Weddings and Funerals

This week is particularly historic for our family. The seven days from June 23rd through June 29th each have special significance. It is appropriate that Patsy and I are in Birmingham this weekend for the wedding, later today, of a first-cousin-once-removed, because much of this special family history is connected to Birmingham.



On June 23rd, 1937, my parents, McKinley Gilliland and Martha Jordan, became engaged. Two years later, on June 24th, they were married at Ruhama Baptist Church in the East Lake section of Birmingham.


On June 25th, 1964 my father died here in Birmingham after having been flown back from Nigeria with a brain tumor. He died in the hospital across the street from Ruhama Baptist Church.


June 26th is the birthday of my first cousin, the mother of today's bride. My cousin lives in Birmingham.


On June 27th of ’64, my father was buried in Forrest Cemetery in Gadsden, Alabama, between two beautiful cedar trees on a hill overlooking a steel plant.


Two years ago on June 28th, I had the delight of performing the wedding ceremony for my son, Matthew, and his beautiful bride, Meghan. That happy event, at least, was in North Carolina.


This next Tuesday, June 29th, would have been my Mother’s 93rd birthday, but she died six months ago, just two days after Christmas. A month later, we comemorated her life in another Birmingham church, then we buried her ashes next to my father between those two cedars in Forrest Cemetery. The steel plant, like so much of America’s heavy industry, closed years ago after it became cheaper to build in Gadsden with Japanese steel than with Gadsden steel.

Yesterday, coming from Atlanta on the anniversary of my father’s death, we “took the long way” and drove by way of Forrest Cemetery. The cemetery is owned by the City of Gadsden and is beautifully kept. Even so, those cedars make it hard for grass to grow around the Gilliland family footstones, and the eroding dirt collects on some of them. We cleaned my parents’ footstones as best we could.

Someone had recently placed fresh flowers in front of the Gilliland headstone.


The last time we were in Forrest Cemetery, to bury Mother’s ashes, the weather was cold and blustery, with the wind whipping bits of freezing rain at us. Yesterday was hot and muggy, and we were dodging thunderstorms instead of ice.

I am glad we're in Birmingham for a wedding this time. Weddings are more fun than funerals.