The Leonora Files sprung from a realization that I was writing so many obituaries for beautiful people like her, who deserved all the flowers. It was the fourth death of a young artist in a short period, and a clarion motivation for me to honor folks while they are here.
Taken by our beloved Ingrid when swung by after church.
“Jon’s church is honoring him for All Saints Day and so I’ll be going to that service in the morning,” Dad tells me on the drive home to Jacksonville. “Now, of course you’re welcome and I would love to have you there, but it’s totally up to you.”
A trap. I know this means I had to go. Outs granted by parents, especially baby boomers, should never be trusted. (Feel free with Amens in the comments if you know.) Nevermind that Jon’s passing in March made Dad a widower after 35 years of partnership, and that my entire reason for visiting was to check in.
To be clear, I did not dread putting on the suit as much as dealing with the slow, Episcopal, 9:30-ness of it all. Jon liked to sit right in the front row house right where he could get a view of the keyboardists hands regardless of which instrument they played. This means that I have to rely on Dad for cues to stand and sit, since they are not indicated in the 18-page program.
After the second bell choir selection, which gave Gregorian realness, I long for a heavyset, black raspy soprano with grits in her tone, or a towel-wielding preacher with collard greens in his as he sweats out sermon. Please Lord, deliver me a church fan with a local mortuary advertisement on one side. I will even suffer the inconvenience of promises that my same-gender-loving behavior long ago Zelle’ed me to hell if it meant I could have black church bells and whistles.
Instead of the bell choir. A heathen needs so much more to survive a church service before 11.
After the unison reading of scripture, while I aim to persevere, Dad’s chest rises and falls a bit more than before. I rush an arm around his back. But then I worry that save the other two black folks there, the congregants might think I was some young dude hanging over Jon’s widower, counting breaths to the end and plotting beneficiary shifts. Not that I care, but since this is Dad’s neck of the woods, I needed to defer.
I revise my comforting. Then I pray to whatever saint is etched in the stained glass over there that Dad does not need me similarly until after we get out of there.
But when Dad needs the bathroom, I am on my own with the program, looking around for help. I almost miss an entire standing cue because I don’t catch that the two other people in my pew are only seated for lack of other options.
These Zelles I earn fair and square.
I remembered that at the funeral of my dear friend Lettrice’s mother days ago, a sagacious aunt advised that whenever our loved ones go down, the best thing to do is be where they are in vibration so that they know where they need to come back to. This has become my default every time I’ve seen Lettrice or Dad since. Although he’s doing very well for sure, I plan to share my concerns about what these folks must think. Always ahead, he beats me to it when he returns to the pew.
I chuckle hearty in it.
And Dad’s inclination to rescue in grief has had few intermissions.
He made a few meals.
He gave me several insights.
He drove into Gainesville and managed to hold his breath long enough to see me come down safely from those silks.
He worked the room at the post-show reception hosted by the college that hired the company I danced for last Friday.
He cast pearls before the black president of that college as well as the director of the dance program there in separate brief conversations, enough that they each sought his email address from me after.
He advised me on consulting rates.
He advised before breakfast at the hotel that if he was “otherwise occupied when you come down, don’t come over here cock-blocking.”
He challenged me to resist unforced errors endemic to practices in financial services, arguing me down to the bureaucratic nuances.
He shared other nuances about him and my mother and their college friends (all “village” for me), down to the other campuses that black students came from to party with them. Dad is an elephant. (The shot below will give some sense of that debauchery.)
He took me with him on trips to the local DNC office to grab candidate signs and plant them around various voting sites, educating me on the specifics of the Duval County electorate and the disproportionate numbers (he knows them) of black voter turnout vis-à-vis registration in the state. Again, elephant.
And this was all within the five days I was with him in Florida.
He has lost none of his understanding about how to live fully and presently.
“Now we could go to the Waffle House, they always got good breakfast,” he says after we run by a voting site to see Ingrid, also Jacksonville family, as she passes out petitions. “Oh no, they’re closed.”
“A relief.”
“What, are you too good for Waffle House?”
“Dad, they don’t always clean the booths there and I only packed one good suit. The other one is at home so if I can’t afford to mess this one up.”
He laughs. “I know that’s right.”
A shot from college days, when he and Mom were a hot item.