It was interesting. Here I was the only white person in the church -- yes, the same church where the rev and his son helped themselves to an honorarium before Mr. Mac was gone -- and the undertaker was asking me repeatedly “How does he look? Does he look good?”. I was really annoyed that he was even asking me, and thought it was only because I was white. But then I realized: I was, after all, next-of-kin, and the undertaker needed someone in the family to validate to his work.
The church was sparsely attended by a few old people, but there was one old man who continued to wail loudly for his deceased friend. I commented to another elderly man that they must have been very good friends. “Nah,” he replied, “he’s just an old drunk. He cries at all the funerals.”
How can one old man have lived so many years in the same town, and at the end of his life call his landlord his next of kin, be robbed by his minister, and have only some old drunk crying for him at his funeral? Is that the price you pay for living too long?
How can one old man have lived so many years in the same town, and at the end of his life call his landlord his next of kin, be robbed by his minister, and have only some old drunk crying for him at his funeral? Is that the price you pay for living too long?
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