Flowers Are Dancing

I've always had a problem with death.

At my sister's funeral, one of my drama-queen cousins began to wail, "It's all God's mercy."

God's mercy? First, she's tortured by cancer; then, it kills her. I suppose that's the mercy part.

When my time comes, and I stand before the Creator, I'll be asking a few questions. Much to my eternal damnation, I'm sure.

My first encounter with death was in October of 1959, when I was five years old. My grandfather had just died from heart failure and our large extended family was gathering at the old farmhouse located in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana.

Theophile G. was a tall, gaunt man: Lincolnesque. My earliest memories of him were of me sitting on his lap sipping coffee-milk while he sang songs in French.

He was a Louisiana Creole farmer and he worked his 40 arpents from dawn to dusk, ruled by the seasons as all farmers are. How he managed to support his wife and five daughters on such a small farm is still a mystery to me, but my mother insists that they were never in want even during the worst of the Depression.

Theophile was a calm and gentle man by all accounts, but he did possess one very bad habit. After a few passes behind the plow, he would rest his old mule, Valley, on the headland and dip into his pouch of Virginia Dare tobacco to roll one of the many cigarettes of the day. It led to emphysema and the eventual heart attack.

Back in the late 50s, no matter how humble your life had been, you could always leave this world in grand style. And nothing was grander than the Falgout Funeral Home in Raceland, a small town eight miles down the bayou from the farm.

It was—and still is—a large white-columned mansion in the old plantation style. Originally designed for two funerals, my grandfather had it all for himself, so the women took one side and the men the other.

The ladies gossiped and talked about people who weren't there and the men smoked cigars and argued the politics of the day—all in French, which I barely understood.

Funerals back then were twenty-four-hour affairs, and I was in for the duration. Since I was the youngest of the cousins, I was essentially ignored, so I was left to my own devices for entertainment. I looked in closets, peeked into offices, played as many imaginary games that a five-year-old boy could muster.

Eventually, I sneaked up to the second floor where the sample coffins were displayed, although I never looked in any. I had already seen enough Dracula movies with my sister to know you don't go poking around open coffins.

After a long tiresome day, I collapsed on one of the couches in the men's lounge and was slowly lulled into sleep by the endless rosary recitals performed by my aunts, each trying to outdo the other in piety and volume.

In the morning, I was awoken by one of my favorite people in the world, my Tante Eloise.

She was my father's sister and in a childless marriage, so I suppose she adopted me as her surrogate son. I didn't mind. I adored her.

She was one of the few adults who understood that sometimes observation was preferable to participation.

We would sit behind her bayou-side home and watch tugboats push barges up and down the slow-moving waterway.

We would catch crabs and catfish off her wharf and look for garter snakes hiding in the foliage.

We'd spend hours in her large greenhouse filled with strange tropical plants with names I couldn't pronounce.

She showed me the touch-me-nots. Tiny ferns that gently wrapped their petals around your fingers, their pink bottlebrush flowers rising over a miniature jungle.

We captured anoles, chameleon lizards that changed from green to brown and back again to match their environment and coaxed them into sleep by rubbing their bellies.

Wondrous times.

But today she was to take care of me while my mother was busy with the funeral and her sisters.

By mid-morning, the priest arrived to give the final blessing. We said our goodbyes to my grandfather and the coffin was closed and placed into the hearse for the long drive to the church.

We followed a slow procession of black limousines as we traveled back up the bayou to the country church where the funeral Mass would be held.

Tante Eloise deftly shifted the manual column stick on her green Chevy pickup as we bounced along the rough country road that paralleled Bayou Lafourche from its beginning to end. LA1, "the longest street in the world," as the locals liked to brag.

I stared out the window in silence.

It started raining and the late-blooming flowers planted in front of the houses began to move with the slow rhythm of the drops.

Tante Eloise broke the silence. "Look at the flowers. They're happy. They're dancing in the rain."

I smiled. Tante Eloise had a way of describing the world that made sense to a five-year-old.

A short distance from my grandparent's farm was the one-lane bridge that spanned the muddy water of Bayou Lafourche. We waited our turn crossing the rusty old structure and followed the cars to an oak-shaded parking lot located directly across Highway 308 on the opposite side.

After parking the truck, we made our way to the white wooden building called the St. Charles Catholic Church. Our shoes made crunching sounds as we walked over the sun-bleached clamshells that once passed for gravel in this area.

Even in October, the small church was hot and stuffy. Old ladies in big hats fanned themselves furiously as the rotating fans mounted on the walls droned on like airplane engines, the old priest trying desperately to be heard over their din.

As I sat listening to the Latin Mass, it suddenly occurred to me that I would never see my grandfather again. I would never again sit on his lap. Never again hear those French songs he liked to sing to me.

I began to cry. My cousins leaned over and snickered.

You have to understand; this was the era of TV westerns filled with tough, square-jawed heroes. Real men didn't cry. I was sad and embarrassed at the same time.

Tante Eloise put a hand on my shoulder as I sobbed.

When Mass finished, my grandfather's coffin was once again placed in the hearse and we all drove eight more miles up the bayou to the St. Joseph Cemetery in the small city of Thibodaux.

As I stood behind a wall of adults, my grandfather was laid to rest in the family tomb. Theophile G.'s long journey had finally come to an end.

When the crowd began to disperse, Tante Eloise took my hand and said, "Come see, cher. There's something I want to show you."

We made our way through a maze of whitewashed tombs until we reached an open area between the cemetery and the Thibodaux Hospital. A church once stood there, but all that remained now was a stone entrance facade flanked by two angels on pedestals, kneeling in prayer.

Tante Eloise made the sign of the cross and said, "When the church burned down, the angels cried."

I looked up at those silent gray faces, still wet from the morning rain, and believed every word she said.

"You see," she continued, "if stone angels can cry, so can little boys."

Fifty years later, at my sister's funeral, those words came back to me. I could hear them whispered in my ear. I could feel a gentle touch on my shoulder. And I became a five-year-old boy all over again. Thank you for that, Tante Eloise.

Eloise H. died of leukemia in 1965. She was only 51 years old—something else I'll be discussing with God.

But in the short time she was in my life, she taught me a valuable lesson. That life isn't good and life isn't bad. It's neither fair nor unfair. It simply is. It's how you live within that life that makes all the difference.

And sometimes flowers dance.

The End