Isaiah Owens - Homegoings

 

Good evening. I am a funeral director. I know grief and I know how to comfort people. When I was growing up in my hometown in Branchville, South Carolina, we were fed fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread in funerals. At a funeral, there was a hearse. The hearse brought your body to the church and took you to the cemetery. That same hearse would take you to the hospital if you were sick. So, the funeral homes acted as a funeral home and an ambulance service. When you was going to the funeral, they tolled the bells as the family approached the church. Once inside the church, they fed us that life, no matter how long you live, is just like a vapor. It appears for a moment and then it disappears. And then they fed us that, that we are like grass which groweth up in the morning and flourishes and groweth up and then in the evening we are cut down and withered and we fly away.

 

At the age of 5 years old, I started burying things. After my grandmother, mamma Alice died, I went and I buried a matchstick. I realized now what was happening is I went to mamma's funeral and I saw them put her in the ground and they covered her up and they made a nice mound of dirt and they put beautiful flowers on her. So, then playing in the yard after the funeral, I went and I dug me a little hole and I put a matchstick in it, covered it up and I put some flowers on it. And that was my first funeral. As I grew up, I continued to be attracted to burying things. [audience chuckles] I buried everything that died on the farm. I grew up on a cotton farm, so all of the animals, the chickens or whatever died, I gave them a funeral. [audience laughter] Which caused me to be rejected by my family, [audience laughter] isolated, and I was an outcast. And they thought that I was a little funeral nerd. [audience laughter] However, I had one friend that was Aunt Genia.

 

Aunt Genia was born in 1882, and she was 68 years old when I was born. So, I played funerals and Aunt Genia would play funerals with me. Aunt Genia was the first African queen that I know. When we were growing up, Aunt Genia could sit a big pan on top of her head and walk from my mother's house to her house with her hands by her side. The pan would be full of butter beans or whatever it was, she never had to hold it with her hand. Aunt Genia had a vocabulary like Esther on Sanford and Son. [audience chuckle] She made up her words as she went. [audience chuckles] She will call you a fish-eyed fool, or she would call you an old hat. But then after she hurt your feelings, she would always call you in the room and give you some candy or some chewing gum or even a nickel.

 

So, Aunt Genia and I had this little love affair going on and Aunt Genia attended at least 10 of my little funerals. [audience laughter] She thought that I was absolutely normal. [audience laughter] And I remember one funeral, we had a toy wagon that had torn up. I wanted to dig a grave to do a funeral for it.

 

So I got Aunt Genia and went down in the woods in the field. And I performed the funeral for the red wagon top. [audience chuckles] And Aunt Genia was the family. She just thought that I was it. And I loved her very much. When I was 14. Aunt Genia passed away. And I was devastated. Now it’s time to go to Aunt Genia's funeral. That day was a day that I felt that I had no reason to live. So, as we left Aunt Genia's house, they started ringing the bell. And the bell was so bitter and so, hard to me. And I just kind of looked out of the window of the car and I cried. The more the bell rang, the more I cried. And I just kept saying to myself, "No more Aunt Genia, no more Aunt Genia."

 

However, after the funeral, I picked myself up. And five years later, I graduated from American Academy McAllister Institute of Funeral Service, and I got a diploma in funeral service. And it was one of the best days of my life. Because now I was on my journey to become the funeral director that I wanted to become. And I was just 18 years old when I graduated. However, it being such a wonderful day for me, it was a very sad day because none of my family members came to my graduation. [audience aww] After that, I got my license and I buried my first customer, Mr. Rufus Felton, in 1971 from the church that I attended. After that my business mushroomed. Now Aunt Genia is gone, my sister Maxine has taken Aunt Genia's place. So, Maxine and I were like twins. And she loved me and I loved her.

 

My family never referred people to me for a funeral. But when Maxine got her job and started teaching school, whenever someone passed away, she would always refer them to me. And Maxine wound up living with me for some years until I got her an apartment. However, Maxine came down with systemic lupus. My mother was here to help take care of Maxine when she was in the hospital. And the last time she was here, she called me aside and said, "Listen, I know that Maxine is not going to make it and I want you to do Maxine's funeral." And I was honored that my mother would ask me to do Maxine's funeral because I knew that my family never used my services.

 

Well, Maxine died and we took her home to Branchville for her funeral and her burial. And that Saturday night, after her viewing and her wake at my funeral home, my brother Anthony and Lynn and myself, I was locking up the funeral home and Anthony said to me, "We can't leave Maxine here tonight by herself." And my brother Lynn and I agreed. So, we went and got in the funeral home on the floor by Maxine's open casket, and we stayed the night with her. The next day, Maxine's 35th birthday was her funeral. And on my way to the church, all of a sudden, I heard [imitates bell sound] bang. That was the church bells. And the bell that they sounded when Aunt Genia died was so harsh and terrible. But this time I listened to the bell and the bell went from being such a harsh sound to being a very sweet hum at the end of the sound.

 

When I realized that this is a family reunion. I was hugging my mother, my father, my brother Anthony, Ms. Jane, Aunt Genia's daughter-in-law Kalizi, Ms. Harbor Rail, my high school principal, Mr. Joseph Jackson, Sister Ophelia, used to be the wife of the pastor that baptized me and Maxine. My battery was charged up and there was love. At the end of the day, I realized that I had been comforting all of these people for all of these years. And now not only my family, but the community has come to comfort me. At the end of the day, I realized then that there was love and that the spirits of those people who have gone on before, along with the spirits of the people that are alive, makes me strong. And it restores my soul and it restores us.