Put the fun back in funeral!

I recently went to my first Jamaican funeral with Mr. Campbell, or as his friends call him "Youn." He is the president of the farmer's group in Westphalia. His son-in-law's father who lived in the neighboring community of Resource had died at 80 in late September.

Most people in Westphalia will dress up for church but wear their "slippers" (flip flops). They carry ther shoes in a scandal bag (plastic bag) to change into once they get to the event so that they don't get mud on their shoes from the dirt roads. So, off I went dressed in my Sunday best, shoes in my right hand, umbrella in my left. We both made sure to carry our umbrellas, as the frost was thick when we left the house. (Frost = fog in Westphalia.) Even though we both "wouldn't mind if the rain never fall" it did.

It is a long journey from Westphalia to Resource which can be made a little shorter by taking a shortcut. After asking several farmers we found the shortcut and started down the little trail. Everything was fine until the rain started. The steep dirt track turned into a slip and slide. Before I knew it I was doing a backbend with both my hands on the ground behind me. In trying to save my dress from getting dirty, (I wouldn't want to perpetuate the stereotype that white people are dirty.) I had sacrificed my thumb. I wrapped Mr. Campbell's sweat rag around my thumb and grasped my umbrella tightly to stop the bleeding. We stumbled the rest of the way to Resource managing to arrive relatively clean. We arrived at the grave site and a little old man promptly grabbed my hand and started rubbing it on his belly slurring something uninteligible. I later found out that he was the brother of Sadpha, the deceased. Despite the rain, the church was full. (Jamaicans don't usually go out in the rain.) Sadpha had seventeen children and it was very obvious throughout the service that he was well loved and a great defender of his children. I was surprised to see more smiles than tear, people dancing and clapping along with the songs, and a genuine feeling of celebration in the air. As we climbed the hill back to the gravesite, Mr. Campbell explained to me, "Me don't like look pon no dead. Me don't believe so much inna dead. Nobody nuh nutten when dem dead. Dead don't matta. Yuh only a somebody afore yuh dead."

We arrived back at the gravesite where Sadpha's closest friends could be made out through a haze of ganja smoke, struggling to walk straight, and liberally pouring more rum. A crowd gathered around the sepulchre as the paulbearers slid the casket in and started to lay the final concrete blocks around it. A strong alto strain cut through the fog, "If you miss me...Don't come searching." Harmonies from the rest of the crowd filled out the song. "And if you don't see me. remember I'm gone." I started to think, why are American funerals so sad anyway? Mr. Campbell said it well. A person is only a person when she is alive. Death doesn't matter as much as life.