DECEMBER 23, 2020 One thing I’ve been missing during the pandemic is singing for funerals. As strange as that may sound, I have found that lifting up my voice to comfort and support people who are grieving is some of my most fulfilling work. It is a kind of service to others that is a rare privilege, and I don’t take it lightly.
I’m usually contracted to sing, and I don’t know the family and didn’t know the deceased. But I always walk away at the end wishing that I had known them. Eulogies and funeral homilies offer a glimpse into the best of a person’s life and how they used their time on earth. I make it a practice to write about each of them in my journal and to keep a copy of their obituaries.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
John Donne
I think this line of work makes me encounter my own mortality frequently, a little check-in to see if I’m living the life I wish to live. I sit there thinking, what will people say about me? Is it what I want them to say? What will my legacy be, and is there something I need to change while I still can?
Singing for funerals is a special skill. It puts me in a caregiver role, where I have to place the needs of the people grieving ahead of my own needs. That means holding in my own tears – the human instinct to cry when others are crying – so that I can make music. My personal list of times that has been difficult to do is a long one. One eulogist was a photographer who had been asked to take family portraits for the deceased, a 39-year-old woman who had found out that she had terminal cancer and died within months, leaving behind a spouse and two children. One service was for a developmentally disabled man who had clearly touched the lives of everyone around him.
Living during the pandemic has made it clear that we need to grieve. We need to pause and honor a life that has ended – not to remember that person, but to acknowledge our changed relationship with them. And mourning our personal losses gives us empathy with others who are grieving, people we don’t know but have heard about in the news, from the children slaughtered by gunfire to the great-great-aunt who died of COVID-19 to the victim of a car accident in the neighborhood, and on and on.
One death in particular, seven months ago from Christmas Day 2020, sparked a worldwide outcry for justice. I don’t need to enumerate the perfect storm of reasons that George Floyd’s death resonated so profoundly with so many people, giving new momentum to a movement that has (sadly) flared and (sadly) waned for so many years. For me, the manner in which he died and the circumstances surrounding his death created a visceral feeling of horror, rage, and just outright sadness. And, even more sadly, his death was far from the only one – this year alone – that reeked of injustice, of an unequal system.
And that is why, as 2020 draws to a close, I’ve chosen to commemorate a sad anniversary by revisiting those feelings, lest I forget, lest we forget. I don’t remember when I first encountered Tom Prasada-Rao’s ravishingly beautiful song “$20 Bill,” and it has taken me a long time – even as a professional funeral singer – to be able to approach and record such an intimate expression of sadness. This isn’t a song to kick off your Christmas festivities. But it is my hope that pausing to remember those we’ve lost will help us remember not to get complacent. Not this time.
