Death has to be the very first ever human obsession. In the beginning, humans did not obsess over life. Before we were rulers of the world and held dominion over Mother Earth, life was just a simple matter of survival. Well, it wasn't simple in terms of the how but it was in terms of the what. Eat, drink, sleep, defecate, procreate, and nurture the young. We humans lived like most other mammals did. We took what nature offered us in terms of food and shelter. It was only in death that we began to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the animals on the planet.
There was no great mystery in birth. Creating life through copulation was an instinct, just as eating, drinking, and sleeping were. We didn't question it we just did it. Death offered us the first boggle that induced us to use our oversized cranial matter. It offered us a reason to use or imagination and to think in the abstract. We had to invent a place that did not exist and that place was not in the physical world or available to us through our 5 senses like everything else we knew. The concept of nothingness, even to this day, is highly unacceptable to humans. So began the creation of the first virtual worlds, the Afterworlds, which were the very first significant creations of the human mind. The oldest human artifacts found mostly relate to burial ceremonies. Yes, there are also many artifacts that deal with birth and fertility but they are mimics of what we actually witness and experience in life. There was no way of knowing what was on the other side when it came to death. It was a one way ticket to the void.
We have split the atom and traveled through space but we still have not pierced the veil of death, though certainly not due to lack of trying. The greatest monuments on the planet are the Egyptian Pyramids and they are but three massive, timeless, odes to death. The Egyptians are acknowledged as being perhaps the first advanced people on the planet in terms of infrastructure, order, and the math and sciences, and from all accounts they were obsessed with death. Embalming may be the oldest science in the world. There is no culture in the history of mankind that does not have burial rituals.
In our highly advanced, technological culture, our approach to death is still a matter of the arcane and the rituals remain as they have since the beginning of time. Lifeless bodies are cleaned and treated to the greatest care, adorned with decorative artifacts, and either buried in the soil, housed in a mausoleum, or burned to ashes. All this attended by community and family members in mourning with elegant eulogies given to the recently departed. For many, respect is reaped in bounties that were never seen in waking life, such is our subordinance to the dead. Death is truly the master of us all.
But I’m not writing this blog entry to get into the details and intricacies of how we deal with death and our death rituals. This is more about how one family deals with it. Recently my eldest aunt, Johnnie Mae, died at the age of 83. My mother comes from a rather large family of 12, consisting of 8 girls and 4 boys, who are all now in their 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Johnnie Mae is the second sister to pass away in the last two years. I feel for my mother as it is hard to avoid the thought that given the age of her siblings funerals might become too commonplace for the remainder of her life. I was visiting my Mom on Thanksgiving when the she received the dreaded phone call. She had already attended two funerals that month.
I flew down from San Francisco to Los Angeles with a bit of excitement because, fortunately, for my mom’s family, funerals are not sad and gloomy gatherings. They are more like mini, impromptu, family reunions. 12 aunts and uncles equals dozens of first, second, and third cousins, and since we are spread out over the country from the home base of Alabama to California to the mid eastern states of Ohio and Pennsylvania any occasion for the family to get together is a blessing, even a funeral. I’m part of the West Coast Contingent and I don’t see my cousins for years at a time. Now we are all grown and have our own families, well, most of us do, and it is always a pleasure to see the next generation advancing in life and they are doing quite well from what I can see. Watching my little cousins run around playing games with each other takes me back to the 70’s when we did the same thing. There were a lot more of us and we were way more rambunctious.
We have a tradition of doing family reunions, usually in different parts of the country, and usually taking over a floor of a Hilton Hotel for a 3 to 4 days. I always wondered how other guests felt when they checked into a hotel and saw the hotel lobby and swimming pool full of African Americans and little black kids zipping up and down the hallways. My first trip on a plane and first time out of California was for the family reunion held in Pittsburgh back in 1975. For a California kid Pittsburgh was like visiting a foreign country. Just like our east coast cousins totally freaking out the first time they saw the Pacific Ocean, me and my brothers were fascinated by things that were foreign to us like fireflies, rivers running through the city, steel mills, bridges, basements, and real urban living where the houses were narrow, three stories high, and only separated by a few feet. I’ll never forget my Aunt Velma’s house with the white as snow carpet with runners, furniture covered in plastic, and the memorabilia shrine dedicated to the Pirates and Steelers.
