HEATHER BARKER
It best to have a job that give you flexi time or one that make your time flexible. Cos you’s a boss. Funerals ‘bout here, they’s long-long. Half day on average and if you get invite to the wake or you invite youself to the wake, well the dog dead. Anyway, they can’t fire you because you get appoint a couple of years back and it would be hell and high water for them to get you out of the job that the Minister of Public Works give you. And too besides, you been working in Government for donkeys’ years and you know when they get rid of people it does be last in, first out.
Better yet don’t even have no job but have money coming in still. Like you retired or something. And if you on sick leave and they see you at a funeral, don’t worry too much ‘bout it because they won’t be able to get rid of you. You get appoint. You job safe, safe like the kickbacks that the politicians quietly get from them contracts. Isn’t God good?
Buy The Nation early. Turn to the pages at the back for the obituaries while sipping peppermint tea at your small round table with the flowered tablecloth. Look for the obituaries with the photographs. The ones in colour, them is the best. For people of a certain stature. Maybe a former banker or politician. Don’t go to funerals if there’s no picture in the obituary or where the funeral announcement looks like a classified ad for (fake) Psychic Patricia or grass-cutting services. Those people, their families like they didn’t value them enough. Them kind of funerals not worth you time.
Read the obituaries slow and careful. The deads, “formerly of” New York or London with many grandchildren, those are good ones to go to. Nuff people will attend. Now, those with copious amount of nickname, especially the men, bypass those funerals like how you bypass neighbours wanting to know all yuh business. Probably full of drunkards and womanisers. And nobody can’t stand womanisers more than you. Because your son’s daddy did one. But those whose obituaries read “reputed husband of” or “reputed wife of”, there’s likely to be drama. And everyone ‘bout here knows that Bajans like a good piece of drama. There gine be tears, bawling, even cussing. Better than Days or Bold and Beautiful.
Have a special space on the side table in your house for the funeral programmes. And if you neat and tidy, arrange them in alphabetical order by names of the deads or by date, whichever easier. Every now and then pull them out and read them, and remember the dead, like how you remember yours. Like how our ancestors couldn’t because so many deads would pitch them headlong into grief. Grief that barely kept endless hours of slaving and the day-to-day dance of keeping their backside alive and their bodies clothed with a semblance of dignity, at bay.
Look for funerals held at the parish church. The ones with the historic spires draw many who more in love with the building than God. Where the smell of incense thrives in the velvet scarlet cushions in the pews worn down by plenty backsides. The parish church have beautiful stained-glass windows. It also have an aura that would make you sad and bawl and, if you prone to temptation, drag you to the rum shop six paces away.
Get to the church early, even though all them protocols, sanitisers and distancing gone, for now. One hour in advance, not half an hour. If you arrive half hour before the start you won’t be able to get a seat at the front. And a seat at the front is where all good professional mourners does take up their place after a friendly jostling and a careful side eye to survey what others wearing. Don’t sit pon the side with the family. No, sit opposite them. Sit close but be socially distant. Sitting down in church is where you does feel most important, and where you does long to let go of your griefs. You want a healing. Don’t tell nobody that though. They gine laugh or, worse yet, say nothing, their lips tight like cork stuck down the neck of a wine bottle. You wish you had somebody, a body that you could talk with and cry with, easy so. Instead you go to funerals and risk being wash ‘way by your sadness, like storm waters does sweep a chattel house from its footings.
Memorize the names of the deceased’s family. So that you could sprinkle them like grains of salt as you recite your condolences: I’m so sorry for your loss. Victor/George/Ethylene/Victoria/Bashley/Irma/Peter, etc. was a wonderful person. Sometimes you will be asked how you does know Victor/George/Ethylene/Victoria/Bashley/Irma/Peter and your answer is always a variation of: We did grow up together in the same village. Years ago. I hadn’t seen them in a while so I thought to come and pay me respects. He/she did such a nice person. And for Pete’s sake, speak the best standard English you could.
Mourning brings out the best of the dead. A nostalgic glaze comes over the bereaved when remembering even the most evil relatives who’ve gone on before them. Bereavement dementia. This is temporary; use it to get in with the family while you can.
Dress magnificently. Don’t wear the same outfit to funerals where you see the same mourners, professional or not. Keeping track of this will tear your head. It takes much planning and money to get new outfits made by the seamstress down the side alley off Suttle Street in town. You don’t wear dresses for this reason, you wear skirts and blouses and have nuff shoes and hats. Oh loss! The hats, they must be fabulous, not gaudy and they must not become a talking point. Or at least not a loud talking point. Sometimes your hats are navy blue. Navy is regal and it suits the skin tone of people of African descent, even the darkest ones. But even before you dress, when you come out of the shower, turn on the standing fan and take your time. You don’t want your makeup out of place. You don’t want to smell high under your armpits or in between your thighs where they rub together.
