This began as a comment about Tim's really wonderful piece about Southern Funerals.
My family is about as bad. I know which funeral home will be called, and where my family members will be buried. I even know which florist various members of my family will use. I think we are all leaving the songs up to whoever is stuck planning the thing (and paying for it) though.
And I don't know where I'll be buried and funeraled, which I find distressing. Everyone I really know is down here, but "our" funeral home is in Harrison. The older I get, the less I belong in Harrison (or the surrounding areas). So what do southerners do who have lost their place in the world?
Joe Kenneth died week before last. It is not like he and I were close, by any stretch of the imagination. But Joe Jr. and Craig were best friends all the time we were growing up. And when Jr came over, I played GI Joe with them (I got to be Scarlett) until Algebra destroyed any free time that remained in my life.
When my parents called me to tell me that he died (okay, so Dad emailed me-- we are just that dysfunctional) my question about the arrangements was "when" because I knew where. And who would officiate. And I wish I could have gone. Right now, my life is not arranged in such a way that I can just take off. Although when Aunt Dorotha died, I made a flying trip to Harrison for the visitation.
There is something comforting about going to a funeral in my hometown. I know the people who are there, many of whom I care for a great deal. I know what will happen. (Well, except the time I almost pulled out of the "family side" of an icy parking lot at a funeral home). But a funeral, for better or for worse, is a ritual. And as such, it reinforces our place in the world.
1 comment:
"There is something comforting about a funeral in my hometown." Oh, Laura, that's a wonderfully poignant truth and musical line. Poetry, really, and I understand exactly what you mean. When Jimmy Lee died, the guy I wrote about in my blog entry, it was the scandal of the new century that his funeral was officiated by a black church in a town 20 miles south of town. But none of the churches around town would pay to funeral a poor white trash meth head.
I'm still the line about the comfort of funerals for my next piece in my Southern funerary series. When I publish my novel on this topic (oh, if only), I'll be sure to mention you in the acknowledgments. (I probably would have anyway had you not offered up that amazing line).
Post a Comment