The funeral was to be held in South Central Los Angeles at a small baptist church just off Vernon just a few blocks from the Harbor Freeway. I arrived in my rental car, a white convertible Mustang (free upgrade from Enterprise), and was greeted by my mother, her husband, and my oldest brother Keith and his three kids, Skye(16 yrs old), Kris (12 yrs old), and Tori (9 yrs old). We were the first family to arrive which was nice because it allowed me to spend some time with my mom and brothers who I only get to see once or twice a year. Over the next half hour, our aunts, uncles, and cousins showed up, kissing, hugging, and consoling each other, with extra love given to cousins Sandra, Tracy, and Stacie, the daughters left behind. Time changes everything. When we were little kids cousin Stewart was the oldest of male cousins of my generation and was the alpha male. Now just about all of us tower over Stewart and its been payback time ever since, but always in good fun, nothing malicious.
All of my mother’s sisters and brothers showed up for the funeral. We took our places in the church and the services began. Like my Aunt Carolyn’s funeral two years earlier the ceremony was lead by a charismatic preacher who’s powerful oratory skills filled the tiny church with much energy. The church going family did their part punctuating the end of each of the preacher’s proclamations with robust “Amens!” and “Allelujahs”! Halfway through the proceedings my cousin Miriam, a professional singer, came up to the podium to sing a gospel song in honor of Aunt Johnnie. Miriam has some serious pipes. She began in the classic, emotional style of soulful gospel singing and finished in a crescendo that took her from long sustained soprano highs to low and mighty guttural baritones that brought the crowd to its feet. Tears flowed and hands spontaneously went up in the air shaking invisible tamborines, praising the Lord with Amens and one particularly large woman was so moved she began speaking in tongues that lasted well after Miriam finished her song. Her performance sent chills up my spine. Cousin Afrika, the youngest cousin of my generation, followed by giving a moving eulogy to Aunt Johnnie and making a comittment to uphold family unity, imploring us all to do the same. I remember Afrika when she was just a little baby and I have always seen her like that but now for the first time I saw her as the powerful woman she has become.
In a perfect change of pace she was followed by her brother, Cousin Glen, or Glenny as we used to call him when we were kids. Afrika and Glen were two of the four children of my Aunt Emma and their family was very close to Aunt Johnnies family having spent their entire lives in South Central Los Angeles. Aunt Johnnie was the one who began the West Coast Contingent. She moved out west from Birmingham Alabama in the 40’s and was followed by many of her sisters, my mom included. My parents moved us out of LA proper to the Pasadena area in the mid 60’s while the rest of the West Coast Contingent stayed in South Central LA, so growing up we were the family that lived away from the nucleus and didn’t interact as much. At times, because of circumstances, Aunt Emma’s kids lived with Aunt Johnnie, so she was like a second mother to them. At the podium Glen began to relate to us his memories of Aunt Johnnie, speaking humorously about her well kept home with the plastic covered French colonial furniture. Glen told of how us kids could never enter Aunt Johnnie’s house through the front door, we always had to go around back and enter through the back door so we wouldn’t tromp all over her pristine living room. To enter through the front door would expose oneself to the Wrath of Aunt Johnnie. For a youngster she could be somewhat intimidating. She had a raspy voice from years of smoking and she still carried a lot of that Alabama southern drawl, and could swear like a sailor. Probably the most memorable memory Glen brought up was the “scent test”. Upon entering Aunt Johnnie’s house you had to present yourself to her for inspection. You had to raise your arms and let her get a whiff of your armpits. If you failed the test you were sent out to the backyard to hang out with the dog or you went to the bathroom and washed up. Aunt Johnnie wasn’t about to let any of us stinky boys defile her home.
