyone need more time before we make the final preparations before the service?”
    Nel shook her head, lowering her eyes to the handkerchief she’d brought, one she’d found in her mother’s vanity, hand embroidered with the letters CBS, Catherine Bessinger Stewart.
    â€œI said my good-byes to her every evening, and the other night was no exception,” Jakob said, looking wistful. His damp eyes regarded the casket. Then he turned to Nel. “You know, she had all the verses, the order of the service, “How Great Thou Art” for the hymn—everything picked out—and the instructions taped to the inside of her Bible?”

CHAPTER 8
    Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
    Praise Him all creatures here below,
    Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
    Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
    The pipes of the old organ belted out the familiar refrain, but Jakob did not sing along. He knew why Catherine had chosen this hymn to conclude her funeral, and he did not wish to comply with her reasoning.
    â€œPraise Him even when you don’t feel like it. Always, always praise,” she’d said.
    He figured she’d chuckle at his stubbornness, which transcended the fact that she’d passed. He was tired. Tired of funerals. Tired of watching everyone he knew and loved be buried while waiting for his own burial, which ever eluded him. Tired of the realization he’d had for some time now that life really was meaningless, as Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes. God seemed to be everywhere around the dead, but Jakob had yet to find much evidence of Him around the living, besides on the countenance of his wife and a few other exceptions like Mattie. More than that, why sing if you don’t feel like it?
    He felt like hollering this question out loud, jolting Reverend Winslow and the rest of the mournful assemblage, disrupting the plangent vibratos of Catherine’s octogenarian friends singing in the pew behind him.
    When he got home, he’d put a note on the inside flap of his Bible telling people to read Ecclesiastes, the entire first chapter, at his funeral, about how none of the laboring, the sunrises and sunsets, mattered. How the generations are forgotten. How living long and getting old doesn’t mean a hill of beans. And how faith, once you’ve seen folks slaughtered because of it, becomes something you lock tight deep inside.
    As Reverend Winslow began the eulogy, Jakob flipped the pew Bible open to the eighteenth verse of the first chapter of Ecclesiastes. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief, 1 he read