Baptist Funeral
Last Tuesday I changed into some dry clothes and left the farm in the middle of the morning and joined my friends at a Baptist funeral in Old Town Alexandria. We went to mourn and honor an 89 year old wife/mother/grandmother/great grandmother/musician/ruler of her universe. As you must know by now, funerals are important to me. Of course I go because I want to be there with the people who have lost someone, that is the first motivation. But there are many other reasons to go -- it may be my first and last chance to get to know this person who moved through the world for so many decades. We get to hear how they grew up and how they affected people and what they cared about and the choices they made. It is a place to hear stories when people are at their most vulnerable. Emotions are real and not hidden. I always think about the fanfare that occurs when someone is born and weigh that against the fanfare of the departure. Completely different but so important, the storytelling that summarizes that person's walk on earth.
This woman was apparently a force to be reckoned with, from the earliest days. Tall, talented, commanding, intelligent, welcoming, sorority sister, military wife (which says a lot about how much she put up with throughout her life), married for 64 years to a high ranking military officer, devoted mother, classical pianist, music teacher for decades, a stately and beautiful woman. She grew up an only child with many social advantages, in Baton Rouge, and became Miss Southern at her university. This has real meaning in her place of origin. And she was the first African American woman to get a masters degree in music education at her university.
My connection to this powerful woman is quite distant, but I have heard stories about her for a few years, as she has been declining in health, and still trying to manage all that surrounds her. It was a frustrating and painful end for her, and for her family. End of life stories so often overwhelm the stories of the first 85 years, and that is why I like funerals -- the other parts of people's lives come roaring back after so much pain and sadness (often) while they make their exit.
Never having been to a Baptist funeral, I was curious about the rituals. Turns out it wasn't so very different from other traditional funerals. A choir sang hymns (about 15 African American women and three men, just like everywhere), a soloist sang with organ accompaniment, friends and family told stories. There were tears and there was laughter. The hardest part was imagining her husband, the Colonel, sitting up there in the front row, watching as they closed the casket over his lifelong partner for the last time. But he is a dignified gentleman who knows how to hold himself up, and he kept his broken heart inside. The pastor was a young man with a lot of wisdom and passion and he synthesized it all with great warmth. The part that caught my imagination the most was his saying that this woman "walked with God." Now, I know some of the backstory and I know that she wasn't really a church-going woman, even if she was definitely part of the community. But you don't have to be "churched" to walk with God, and we all know that. What does that mean anyway? It means that she was ethical, she had strong values, she cared about people, she worked hard for good, she shared her talents, she took care of her family. She definitely walked with God. Who knows if she even believed in God, but that doesn't even matter. That is just a way of saying that she lived a worthy life.
I didn't stay for the lunch, but the church ladies put on a big spread, and there was a head table for the family. Everything was taken care of by the church, even though the family wasn't a regular member of that community. That feels good to me. It feels good that people took care of the mourners, and that the funeral reflected the culture of the family.
A question that has been floating around in my mind, again sparked by this funeral, is the issue of belonging. Every human has the need to belong to some group, some place, some people. This woman belonged to a lot of people and she also created a place of belonging for people she wasn't related to. Cannot do better than that.
This woman was apparently a force to be reckoned with, from the earliest days. Tall, talented, commanding, intelligent, welcoming, sorority sister, military wife (which says a lot about how much she put up with throughout her life), married for 64 years to a high ranking military officer, devoted mother, classical pianist, music teacher for decades, a stately and beautiful woman. She grew up an only child with many social advantages, in Baton Rouge, and became Miss Southern at her university. This has real meaning in her place of origin. And she was the first African American woman to get a masters degree in music education at her university.
My connection to this powerful woman is quite distant, but I have heard stories about her for a few years, as she has been declining in health, and still trying to manage all that surrounds her. It was a frustrating and painful end for her, and for her family. End of life stories so often overwhelm the stories of the first 85 years, and that is why I like funerals -- the other parts of people's lives come roaring back after so much pain and sadness (often) while they make their exit.
Never having been to a Baptist funeral, I was curious about the rituals. Turns out it wasn't so very different from other traditional funerals. A choir sang hymns (about 15 African American women and three men, just like everywhere), a soloist sang with organ accompaniment, friends and family told stories. There were tears and there was laughter. The hardest part was imagining her husband, the Colonel, sitting up there in the front row, watching as they closed the casket over his lifelong partner for the last time. But he is a dignified gentleman who knows how to hold himself up, and he kept his broken heart inside. The pastor was a young man with a lot of wisdom and passion and he synthesized it all with great warmth. The part that caught my imagination the most was his saying that this woman "walked with God." Now, I know some of the backstory and I know that she wasn't really a church-going woman, even if she was definitely part of the community. But you don't have to be "churched" to walk with God, and we all know that. What does that mean anyway? It means that she was ethical, she had strong values, she cared about people, she worked hard for good, she shared her talents, she took care of her family. She definitely walked with God. Who knows if she even believed in God, but that doesn't even matter. That is just a way of saying that she lived a worthy life.
I didn't stay for the lunch, but the church ladies put on a big spread, and there was a head table for the family. Everything was taken care of by the church, even though the family wasn't a regular member of that community. That feels good to me. It feels good that people took care of the mourners, and that the funeral reflected the culture of the family.
A question that has been floating around in my mind, again sparked by this funeral, is the issue of belonging. Every human has the need to belong to some group, some place, some people. This woman belonged to a lot of people and she also created a place of belonging for people she wasn't related to. Cannot do better than that.
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