A Jazz Funeral

I walked near the back of the group with my baby boy in my arms. He laughed and waved at his surroundings, unaware that those big rocks all around us were markers for the dead. I did what I always do when I see headstones: calculate how many years each person got, wince at the low numbers, take special notice of the ones who died at my current age. I noticed many headstones for couples where one partner’s date of death was not yet filled in, and took a moment to wonder about the ones still among the living. 

Ahead of us, my oldest son walked hand in hand with his mother and his grandmother. The rest of the group consisted mostly of family, some of whom wore New Orleans Saints attire to honor the dearly departed. At the front of this procession marched seven old men strapped with drums and brass. They led us slowly through the cemetery playing “Nearer My God To Thee,” though not like a hymn that you might hear in a church. More like a soulful dirge.  A light rain had started to fall, but we kept the pace easy all the way to the grave site. No need to rush. Just a little water.

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My wife’s Aunt Ginny evacuated New Orleans on the eve of Hurricane Katrina after spending her entire life there. She spent her remaining years in Austin, but never felt quite at home here. When she spoke of home, it was always New Orleans she was talking about. This place, this Austin, this Texas, it was a strange land to her.

There was, however, one resident of our fair burg who believed that Ginny was right where she belonged, and that was my oldest son. To say that he adored her does not suitably communicate how important she was to him. Almost immediately upon her arrival, she became a fixture in his life, a cross somewhere between an aunt and a best friend. Their bond was something special, the kind that forms a cocoon around itself, the kind that makes up its own language known only to those on the inside, the kind that makes one person not want to go anywhere unless the other person is going too. Ginny even lived in our home for a number of months, during which time my son could almost always be found in her room. If she was ever annoyed by this, she gave no indication. In fact, she seemed to have a gift for playing with children on their level. Of course, this gift came at the expense of some of her adult faculties. She had not worked in decades, and would almost certainly have wound up homeless had she not had relatives to shelter her. It was sometimes nice having someone else to watch our son while my wife and I got other things done, but I’ll admit that there were times that I resented her, not only for taking up space in our home, but for being able to get so close to my son, MY SON, for horning in on the closeness that his mom and I were supposed to be having with him. A bit of perspective has helped me to understand that their relationship was the apple to our relationship’s orange.

When Ginny was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago, the first thought I had right after “oh God that sucks” was the affect it would have on my son. By that time, we had two children, and Ginny was living in her own apartment, but she and my son were still close. I know people can survive cancer, but Ginny had not seen a doctor in years, and as feared, her cancer was advanced beyond the reach of any treatment aside from pain management.

“Is Ginny sick?” my son would ask after visiting her. Confined to bed by weakness, she moved in with her sister and husband, my wife’s parents, after the prognosis was delivered. A hospice nurse visited several times a week to see how she was doing and to give instructions for her care. We took my son to visit her, and he would put his hand on her arm and assure her “Grandma’s going to help you get better.” His questions later became a simple statement of fact. “Ginny’s sick,” he would say. All we could do was agree and selfishly hope that he wouldn’t ask too many hard questions.

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We reached the grave site and crowded in under the tent that had been set up to protect us from the weather. I was still holding my youngest, but by this time he had grown antsy and wanted down. I set him in the grass to let him wander for a bit between the headstones and trees. I caught a brief glimpse of what the cemetery must look like through his eyes, and it looked like a wonderful place to play. At a nearby grave, someone had left offerings of not only flowers, but also seashells and a yellow rubber ball. I tried to distract him from it, but there’s little to be done to deter the kid from a toy that he’s fixated upon, be it the property of the living or the dead. The head stone bore a picture of the man buried there, and he looked friendly enough, so I didn’t think he would mind sharing his ball with a baby boy, so long as we put it back.

My oldest son sat quietly in his mother’s lap for the entire service. He faced front, listening to the eulogy, wearing the face he wears when he’s trying to wrap that amazing three year old brain of his around a new concept. It was the same expression he had worn in the car on the way to the cemetery.

“Are we going to Ginny’s party?” he asked.

“We’re going to her funeral, then her party.”

“The funeral?”

“That’s where we go to say goodbye.”

“And then the party?”

“That’s right.”

He stopped to think about this for a moment.

“Is Ginny in the sky?”

“Yes baby, she’s in the sky.” This is what we had told him when trying to explain why he would not be seeing Ginny again. I would like to be able to tell you that we came up with something more imaginative, something profound enough to communicate the reality of death and loss, simple enough that he could understand it, and gentle enough that it wouldn’t scare him. But I can’t, because when the time came, all we had was “she’s up in the sky.” 

“It’s raining. Will Ginny get wet?”

“No, she’ll be okay. We might get wet though.”

The service concluded and the band struck up once more. I wrestled the ball back from my youngest and set it back on the grave where he’d found it, whispering a quick thanks to the nice fellow to whom it belonged. Those seven old men and their instruments led us through the rain back to where we had started with a swinging celebratory “When The Saints Go Marching In.” A fitting sendoff for a lifetime New Orleanian.

The reception afterwards was at our house. The place was comfortably crammed with family, the gathering well-lubed by plenty of food and drink. We put on some jazz, some blues, a little old time rock and roll. There were tears, yes, but mostly there was celebration of Ginny’s life. I watched my sons bask in the attention of their grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and wondered about their memories of Ginny. My youngest won’t have any recollection of her, but I wonder what, if anything, my oldest will recall of the great aunt that meant so much to him. My guess is that the specifics will grow fuzzy, but somewhere in his memory, the thought of Ginny will always carry a feeling of warmth and love.