8 min read · 1,439 words
The last funeral program I made sat on the cutting table Tuesday morning with the plastic laminate still warm from the roller.
I knew the family. The Hendersons. Lived over on Sycamore near the old grain elevator. The church called me Saturday and I had it done by Monday afternoon, same as always. White cardstock with the photo centered and the hymn list on the back. I didn’t put my shop name on it. Never did.
Nobody knew about the programs except the churches. They’d call, or sometimes just slip a note under the shop door with a name and a date, and I’d do the work. It cost me maybe $7,000 a year in paper and laminate and time, but that’s what you do when you live in a town like Cairo. People help each other. You don’t make a show of it.
I’d been doing it for seventeen years. Started back in 2008 when Reverend Oakes from First Baptist called and said a family couldn’t afford a program for their daughter’s service and could I help just this once. I said sure. Then it was twice. Then it was every month. After a while I stopped counting.
The shop itself was nothing fancy. Two offset presses, a paper cutter, a laminator, and about forty years of ink smell worked into the walls. I leased the building from Vernon Kolb, who owned half the commercial block on Washington Avenue. The lease was month-to-month. Had been since 1991. Vernon never raised the rent. I never asked why.
In February, Vernon called and said he’d sold the building to a developer out of Paducah. They were tearing down the whole block to put in something new, probably apartments, and I had sixty days to be out.
I was 69 years old. I had two printing presses that weighed about 1,800 pounds each, no lease anywhere else, and nowhere to put them. I called around. Nobody in Cairo had space. The buildings that weren’t already rented were falling apart or priced for people who weren’t me. I thought about Paducah, maybe Cape Girardeau, but moving the presses that far would cost more than I had, and starting over somewhere new at my age didn’t make sense.
I figured I was done.
The sixty days went fast. I sold off most of the supplies. Gave away the paper stock to the schools. Called my customers and told them I was closing. A couple people said they were sorry to hear it. Most just said okay and hung up.
On the last day, April 9th, I was supposed to be out by noon. I got there at six in the morning to start loading my truck with the small stuff. Boxes of business cards, the laminator, my desk lamp. The presses were staying. The developer said they’d haul them out with the rest of the building.
At 7 A.M. I heard trucks pull up outside.
I looked out the front window and saw three white moving trucks, the big kind with the lift gates, parked in a line down Washington Avenue. A crew of maybe six people got out. They were already unloading furniture dollies and moving blankets. I figured they were there for one of the other buildings.
Then a woman got out of the first truck.
She was maybe 45, dark hair pulled back, wearing jeans and a work jacket. She was holding something in her hand. She walked straight to my shop door and knocked.
I opened it. She held up a funeral program. It was laminated, a little worn at the edges, and it had a photograph of an older woman on the front. I recognized it immediately. I’d made it in 2011.
She said, “You made this for my mother’s funeral. You didn’t charge us.”
I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded.
“I’m Deanna Morris,” she said. “My mom was Clara Morris. She died in 2011 and we didn’t have any money for a service. Reverend Oakes called you and you made fifty programs for us. You didn’t put your name on them and you didn’t ask for a dime.”
I remembered the Morrises. They’d lived out past the cemetery on Route 3. The mother had died suddenly. Heart attack, I think. The family was struggling.
“I kept one,” Deanna said, and her voice cracked a little. “I’ve carried it in my purse for fourteen years because it was the only thing we had that made my mom’s funeral feel real. When Reverend Oakes told me you were losing your shop, I made some calls.”
I still didn’t understand. I looked past her at the moving trucks.
“We’re here to move you,” she said. “All of us. We found you a space in Mound City. It’s small but it’s got room for the presses and the rent’s paid for six months. After that, we’ll figure it out.”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
She turned and waved at the trucks. The crew started walking toward the shop. One by one, other people got out of the trucks too. I recognized some of them. A man I’d made a program for in 2015 when his father died. A woman whose son’s program I’d done in 2019. A couple I didn’t know at all, but they were carrying toolboxes and rope.
Deanna looked at me. “We called every church in Cairo and asked who you’d helped. Reverend Oakes kept a list. It was 1,847 programs over seventeen years. We reached out to everyone we could find. Eighty-three people donated money. These six here took the day off work to move you.”
I couldn’t stop staring at the funeral program in her hand. The laminate had a crease down the middle from being folded and carried for fourteen years.
One of the men, older guy with a gray beard, stepped forward and shook my hand. “You did my wife’s program in 2013. I’m Lonnie Briggs. We’re getting you out of here today, and we’re getting those presses to Mound City in one piece.”
They worked for five hours. I mostly stood there and pointed at things when they asked. They wrapped the presses in blankets and used a hydraulic lift to get them onto the trucks. They packed every box, every piece of equipment, every roll of paper I’d thought I was leaving behind. Deanna stayed the whole time. She didn’t do much lifting, but she kept talking to people, organizing, making sure everyone knew what went where.
By noon, the shop was empty. The building looked smaller without all my stuff in it. The developer’s crew was supposed to show up at one to start tearing it down.
Lonnie Briggs clapped me on the shoulder. “New place is about twenty minutes north,” he said. “We’ll meet you there and get you set up.”
I tried to say thank you but my voice didn’t work right. He just nodded and got back in his truck.
Deanna was the last one to leave. She walked over and handed me the funeral program, the one with her mother’s face on it.
“You gave us this when we had nothing,” she said. “Keep it. So you remember what it meant.”
I still have it. It sits on the desk in my new shop in Mound City, right next to the laminator. The crease down the middle is permanent now, and the edges are soft from being carried in a purse for fourteen years.
I’ve been here eight months. The rent’s still paid. I don’t know who’s paying it anymore because Deanna won’t tell me. I’m still doing the programs when the churches call. I still don’t charge. I still don’t put my name on them.
Last week I got a note under the door. Just a name and a date and a request for thirty-five programs. I made them on Thursday, same white cardstock, same layout. Delivered them Friday morning. The family didn’t know who I was. That’s fine. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
The crease in Clara Morris’s program catches the light sometimes when the sun comes through the window. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at it without seeing Deanna standing in my doorway at seven in the morning, holding it up like proof that quiet work still matters, even when you think nobody’s paying attention.
They were. They all were.