Learn to cry at opportune moments. Your tears must be genuine but not excessive. You will shed tears during the eulogy and the tribute about the husband or wife or daughter or son or brother or sister or best friend. You will cry if they say they had to bid their loved one goodbye through the screen of a smart phone held by a gloved hand. Wipe your eyes with Kleenex, not flimsy toilet paper that leaves small butterflies fluttering on your face.
Do not wail at the grave site, this is common and low-class and for those who will bury their dead at Westbury.
No, you is to cry with decorum. Your shoulders could heave slightly but do not scream Oh God, they dead. Do not jump into the grave or collapse to your knees in the moist dark brown soil that has been freshly dug out of the six-foot hole. Do not let mud get onto your shoes, do not walk on the soft-turned earth.
To cry better (there will be times that you need to) conjure up memories of your own losses. Your first-born dead to gun violence and the shame you felt at your words before the reporter from The Nation: “He did a good boy.” Yes, he was a good boy when he was a child and good to you when he became a man. But he wasn’t good all the time. Not when he stole from your purse and your credit union account. You must cry like you wanted to but did not at his funeral where you stood still, your chin jutted out a little too far forward, your back too straight. Your smiles at well-wishers and church members too broad and sunny. You thanked God for his life and said that you did fine, that he was in heaven now. That was why you could not cry. You told them it was a joyous day, a homecoming for your boy. You know now that you lied.
As you are at the gravesite singing When the Roll is Called up Yonder, remember the man who left you at the altar on your wedding day. Remember how you felt as the congregation whispered loudly behind your back. And how you walked out with your chin touching your chest and tears splashing the bouquet in your hand. Remember when your fiancé turned up later and told you that he was not good enough for you or that he had changed his mind or that he decided he should be with his children’s baby mother. The excuse changes whenever you recall it.
Mourner at the Kingston funeral of Gregory Isaacs, the Cool Ruler, 2010. Photo: Annie Paul
You strain to remember even less what Uncle Clovis tried to do to you in his house next door, always bragging about going off to ‘Merica for a better life. After you told your Daddy, Clovis flew off to New York quick-quick. He lay low but years later you heard he start to interfere with your niece, Gwen. Because of Uncle Clovis you never wanted to go to New York in case he invite you to his house. Even after he dead you never went. You gine stay on this little rock called Bim all the days of your life. The devil you know is better than the one you don’t know.
You may as well cry, but only when at funerals, for all the dreams that you buried. You buried so many you might as well be a gravedigger. That one about having a grandchild drop straight into the grave the same time that your son was buried. Your lineage gone and dead. What about that one about getting your own piece of land, not nothing in a tenantry but something that is yours outright. You work in Government for so many years and still can’t get piece of land. Even after you lie down with that sleazy minister nothing happened. So you still living in a house down a cart road that so rocky that neither car nor ambulance could get through.
Attend funerals only on days when your grief is in bloom, full and ready to fall onto the ground like ripe pawpaw. Let it splatter on the earth and stain you and those around you. Attend only those funerals where there’s a good chance there will be a wake afterwards. Wakes offer what you need in abundance — meals and laughter. Carry ‘long a piece of foil folded into four for leftover chicken, macaroni pie, sweet potato, fish cakes, cake and salad. As you shovel forkfuls into your mouth, you will still the pain, albeit temporarily. Laughter does the same, the louder the better. And at a wake you’re bound to have laughter that somersaults at cheerful reminiscences of the dead, especially their childhood escapades. Laughter is a pleasing addiction. Snort it often.
But as you sit now reciting Revelation’s no more pain, no more death, no more tears, dwell on each individual pain, death, tear, violation, not just yours but your mother’s and her mother’s before her. Crowd them as guests in your heart as you slump in the pew. Remember that they will never leave nor forsake you. Cry silently, with your chin touching your chest, and tears blurring your eyes. And when a woman, who looks familiar, who looks like family, taps you lightly on your right shoulder as you leave the church and hugs you, hugs you up tight, and asks how you are, how you are really, for once tell the truth. She won’t laugh or fold down her lips in silence when you reply. No, she will listen and she will hear, and she will understand because Gwen’s your family, she’s a pastor, and she’s a professional mourner too.
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