by Jerome Pearson
October 2010
When I was a child, I was afraid of dead people. Upon hearing of a new death, I was not immediately focused on the sadness of what happened, but, instead, on the possibility that the person who died might want to include me in the mix. As a kid, I rarely slept during the night upon learning of a new death.
During my life, I have always lived not far from cemeteries. They seemed to follow me wherever I moved to. I was always told that you should never point into the direction of a cemetery because your finger would rot. As an example, if you wanted to say that so and so when in a particular direction, if a cemetery was in that direction, you were not to point your finger. You might just lose it. I was born near a cemetery, the name of which I had never known. We moved away when I was about 5. In those middle years, I lived near another cemetery called Ivory. Then when I was 11, we moved back closer to the first cemetery. And then, when I was in the seventh grade, our bus driver lost control of our bus on a dirt road one day, and that bus ran right smack into that same cemetery, barely missing the first tombstone. Kids were screaming, and then the driver backed out and we continued on our way. Of course, high school kids were the drivers during those days.
I always thought that dead people liked to linger around at night. They were nocturnal creatures. It seemed that those first few days after a death, the “Dead”, were always in purgatory, which is a temporary lock-up between Earth and Heaven, or Hell in some cases. This would be the time for them to seek their revenge. And even if I had done nothing wrong to them, or the fact that they did not even know me, I still felt that for some reason they would be out to get me.
There was one particular year I was even afraid to go to bed. At least, I afraid to go to bed first. The boys in our house shared one room, and I was not about to be the first one to enter that room at night if there had been a recent death. I thought my siblings were thinking the same thing, because we would each stay up as late as possible to see who dared first enter the vacant room. Perhaps this was only my imagination.
Dead people showed up in many forms. Sometimes they returned as a “haint”, and they would ride you at night. You could feel them when they came over you while lying in bed, and slowly lowering themselves onto you, and then you would become paralyzed, and unable to move or speak. A “haint” was never violent, and never really harmed you, but seemed to get its kick by just riding you for a few minutes, and then disappearing into the night. Haints existed in my life for many years, even into adulthood. I can even recall one Sunday night in Germany, lying in my bed, and feeling a haint slowly lowering itself onto me as I slept. This was very strange feeling because you could feel it coming, yet you were unable to move out of its way. And then finally, it would disappear. It seemed to me that a haint arrive on Sunday nights mostly.
Sometimes they showed up as dust in a field. Have you ever noticed a field where there is dust spinning in about a 10-yard radius and about 5 feet high? I was told that the spinning dust was the symbolism of a dead spirit, spiraling out of control, kind of like a small non-violent tornado. When I would see this dust, I used to wonder “who could it be?” Spirits were always the dead- form of the living. So, if I thought it was a spirit, I would think about who had recently died, and were perhaps out on a kind of probation, as they awaited their final fate, longing to commit more crimes, before that final and everlasting lock-up. Old people would see this dust, and they would say “that ain’t nobody but John!” Of course, John, would be person who had recently passed.
It was said that when a person dies, immediately after dying they make a quick visit to every place they have ever been. I did not know what this meant, and how was it possible? How can a person within, a blink of an eye, return to every place they had ever visited? And why would they want to?
However, I remember one “breezy” and “windy” Friday, somewhere around 1970; I heard that a man name RD had died. Shortly after hearing of his death on this windy Friday morning, I heard our screen door slam shut, but when I investigated, there was no one there. So, I was thinking that perhaps RD had just made his quick and final visit to our house because, after all, while living, he did come to our house sometimes to buy whisky. I was happy that this return visit was occurring during the day, and not at night.
But then a few hours later, I heard the screen door slam shut again. Again no one was there. I was thinking that perhaps Mr. D had forgotten that he had already been at our house earlier during that day, and was just crossing his “t” s and dotting his “i” s. Or perhaps, he was returning for one last swig of corn liquor before the long trip.
By nighttime, the wind had subsided, and the door did not slam shut again, but I did not put 2 and 2 together. Luckily for me, Mr. D was such a gentle man in life that I could not imagine him returning to do harm to anyone in death. But he was still a suspect, so I kept my eyes opened.
