Auntie and I walked down the aisle hand in hand, following the ritual of the family processional for Reginald’s home going.  As we neared the front of the aisle, I turned to take a seat next to my grandmother, but my Auntie pulled my hand and redirected me to the open casket to look at his remains.  Auntie’s face was calm, assessing how well the body is preserved.  She nodded slightly, raised her eyebrows, and pursed her lips as to confirm that the funeral home did a good job; she approved.  I, on the other hand, gingerly peeked over.  My eyes immediately shut and my head turned away.  That thing in the coffin is not Reginald.  It looked like Reginald, but his skin was pallid and powdered.  From what I could tell, it easily could have been a wax replication of the man I knew rather than his actual body.  I quickly pulled Auntie’s hand and we sat next Grandma as the others following us repeated the ritual of viewing.  After the viewing by all others, it was Grandma’s turn to view her husband’s body, Son standing by her side.  The pain of loss did not rise in me until I saw the grief in Grandma’s face as she was forced to confront that the man she loved for nearly 40 years is gone.  It’s a cruel requirement of the recently deceased to make us look at them when they know their true essence is not there.

There were 13 years between my attendance of a funeral.  The benefit of being relatively young is that you are not forced to confront your mortality or the mortality of others. Barring freak accidents or rare diseases, someone around my age who lives a middle class life in an industrialized country rarely has to concern themselves with the idea that those we entrust into our lives will one day leave us, or that one day we may leave them.  Funerals remind us that this time is temporary.  It is not to say that I haven’t lost people in the last 13 years, but that there is something about attending a ritualized mourning that makes the loss more difficult to burden.

Reginald’s coffin was a beautiful mahogany with a high gloss finish, and copper accents.  The floral arrangements were tactful. Simple banners with the identity of the giver printed in gold leaf were pinned neatly against oranges, reds and whites — gladiolus, torch ginger, anthurium, carnations and Asiatic lilies in circles and fans.

Before the home going, the family circled in a room outside of the chapel, and Pastor apologized for the state of the chapel before beginning her prayer– something about a speaker that wasn’t done right and had nothing to do with the ceremony.  It was a glimpse of her vanity; something that would punctuate the service to come.  She made us bow our heads as she asked the Lord for us to have a — what would one call it? — a blessed remembrance.  It was strange to have to ask for an easy grieving ritual before the actual ritual, like God gave a damn about whether or not we prayed a little longer, and rejoiced in His name a little more even in the face of our personal loss.  I wanted to tell the pastor that God had his point proven with Job;  let’s just hurry up and get this over with so I can be uncomfortable somewhere else, and not uncomfortable where I currently was, which was holding hands with a practical stranger in four inch heels I hadn’t worn in a year and had forgotten were uneven from wear.  My feet hurt;  the pastor’s prayer annoyed me; and the only thing I could think was “please don’t let me fall when I go up to speak.”

Really the only point of the home going is for the people left behind to have a form of closure.  There’s this story about Emily Dickinson used to illustrate her being reclusive where she refused to go to her father’s funeral.  The funeral was being held in parlor of their home on the first floor.  She was on the second floor.  I think she had the right idea.  Who wants to have the last memory of someone they loved be them dead?

The funeral, itself, was not much out of the ordinary.  There was the second apology by the pastor about the speaker, and some quick stories about how she knew Reginald.  There was the obligatory “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” sung by someone who never met the deceased, bible passages by the grandchildren, obituary by a niece, and an organ player who spent most of the service texting with someone.  I was sandwiched between two aunts, and the provider of tissue for all.  Somewhere in the middle of the service, the pastor said that we were being too solemn and that the Holy Spirit was directing her that Reginald would want us to rejoice in the house of the Lord.  She spoke in a cadence that rose and fell like the ebbs of a tide with an oncoming storm.  She demanded we rejoice in the Lord, clap our hands, say “hallelujah” because Reginald loved the Lord.  She repeated the same message of directives for a few minutes with the refrain of “Reginald loved the Lord.”  Part of me wondered how well she knew him.  Part of me wondered if she was equally as uncomfortable with communal mourning.  Mostly, I just thought, “When will this be over?” After a few awkward testimonials, and a final statement by the pastor, who then broke out into song, her rendition of “I Love the Lord,” we were released.

