On March 14, 2019, Farmer Bill Thayer hitches up his beloved team of Haflinger horses and drives them out to the woods to haul home some logs before a thaw would make it difficult. An hour later, Shepsi, farm partner, comes into the office at the back of our their farmhouse.  “Bill’s in the middle of the road,” he says. “I think he’s alive.” 

For the next two and a half weeks Cynthia stays with him in the ICU in Bangor, an hour and a half from home, until his heart becomes compromised and she needs to make a difficult decision. 

That first night back home, friends and family gather around him, make toasts, sing silly songs, read some Frost poetry, say their “good-byes.” The second night, he dies. In the morning, they wash him, dress him up in his jeans and muck boots, place him in a simple wooden box. They take him in the horse drawn wagon down the lane to a small cemetery where their granddaughter is buried. All over town bean suppers are canceled, all flags on the peninsula lower to half-mast, and they bury him covered by Grenadian colored cotton bought just a few months prior in Carriacou. 

Many hundreds of people from all over the country and Canada arrive at his “Jazz Party” sendoff. Friends plan the food, the town roads fixer digs the hole. All for no cost. A benefit pays for the obituaries. No funeral home, no embalming, no watertight casket. Just Farmer Bill tucked into the simple wooden coffin that Jeff made overnight, lying on a sheepskin from one of their old ewes, holding his drumsticks, and hugging an old headless Barbie doll. It’s full of comedy and sadness, fun and community caring. Interspersed with the chapters of Bill’s accident, are essays about their life in Maine from 1976 when they moved from Massachusetts.