A BBQ Instead of a Funeral

I have a funeral phobia. I am not a big believer in the “closure” concept of seeing the body in the casket—I don’t want that memory sticking with me. I also strongly dislike funeral homes. The staff always have a well-used look of compassion plastered across their faces. Their compassion is hackneyed. I feel a stagnant, negative energy pulsating off the entire building, from thousands of people having come in and out in misery. I also strongly dislike the way there seems to be a sales room with samples of their outrageously priced articles for outfitting death. It is all disgusting to me. And that is why I was more than happy to attend a memorial that was not at a funeral home. Celebrations remembering a life, I like. Ones in the form of a BBQ, all the better.

Yesterday my family and I attended a memorial of someone that was dear to us and had suddenly passed on. Although none of us had seen him recently, the memories were fresh.

We made a two hour drive in the late afternoon through a few speed-trap towns, across a couple railroad tracks, above a marshy waterway, and finally to a small house divided from its neighbors by a chain-length fence. My two sleepy children climbed out of the van and clung to my side as we walked up to mingle with a crowd of unknown people leaning against vehicles, drinking and talking joyously—no black dresses, no tears. I went inside and set down our offering of food on the round wooden table, like an altar for a potluck supper. I spoke briefly to the lady of the house, taking in her accent, so different from my own. We grew up separated by a hundred miles, but two distinct cultures none-the-less. A collage of pictures was taped up to the wall as a natural ice-breaker for groups of people unfamiliar with each other, but united in one way.

The kids were invited to get a juice pouch out of the cooler set on the front porch. We don’t drink juice in our house, so the kids were ecstatic. The two-year-old, naive about juice pouches, proceeded to squish it and send a stream of juice flying six inches into the air. This was their ice-breaker.

More people arrived, with more food in covered dishes. We discussed our vague recollections of each other. An old pitbull with hair missing from its back-end sniffed me and made a lunge to lick my face. I listened to the sound of my feet up and down the wooden steps—that old, hollow, peaceful sound of a raised porch, back and forth.

A bell was rung, and all people, in and outside the chain length fence came forth to stand in a circle around the porch. On the upper half of the circle, on the porch itself, sat the elderly. Their faces were heavily wrinkled with all their years, and they must have been sitting there wondering. Why do some people live so long, and others so short? Is there a timer pre-set to tick away at life, until suddenly the buzzer goes off, and that’s it? The old ladies have had a long run with their timer and I wonder what they think about it all.

A man stood in the middle of the porch reading neat blue cursive handwriting from a sheet of notebook paper. He was calm and controlled, his energy so at peace, so unbending. He must have known about his timer, and he wasn’t afraid of it. His speech was succinct, and then he stepped back. A couple people tossed their voices forward, throwing in a few lines of jolly memories. Some tears were shed. No one else spoke up, not for lack of sentiment, but no more words were needed. All present had loved him, and all had a week to process the world without him. No one wanted to focus on anymore sadness. The hostess hollered “Let’s eat!”

The crowd disbursed, and I had opportunity to hold against me the brown strands of hair that belonged to the little girl that no longer had a living father. That hair is so much like my own.

I stood outside in the evening light at a high table in the grass. A cup of oil with a lit wick shoved down the middle of it wafted black smoke, back and forth, in the wind. I fed bites of mac and cheese and ham to the toddler as she ran around, back and forth, around my feet. The four year-old was laughing with the other kids, running, back and forth, across the yard. First, the children climbed in the back of a pickup truck, then they tossed around a tennis ball, and finally they pretended to gang up on their favorite uncles, attacking them from behind so that they would be flipped upward above shoulder height. My toddler forgot about eating and ran over, yanking on pant legs, saying over and over again, “My turn! I want to fly!”

I petted that old dog again, and let him get in a few slurps. The light faded more and more from the sky. It was crystal clear, but there was no dramatic pinks and purples, or even a bright gold. The sunlight just slipped away, at peace. The bats came out, and it was time to go home.

I went in to look at the pictures again. I grasped the Native American necklace that has been around my neck for a week. He was part Cherokee, and he would have liked the leaf charm made of bone that hung halfway down my chest. I silently said goodbye as I looked at his face, but I didn’t really feel like it was goodbye. There was a sense of him lingering nearby.

The drive home was long and dark through unfamiliar country roads. Patches of lanes shifting from construction made the seventy mile-per-hour speed near so many reflectors feel like a roller coaster. I found a cozy, reliable truck driver to follow behind and stared at his red tail lights, until things became familiar again.

Now it is today, and I awoke this morning. This timer is still ticking.