Me and my brothers were lucky, we were spared the scent test because we didn’t spend as much time at Aunt Johnnie's house as Glen and the other LA cousins did. It must have run in the family because my mother would do it to me and my brothers at times. On Saturday mornings my mom would set herself up in the kitchen and talk on the phone for hours to her friends and relatives. In order to get out the front door you had to pass by her. Often times she would stop us on the way out and give us the once over, twice. If we smelled too manly, or our skin was too ashy, or hair too nappy, we were sent back to the bathroom to make ourselves more presentable and of course she would have to share that information with whomever she was speaking with on the phone in that tone of voice only a mother disgusted with her offspring could muster. The way she did it would always make you feel embarrassed and about two inches tall. Now that I am a grown man I can’t argue with her methods. She had four rambunctious boys and playing football, basketball, and running the streets all day was top priority. Showering and bathing were not. I can remember my mother actually rubbing dirt off my neck once with her finger. In the end she was really doing us a favor and keeping us somewhat civilized.
The pastor closed out the ceremonies with more lessons from the Bible. He must have known that he had the capacity to carry on all day so he told us if we wanted to slow his roll we needed to be emphatic with our “Amens!”. We didn’t heed his words with diligence until we realized he wasn’t joking as he powered on with one parable after another until finally the force of our “Amens” surpassed his colorful storytelling. We exited the church aisle by aisle and gathered on the sidewalk for an extensive session of photo opps. When our family gets together, photo opps are like being at the red carpet for the Academy Awards. For every group there were about a dozen cameras and video cams clicking away. There were so many cameras if you were in a group being photographed you really didn’t know where to look. We gathered in groups by individual families, we gathered by generation, we gathered by family sub divisions, and the holiest of the holies was the gathering of my mother and all of her brothers and sisters. If you were to drive by and see us crowding the sidewalk with beaming, smiling faces you would never think it was a funeral. Throughout the day and the ceremony the mood was not somber, it was celebratory. That’s just how it is when our extended family gets together. The funerals end up becoming mini family reunions.
Now that the funeral was over it was literally party time. We all caravanned over to the city of Carson to the spacious home of Cousin Erika. My nephew Kris and niece Tori sheepishly approached me and asked if they could ride with me in the convertible and of course I obliged. Riding in a convertible with me used to be the exclusive domain of my niece Skye but like I said before, time changes everything. I put the top down and off we went. We arrived at Erika’s house and the party began in earnest. The champagne, beer, and wine flowed freely and we lined up to attack the buffet of fried chicken, prime rib, greens, and potato salad. Cousin John-John, who is now enrolled in culinary school, held court in the kitchen adding strawberries to the chardonnay and frying up fancy shrimp. Cousin Chris, who has more than a bit of street in him and who’s stout build could be a result of too many trips to Popeye’s chicken, could be considered the family court jester. Baggin, crumbin, signifying, he’s the master and his jokes and stories had us laughing all night. The little ones took to the streets playing kickball and basketball just as we did when we were their age. The teens did what teens do, huddling in a small group manipulating their smart phones and exchanging the secrets of their clandestine world. The aunts and uncles sat in a circle and talked the night away, just happy to be together again. The ladies dominated the kitchen mixing juicy highballs and exchanging family gossip. The men found the tv room and planted themselves and their beers in front of the tube to watch the UCONN vs. Kentucky basketball game on ESPN, debating everything under the sports sun, from who was winning their fantasy football league to who is the best in the NBA, Kobe or Lebron. One thing they all agreed on was Kentucky guard John Wall may be the next Big Thing in basketball. Any stranger walking in to Erika’s house would never know all of had just attended a funeral.
Before the night ended, Big Brother Keith and Cousin Miriam gathered all the cousins for an impromptu family meeting to discuss the next family reunion. Our last two family gatherings had been the result of funerals and we didn’t want the next one to follow suit. After some discussion it was decided the next reunion would be in Las Vegas in 2011. Everybody seemed satisfied with the decision. The night had gone so well my brother Keith invited everyone to his home in Monrovia the following night for another family party which made everyone very happy, especially the East Coast contingent, who still had three days to kill (pardon the expression). I was not able to attend the party as I had to return to San Francisco but I heard it was off the chain. I knew it would be and I was really bummed that I was not able to attend.
Well, at least I was able to go back home to San Francisco buoyed and energized by spending time with the family which for me in my current state of extended unemployment was just what I needed. The search for hope and inspiration takes us all over the globe but often it can be found right under our nose, at a family funeral. God Bless!
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