Death Story

By Lyndsay Rowley

The First Burial of a Child

His great uncle died when he was 18, and his mother was very fond of the uncle.  His brother and he were told we were to be pallbearers in the funeral.

For the majority of the funeral all I could think about was why my great uncle did not slide around in the coffin and how they got him in the casket."

"It was after that funeral that I realized that I was meant to go into the mortuary business."

Ron Horton always thought he was going to be a teacher, but even at such a young age Ron knew he was meant for something other than teaching. 

Ron is a 60-year-old man who spends his days planning with the living to celebrate the dead.

This polite full-figured man came to High Point, NC after he graduated from Cincinnati Mortuary College in 1972.

Ron has been the funeral director at the Sechrest Funeral Home for 37 years, but it never gets easier to see grieving individuals over their loved ones.

As you walk into Sechrest funeral home you are welcomed with smiling faces and kind words.  The rooms are filled with flowers and furniture displaying an array of colors.  The couches are covered in lavender floral 

In every corner of every room of the building sits an empty chair that has certainly embraced  a troubled soul at some point in time.

Ron stares with glazed eyes into the distance, "you would think that it would get easier.  That one would get used to seeing people so upset over their losses, but it doesn't."

Ron goes on to explain that through the thousands of services he has had, there is still one that haunts his memory from his first year of work.

"I remember when I had my first service for a child who had died.  It was a young boy who had died in a car accident."

Fidgeting with his fingers Ron explains, "I remember when they told me that he made it to the hospital but died on the operating table."

Putting his hand over his mouth Ron continues, "I remember meeting his mother for the first time.  It appeared to me that she had died along with her child." 

Ron came to learn a lot about the boy.  He learned that he liked baseball and that he had dreams of be an astronaut.  He was a boy who lit up every room he walked into with his smile.

Ron takes off his glasses and rubbed his eyes before folding his hands and leaned over to look at the ground, "it still isn't easy to talk about today."

Ron goes on to explain that at the funeral he had never seen so many people so broken hearted.

At the burial site hundreds of people gathered around the small white coffin to pay their last repects to the boy whose life had been cut short.

Wide eyed remembering the details of that day Ron explains, “it certainly wasn’t raining that day, but the grass was surely wet from the sheer amount of people that were crying.” 

"I see loads of people cry on a daily basis, but I had never scene that many people crying at a single service before.  It was obvious that this little boy had a tremendous effect on people's lives."

Ron explains that the most difficult part of the service was when he walked out in the main room to get away for a couple of minutes, and he saw the little sister of the deceased sitting in a chair in the corner.

"She was the cutest thing.  She must have been about four or five with blonde ringlets."

The little girl was wearing a black dress that had a white ribbon that wrapped around her tiny waste.  She was wearing white tights with black shiney shoes.

"She only took up about half of the seat she was sitting on.  The chair seemed to overpower her little body."

Ron walked up to the little girl and asked her how she had know the deceaced.

The little girl in formed Ron that she the little sister of the deceaced and that her brother was now in heaven.

Taking a deep breath and crossing his legs Ron says, "her soft innocent voice broke my heart.  I told her she was right and that if she needed anything to let me know."

Ron continues by saying that every time they have a service for a child the thought of that little blonde girl still creeps into his mind.

"It was a beautiful service.  It's always harder to bury a child, but for some reason no other service has really stuck with me like that one."

A beautiful service is Ron’s way of celebrating the life of the dead. This is why Ron got into the mortuary business.

Sitting back in his chair Ron lets out a sigh, "everyone has to die sometime."