Grandma made her way to the limo.  There was a line to follow, all to give their condolences before the repast.  In case you are wondering what a repast is, it’s that meal you see in all of the movies where everyone mills around a home, making uneasy small talk.  When it’s a black family, it’s called a repast (it comes from the French meaning meal — I had to look it up).  Silly me, I thought that when the funeral was over, we would be able to flee to the restaurant and be out of step there, but, no.   There is a requirement that everyone come to the widow, and tell her how important the deceased was and how they feel for her loss.  Each tribute ended nearly the same way: “If you need anything.” An empty promise stated at the end of each “I’m sorry for your loss.”  Many of the people who spoke to her had never met her before, and would never see her again, but the promise was still made.  I don’t know if it can really be conveyed how odd it must have looked to the passerby that there was a line leading to a limo in South Central Los Angeles.  What rap star or celebrity could it be? No, just Grandma, numb to an onslaught of well wishers, all wanting the chance to say something, anything, desperate to share their bit of nonsense.  Somewhere during this observance, I did fall, on the steps of the church, in front of everyone.  We left shortly after.

The repast was in a bright and airy room that overlooked the marina in a restaurant where you had to walk on a bridge over a Koi pond.  The name of the restaurant was crass in nature, giving homage to its less than regal origins when many many years before the area was filled with a more savory sort of clientele.  Auntie, Grandma, and I sat together again.  We were “ride or die” that day.  The eight or so other tables filled quickly.  No one, not even my father, wanted to sit at our table.  It’s still unclear if the reason people avoided our table was due to some energy we were putting out, or their own uneasiness with sitting with the widow.  Honestly, though, how can you make small talk with a woman who lost her husband of 40 years?  It’s most certainly not the table where you can talk about the new import you’ve had your eye on, or how your niece is getting married in a couple of weeks.  That’s not going to be the fun table.  People would visit — those who did not pay their respects at the church — and, while they would carry on with their sorries and promises, Auntie and I talked about the real estate by the marina, judging the different items from the buffet, recapping the funeral service, every so often glancing over to Grandma to see who was making their emotional offerings.

At some point, a man had situated himself next to Grandma.  He was greasy, and his thin lips curled at the ends.  He was a light skinned man with curly hair that had too much product in it.  He wore gaudy clothing, a gold chain, and he leaned too close when he spoke to her.   In his defense, I later found out that he had been infatuated with Grandma since he was a very young man, but he made me more uneasy than the situation already lended.  I expected that there was a pimp cane, an overcoat, and a hat waiting for him at his seat at a different table.  I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but I wanted him to disappear.  Whisper, whisper, whisper … “I can call you and …” whisper, whisper whisper … “You know you’ve always been a beautiful woman … ” whisper, whisper whisper.  This went on for too long, but, finally, another interloper arrived.  As the repast wound down, Grandma turns to me and says, “Drink as much of that champagne as you can.  We paid for it.”  And, I did.

A couple of days later, with a much smaller gathering, we buried Reginald.  The burial took no more than fifteen minutes, with very little fanfare.  The same tactful arrangements from the service were lined up between graves.  The pall bearers had a time getting the coffin to the grave because they wanted to avoid the tombstones of those already at rest, like the dead actually care if you walk on a piece of stone.  The pastor’s sermon was short –a passage about returning to the ground — punctuated at the end with an offer to counsel Grandma whenever she needed the Lord.  His casket was lowered, and the funeral director came to Grandma to offer her condolences one last time, and to remember their business for the next service.  The witnesses to Reginald’s final resting pulled flowers from the arrangements, morbid souvenirs  of the event.  Grandma, calmly remarked that it was a lovely place, although there was supposed to be a wall.  Then she turned to me and said, “You know you’ll be here one day.”  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I would not be buried, but would be burned.  I walked her to the car where the picked over flowers awaited us, and we left Reginald on a hill overlooking others who were at rest.