For Crying Out Loud

I hadn’t thought much about public wailing before my uncle’s funeral. His sudden death from a heart attack shocked our community, because for many people Uncle F’s life seemed immune to tragedy. He was the kind of twentieth-century man for whom even Blackness seemed a noble grace. His chiseled features made him resemble the actor Percy Rodriguez, who played Commodore Stone in the original Star Trek television series. And he wasn’t old when his heart stopped, but robustly middle-aged and at the peak of a prominent legal career. Uncle F and his second wife lived in a Michigan suburb, in a nice house with their young kids. Then he was found unresponsive on the couch.

I remember the moment my auntie began wailing at his funeral. She was my uncle’s disgraced first wife. For over an hour she’d sat among the mourners in the Episcopal church on W. Seven Mile Road listening to the somber prayers and songs. Years before, some of these mourners had known that my uncle had a white mistress. When he married her, some of them had attended the wedding. My aunt never recovered from the shame. So, when the coffin that