A Funeral I wish you could have been to

A friend's mother died and her funeral was yesterday.  I attended.  I'm close to this friend's beautiful wife and he and she have 3 outstanding sons.  This family is black.   The funeral was amazing.

The eldest grandson got up to speak about his grandmother, who was 91 when she passed on.  He talked about how she taught him to look people in the eye when you're speaking with them. He remembers that.   He told us how he used to love to spend time at his grandparents' home and watch cartoons he couldn't watch at home.  One day, something in the cartoon mentioned pork chops and so this young man as a little boy said he found himself saying out loud "I want pork chops"....Immediately, he saw his grandmother grab her purse and coat and head out the door.   He didn't realize it, but she was going to buy him pork chops for dinner. He was very little, he added, and didn't even know what pork chops were!   This stayed with this twenty-something young man all these years....what a lesson modeling teaches us.  He learned of love and quiet giving that day.  He said that, after she died, he felt she was still there in the house she'd lived in for so many years as he put his head down on her empty pillow and thought of her.  I couldn't help but cry.   I thought of this great woman who worked tirelessly for her Baptist Church and for the NAACP and for young people to have cultural opportunities they might not have had, and knew that, even with all of that community work, it was the love and the lessons she left behind to her family which meant the most.

Her son, my friend, told how he was going to be soloing at Carnegie Hall the next night and he called his mother to see how she was feeling.  He was a grown man filled with fear that any performer gets but didn't want her to hear it.  She asked if he was fine, and he assured her he was.  But, a mother reads between the lines, doesn't she.  She said "Honey, the Lord has laid out a big table for you....'he prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies...'  You go eat from that table, you can't just 'eat and run'!  You remember to read that when we hang up."  He did, and he did a wonderful job the next night. 

I gazed around the church, which was about 99% full of Black Americans, and thought about how beautifully, respectfully dressed these people were.  No cut-offs and flip flops, but dark suits on that warm day, women in suits and high heels and stockings even in that heat.   Eloise had dressed like a lady and they sure weren't going to do any less for her, let me tell you.  From the pulpit, one man said he'd never called her Eloise, he's always called her Mrs.S(***) (*I don't want to put her last name here for privacy sake).  She was that kind of woman.

I thought about this blog and how often comments are filled with anger at the Black community for the crime and lousy politicians we all hear about.  You would sure never know any of that existed while you were with this crowd.  Just like you don't think of  White crime when you're at a White funeral.  The people I was surrounded with yesterday were concerned that I hadn't got a church bulletin (they'd run out by the time I got there) and shared theirs with me so I could read whatever I wanted to see on it (who was talking, what the name of a particular hymn was, etc.).  We laughed and wept at the same lines as friend after friend and family member after family member paid homage to an incredible woman. 

This was about being American and losing a great person from the community.  This had nothing to do with Black and White.  The people there were no worse and no better than any White bunch in any church.  Except, I have seen some White funerals with people not dressed with as much dignity as these people were yesterday.

This was all about INTEGRITY and RESPECT and DIGNITY. HONOR.  Those words were there with all of us as much as if they'd been plastered in large letters across the altar.  ELOISE dressed appropriately, ELOISE was kind, ELOISE gave of herself to her community and her family, ELOISE gave everything she did all she had.  And she left her stamp on all the folks at that funeral yesterday.   I thought how much I wished I could ever be like Eloise.

Eloise might have been White, but she wasn't. It makes absolutely no difference.  Black or White, she was total LADY, a woman of love and discipline and great faith.  She was a woman every child on this planet should have for a grandmother, black or white.

This is what I left thinking:  we hear a lot about the problems in the Black community and we forget to remember the problems are no different than that of the White community.  And the good stuff deserves to be said about both colors, too, about all Americans, some in each color doing their best, some in each color not doing their best.

I'll just leave you with that..........I wanted, somehow, to share this experience with you.  So, there you go. I wish you could have been with me.    I'll share one more thing, her son said she told him she was unhappy a few days before she passed away.  He asked her why.   She asked if he was okay with the fact that she was going (she'd told them all, for a year, she was eager to get to heaven and be with the Lord and with her husband who died shortly after Mr Z did, nearly 2 years ago).  Her son told her he was very okay with it.  When he had finally assured her that he knew where she was going and that he knew she'd be happier there and that he was happy for her, this lady who he said very rarely ever used this expression,  raised both her arms and said "Praise God!"    She died about two days later, when she knew her family would be okay.

Eloise, you were QUITE a woman.........we should all be like you.  Black OR White.  Color has NOTHING to do with it.

z