One was held in a little church in the city. The minister was either not the deceased's pastor or he didn't know her well. He spoke in generalizations and was only able to personalize his speech by parroting stories shared during the personal remarks. It made him seem disingenuous. Nonetheless, the ceremony was emotional, everyone was in their Sunday best and the funeral home staff put on quite a show. At one point, in what I later learned was a Creole tradition, they carried a jeweled tiara on a velvet pillow down the center aisle to place upon the deceased's head while singing "She will wear a crown." It was poignant and heartbreaking. There wasn't a dry eye in the place.
The second funeral was a couple of days later in a larger church out in the country. The minister and my father had a relationship through Christ and were even, dare I say, friends. His speech was full of little anecdotes that clearly communicated a shared history. It put smiles on the faces of the bereaved and filled many an eye with tears as stories of times gone by were shared. The ceremony was video taped and shared on YouTube so that those unable to travel to be in attendance could still participate. The video tribute was a mix of pictures and PowerPoint slides filled with the one-liner nuggets of wisdom and humor that my father shared with me. One such nugget was when my father would say, "I am in shape. Round is a shape."
My least favorite parts of the process are the body and the display of the family's grief as the attendees are paraded past. While the funeral home team did a phenomenal job with my father's corpse, to me, it was clear that everything that made my dad who he was, was no longer in there. At least, it looked like him, especially once I had them put his glasses on.
My favorite part was the last video of my father singing a solo in the church choir. Dad had a way of ensuring that he looked directly into the camera when he sang. So there were moments when it seemed that he was looking straight at you. The song was one of his favorites, it is titled "Midnight Cry" and it talks about joining the Lord. Considering the time of his death, it was not without a bit of irony. and was totally something that daddy would have appreciated.
He had a military burial as a result of his time served in the Air Force. This too was poignant and heartbreaking. Daddy wouldn't have had it any other way.
The final lesson that my father taught me was preparation. He knew that his time on this earth was dwindling. He prepared for it as much as he could. He wrote down usernames and passwords, pins and account numbers to cell phones and emails, bank and bill pay accounts, everything that my stepmom would need to go about the business of transferring things into her name upon his demise. He even had more than one life insurance policy to ensure that his treasures were maintained, namely his wife and me. The last gift that my dad gave me was the ability to get out of debt with the money from his life insurance policy.
While my husband and I recognized the benefit of preparation as displayed by my father, we can procrastinate with the best of them. This unfortunately came back to bite us in the butt when COVID-19 came knocking on our front door.
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