Dead people were kept in funeral homes. When someone died, I would often hear the question: Who got the body? Basically, people wanted to know where the dead was currently being held. In my hometown, people wanted to know whether it was Samuels, Flemings, King, or some other establishment. People always preferred one funeral home or another. People would say: “Hayes Samuels’s sho made Leroy look good. As a matter of fact, he looks better in that casket than in life. Man! He just looked like he was sleeping!” So, Samuels is good, whereas some other establishment might have messed up a time or two in the past, like putting on too much make-up, or creating an unbecoming hairdo.
People would say, “When it is my time, and I went from yanh, ah want Samuels to have my body. Don’t send me to such and such, because I’ll be angry, and might come back to see who made the decision, because I got plenty of “in surance”, mo than a thousand dollars, and I keeps up my payments.” “And they better not put me in no black bag or a pine box like they did Julia Mae son, cause he aint had no surance.”
In the south, on the day of the funeral, the entire funeral convoy would show up at the home of the deceased. The hearse would be leading the way, followed by other large vehicles. They would make a U-turn and then line up in the direction that would lead to the church. Then other cars would line up behind the funeral convoy. And then the convoy would make that slow trip to the Church. I would be surprised to see Police Cars leading the way and controlling traffic. It would be the only time in my mind that the police appeared to be in a friendly disposition. I had long feared the police, but the first time I observed them controlling the traffic, I gained a new respect.
As the convoy began moving forward, I would often hear a particular relative in another vehicle exclaiming, “yes Lord, yes Jesus” and then she would reverse it, “Yes Jesus, yes Lord!”
Thinking of the word “dead”, I remember one summer back in 1972, I was riding on a wagon with my neighbors and her grandsons. We were riding on a wagon which was being pulled by a mule. As we were leaving the yard on the wagon, and later onto the highway, one of their dogs ran alongside the wagon barking at the mule, nearly getting trampled by the wheels of the wagon. Her grandson, R, had a whip which he used to lash out at the dog, trying to make it return home before getting hurt. After trying to get him to stop on more than a few occasions, an exasperated Mrs. L finally says: “Leave em alone R! If he wanna dead, ley em dead!” From that moment onward, every time we saw R, we would say, “If he wanna dead, ley em dead!”
The dead would also show up as a Jack-o-lantern. For some people Jack-o-lanterns only came out during Halloween. But to me, they seemed to come out on dark, rainy nights, and it could be anytime of the year. They were always hiding in the woods or fields. If on a dark, rainy night I saw a light in the woods, or in the middle of some field, I knew it must be a Jack-o-lantern. Jack-o-lantern only bothered you if you came to the field or in the woods. So, at least, you didn’t have to worry about them coming to your house.
Some dead people showed up as themselves, so I was told. I never saw one, but others would claim such things as: “I saw my grandmother sitting on the edge of her bed just as plain as day. She was wearing that same white dress they buried her in. I think she was trying to tell me not to marry that woman who is having my baby. I think my grandmother was trying telling me that the baby was not even mine. So, I think I gon back outta that wedding fore it’s too late; I’m going over there this afternoon and tell Doris it’s cancelled.” Dead people were always smarter in Death than they were in life.
Back to funeral homes, there was a bit of apprehension when entering them. They seem to all have such dark curtains, and rooms that seem to lead to places I never wanted to go. And that awful music! I must admit, I am a bit non-traditional in my thoughts and beliefs, so please bear with me. I can never understand this desire to see dead people once they have been prepared for burial. I don’t see what purpose it serves. People rarely look like themselves.
I remember one night going to a wake for a cousin who been recently killed. He was 24 years old and had recently moved to Baltimore when his Mother received a call one Saturday Morning stating that he had been shot while playing dice. His body would be shipped back to South Carolina. The body was given to another Flemings funeral home located in manning. I can remember standing in the funeral home just looking at him. One of those sad records were playing in the background. Suddenly, the record, which was playing had finished, and then I was hearing that static sound that occurs at the end of the record, although I did not realize that it was the record. For a brief few second, I was about to dash out of the funeral home because I thought he was beginning to snore.
I now know that there is really no reason to fear the dead. Death is only the continuation of life.
Plants and things in nature live but only one season. But each spring or summer they blossom with so much delight that they must be thinking that they would live forever.
In one way, perhaps they do. In some ways perhaps we all do. Perhaps, there is no such thing as death.
Perhaps there can only be life. We only move from one phase to the next, and there is no reason to ever be afraid.
But I always keep my eyes open!
Jerome