How I Survived a Southern Funeral

My Uncle was a good man. In summer of 2016, his death rocked an entire community to its core. He was a man of few words, an artist and philosopher of sorts. A believer in God, yet against the bureaucracy of the church. He owned a restaurant and catering business in the small South Carolina town he grew up in. He was born there and never left. He didn’t need to though. Because in his eyes he had everything he needed. His family, his friends, and his business. And of course a lover to round out his story. I am happy that my Uncle was someone important in her life, and her in his. She was different from the rest. She had spunk and a level of individuality. She was not stuck in the southern way of what a woman should be.

We were to meet at my grandmother’s house to ride in a motorcade to the service. On our way to her house we passed a church. The small field next to it was filled with cars. More cars were parked on the grassy median on the rural highway. As we passed the church we thought out loud to ourselves that someone must have been having a very large funeral. Little did we know it was for my Uncle. Despite my southern roots, I had never attended a funeral of this cultural kind.

My sister and I rode in a van with other cousins while our parents rode in limos. The ride was as congenial as one could be considering the circumstances. It’s hard to know what to talk about since we all knew where we were headed. The van was moving really slow. Literally 20 miles per hour the whole way there barely picking up speed above 35 when it really got going. The driver was driving so slow that we weren’t even part of the motorcade. Cars passed us. According to the driver this was on account of them putting “bad gas” in the tank. What he really meant was that some genius put gasoline in a vehicle that ran on diesel.

The beginning of the service was beautiful. There was singing and worship. It was moving in a positive celebratory direction. But the tone quickly changed. The amount of sadness in the room was of epic proportions. Truly insurmountable. I never knew sorrow could manifest itself to where it takes over the room and like a weed, sucks the life out of those in it. My aunts and cousins were wailing. Some unable to stand because of how grief stricken they were. When this happens, the practice of wailing over the dead, I wonder if the person who died would want it to be that way. Everyone so unbelievably sad. Do they care that some that mourn them never really knew them? Or that some are just there for the food after? There came a point where I could not cry anymore. I felt dehydrated. But to not cry felt wrong. So I kept at it. My mind wandered to other things that made me sad. The thought of how sad everyone else was, how sad the situation overall was, and that one episode of The Closer where Kyra Sedgwick’s character walks into her mother’s room to find her dead. Literally anything but my own sadness. Just things to keep me crying. Because my own sadness wasn’t enough. I know that sounds wrong but there is something psychologically trying about a funeral.

When it came time for the viewing of the body I stood up and took my turn in line. I wrung my hands nervously. I never made it to the casket. I lost it. I began to breathe hard and I rushed back to my seat. I’m sure if there were people in front of me I would have pushed them out of my way. In my seat, I broke down. My sister came to my side to console me. I was not wailing, but it was a decent cry. I cried because of how pale and lifeless my Uncle’s body looked from my seat. I questioned this practice too, viewing the body. I will forever have that picture of him lodged into my brain. Why must we view the body? Why remember a person looking cold, pale and lifeless when we can rely on our memories of that person?

Looking at the body is a surreal experience. It is also emotionally destabilizing. It is the moment where it all settles that he really isn’t there anymore. The situation is really trippy. I’d like to think that my uncle passed on to a better place. That he is watching over us from heaven. Despite being raised in the church, and being a firm believer of God, I sometimes question the existence of Heaven. I wonder if it’s just a place we say people go to ease the pain of their passing. I feel horrible admitting that. But it is a passing thought I have from time to time.

My heart broke for my father as I watched him mourn the loss of his younger brother. Probably one of the only times I will witness my father cry. My other Uncle, who didn’t want to say anything in regards to his death in the beginning and the days following his death, began to sob. That broke me too. My Aunts mostly cried loudly and screamed. My grandmother has Alzheimer’s. She did not really understand the fact that her son had passed away. According to her, as her caretakers tell her, he is still at the hospital. All of us would like to keep her understanding strictly at that level. Why experience pain when you do not have to?

My Uncle was one of eight children. He was also the second youngest. So it was inevitable his death would be taken so hard. He was not old. He did not have a terminal illness. He was recovering from spinal surgery and undergoing physical therapy. He had recently lost 45 pounds and was just released from the hospital. His blood pressure dropped suddenly the morning after he was released. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. He was literally alive and excited for his future, to get out of the hospital after being there for months, one day. And dead the next. He was 45 years old. That did not sit right with me or my immediate family — especially my father. But that is another story for another time.

I survived this experience by taking in everything in my environment and comparing what I observed to my own values. I learned several things that day:

• Funerals are a business and their business is death.
  • After the nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters placed a rose on top of the casket they lowered my Uncle’s body into the ground accompanied by a skipping gospel track emanating through the open doors of one of the limos. I glanced back over my shoulder as we were leaving the site to find the burial ground custodians had brought the casket back up and removed the flowers off the top of it. The show was over.
• Funerals are not for the dead. They are for the living.
• I do not process death well.
  • It takes me a long time to actually conceptualize that a person is actually gone. Whilst physically laying there dead in front of me. They are no longer there. I do not know about other people, but that is a lot to take in.
• Funerals as celebrations of life are a fallacy.
• Although I slay in black, I hate funerals.