The second line (or life & death)

Barbara dropped the paper off yesterday, Look. A second line on Frenchmen St. It's tomorrow.

So I wrapped up work early, locked up shop at 1pm like everyone else in town, to walk down to The Spotted Cat, to watch the funeral procession, trying to not look like the awkward tourist curious to snap some shots of their grief, though the Nikon around my neck said otherwise.

The crowd slowly spilled from the bar onto Frenchman Street. Elders from the senior housing complex were wheeled to the street, lunch goers and shopkeepers lined the sidewalks. They come out then, a man and woman, my age, holding a picture frame of their smiling father in one hand, a beer bottle in the other. The Treme Brass Band starts up a ruckus, loud, audacious tune, the same sort of tune that would start a wedding procession—it really was the start of another celebration. Leading the way are the first-liners, a brother and sister, his adult children.

The two toast his soul with a clink of glass. The music picks up and they dance. Even as tears stream down their face, they dance. In the very face of death, they dance. Behind the band swirl the crowds of “second liners”, fantastic colors, sequins, drinking, laughing, dancing, waving brooms, umbrellas, anything, while admirers carry the huge colorful canvas paintings he’d created in this life.

The parade--this unlikely celebration--progresses through the street. There’s no suffocating church organ, no dimmed lights, no hushed tones, no overbearing preacher to admonish us all in our most vulnerable moment. And the emotion that courses through the crowd. It’s electric. There is no shame, no hiding it away, no cowering in the dark sadness alone. Instead, the sadness is brought out into the light, in the middle of the street, for all to see, to behold and to feel. There, in the bright sunshine, it becomes something else, it disintegrates some. A strange,bittersweet blend of joy and bold sorrow.

In the middle of the street, she looks at me, her eyes dark with intense grief, yet she smiles beautifully, while letting tears fall down her face. Peace and despair. Sunshine and rain. Both brave and sad. Honest and open.

I smile at the beauty of it all. And that little bit of nothing pulls at my own sadness. And there I am--crying! In the middle of the street, on a sunny day. Feeling both elation and despair. Is that even possible? But it’s that mixture, that blur of honest emotion that connects me to those strangers standing around me. The flow of humanity swells as others join the line, they disappear slowly down the street, only an echo of what was. Breathless. I stand, alone, in the intersection of Royal and Frenchmen Street, amongst the peeling paint and worn shutters, I tell myself for the hundredth time this week that honest love is a brave, beautiful thing even as it stings with the sadness of loss. There is no shame in feeling both sides of that. None at all. I’m starting to realize how special it is...

Later, I overhear a man, in faded pants and an old army coat, tell another man, over a beer – I consider myself lucky to have known him well. He lived a full life. He was loved by all as deeply as he loved. And he loved with all he had. Never knew another friend like him. I know he’s honored by this party.