The Choir Invisible

My mother used to have a pile of cards and programs collected from the funerals she attended. They were almost all conducted by the same undertaker, with the same illustration on the front and the same Victorian-sounding poem on the back. Only the names and dates were different. I'd find these tucked into her top dresser drawer when I looked for a handkerchief and wonder how a person would collect so many. Now I find these cards in the pocket of the black dress I leave at CGF to wear to funerals. Every summer, there's at least one funeral. 

You would expect the actuarial charts to catch up with farmers, who are an aging demographic, despite what the Times says about those hip, young organic farmers with Political Science degrees. But the black dress and I are going to other services, too, each with its own set of grieving family members and, often, awkward family psycho-dynamics. The service for a heartbreakingly young man that had the Lynyrd Skynyrd soundtrack. The banker's funeral that I watched on TV in the overflow room. Mass for the mother of a high-school boyfriend. Cancer victims, suicides, traffic fatalities. 

It would seem be a grim litany, this forced march to the services of friends and neighbors. And yet the generosity of spirit I see at each of these events is invariably heartening. It's not just about the predictable Protestant casserole; I think it's about time. 

Ponder this: I went to a beautiful funeral at a historic Episcopalian church in Austin with the burial following at the lovely state cemetery. Afterward, most friends and associates expressed their sincere and heartfelt condolences before time constraints required them to return to their law firms.  This urban tribe is no less thoughtful or considerate than my rural one, but home visitation and church dinner are not part of its folkways. In contrast, about 40 friends and family members stayed at my grandparents house for three days after my uncle's funeral in 1957--it took that long for the floodwaters to recede. My mother was one of the first to leave, and she flew out in a crop-duster's airplane. I still hear stories about that post-funeral camp-out from the people who were there, and none of them indicate that those three days in a house full of damp, grieving people was a waste of their time.

Tomorrow, Michael and Jamie will sing Amazing Grace at the service of a a long-time civic leader. The black dress and I will, once again, watch and learn.

--MCG

*key to obscure literary reference: I know this George Eliot poem because it's from the Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch:

O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence