Blacks Throw the Best Funerals. An Editorial
Blacks Throw the Best Funerals
-B.R. Moroni
There will always be controversy about racial equality and inherent ethnic traits. However, I have to say that African Americans really know how to honor a lost loved one. Perhaps even more important, blacks seem better at helping each other get through the grieving process, better than whites.
I had attended three funerals in a very sad two months. All were nice but at one, the last one, there was more love, more soul, more passion, more singing, more enthusiasm and more spirit than at any funeral I have ever previously attended. The deceased was loved by so many people, it was a church full, standing room only. The speakers were reverends, ministers, deacons, elders, relatives, her children and, her next door neighbor. I don't even believe in God but I gotta tell ya, there was more spirituality in the United Methodist Church that one morning than any Catholic will find in the proverbial "month of Sundays". It was truly moving.
The service was for Ina, the mother of my girlfriend Scarlett's closest friend. I had only been in the same room with Ina three times when she was alive, and all three times were very special. The last time was the day we buried Momsie, Scar's grandmother. Ina asked me to sit next to her because she was chilly. I put my arm across her shoulders and she giggled like a little girl. She said, "Oooh Brad, how can you be so warm when I am so cold?" I told her I had good circulation. She said, "Well you just keep circulatin' right were you are." I was asked to be a pall bearer by Beverly(Scar's friend, Ina's daughter). She said, "Braddie, Mommy wants you to keep her warm a little while longer." How could I refuse?
Near the end of the service, after many folks spoke and Beverly read a poem and the minister gave a powerful sermon that had people shouting and jumping around spiritually overwhelmed, Beverly's sister Kathy sang a song. I don't know the title nor the exact lyrics to the soul stirring gospel piece but it went something like this:
And if, my mother must walk alone,
She won't be afraid or cry
Because if my mother must walk alone
It's because she has Heaven in her sight.
She sang once from the pulpit with a piano accompaniment. Then she stepped away from the microphone and shouted, "I will sing that again!" Which she did, a capella as she walked down the steps from the alter. Perhaps "sang" is not precise enough. I think Kathy actually emoted the song as she turned her back to the congregation and repeated it louder and more clearly, to her mother, as she walked slowly to the casket and finished the song with palpable power and love as she laid her hand on the beautifully finished maple box. Immediately the awestruck church full of teary eyed mourners erupted in a standing ovation. I found myself sobbing while Kathy sang and I was the first one standing at the end.
After the gravesite service, everyone returned to the church and ate collard greens and macaroni and cheese and beans and rice with sausage and lasagna and fried chicken and sausage and peppers and ham and turkey and corn bread and cake and pie while they laughed and cried and shared memories of Ina.
Long live the American Negro culture! True and pure.
