Some of my earliest childhood memories weren’t from playing manhunt in the neighborhood or studying for the spelling bee. They were from funerals.
While other parents occasionally pulled their kids out of school for “ditch days” or even dentist appointments, the only time I ever got called for early dismissal was to make it in time for somebody’s funeral. It did not matter if I didn’t know the person.
My grandmother -- we called her Favorite -- loved funerals. I found it odd, but she used to say the best way to learn about a person was after death. By seven, I think I’d been to more funerals than weddings. I could tell whether a casket was of good quality and the names of the best funeral homes in the Tidewater region. She never visited caskets up close -- even loved ones -- but she’d collect several programs during the service. A couple to keep, a couple to frame, and several to mail off to friends and family who weren’t in attendance.
(Years later, in college, I would occasionally open my dorm mailbox to see the funeral program of a person I absolutely did not know as a child waiting for me at the bottom. And, of course, my grandmother would call just to make sure I’d gotten it.)
Talking about death was as natural as talking about food.
Favorite loved funerals so much that she volunteered to serve as the cook for the repast dinners. (Naturally, I was “voluntold” and did not have an option to say no.) She also did weddings, too! Even graduations and baby showers. She could do a lot of things. But her vision would -- amazingly -- come alive when planning the menu for a funeral repast.
As a child, there was nothing more I wanted to spend my Saturday mornings doing than watching new “Pokemon” episodes on Cartoon Network. Or sleeping in. Or even doing homework. Or something. But if there was a funeral scheduled (most were on the weekends, but some fell on Thursdays or Fridays), then I could expect an early wake-up that day.
We’d awaken early -- 7 a.m., of course, Favorite didn’t sleep in -- say our prayers and drive to the Fresh Pride grocery store on Kecoughtan Road, near the (Old) Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church. Fresh Pride smelled odd -- like a cross between ammonia and expired bananas -- but was the only place she’d ever buy meat. I think it’s because nobody looked at her funnily when she’d write a check for just 78 cents -- she didn’t carry cash -- or ask for the butcher directly for an order of pig feet for the house. In addition to it being our family grocery store, it became the church’s during funerals.
Instead of letting me wait in the car with my Gameboy or nab a magazine at the front of the store to pass the time, my grandmother enlisted me to help. I’d heft large cans of greens, dozens of potatoes, containers of olive oil into the cart in my ankle-length skirt. Favorite, in a jean skirt, a flower top and a straw hat, crossing off items from her list in nearly illegible handwriting that only she and I could read.
In Black American culture, people commiserate during or after funerals by asking three crucial questions. Question number one: “Who did the body?” or which funeral home handled the service. The second question was, “did she look like herself?” -- meaning whether the funeral home retained the person’s physical features even in death.
And the third, and perhaps most important, “who did the food?” When my grandmother did the food -- or cooked the repast meal -- people would seek her out to compliment her.
Funeral dinners are pretty simple. Grieving people typically aren’t the hungriest. And nobody wants to cry over a piece of fried chicken. But if the food at the repast isn’t excellent, people will talk about the cook, and even the dead person, forever. You always remember a terrible funeral meal.
We’d get to work in the industrial kitchen of the church’s dining hall, a small red-brick building at the end of a rural street in Hampton. I’d spend the late morning and afternoon chopping potatoes, breading chicken, seasoning greens, making tea, mixing it with lemonade.
But my main job was to set the tables. I’d unfurl the tablecloth -- the cheap plastic ones, not cloth -- taking care not to snag it on a nail or a chair. I would lay out the plates, facing down, not up, fold the napkins just right and lay the silverware just so. Favorite was a perfectionist.
After everything was to her liking, we’d turn out the lights and slip out of the side door.
Rarely did she actually stay for the repast. Favorite didn’t like attention. The glory was for the Lord. Taking away the burden of planning a meal was for the family.
Years later, after she stopped cooking and months before she died, I decided to attempt a Friendsgiving for a dozen of my closest companions. My D.C. roommates and I knew we were completely out of our leagues when we tried to start cooking the morning of. Some dishes were quickly resolved, like ordering the turkey from Popeyes. A friend brought the macaroni and cheese. The stuffing -- which some don’t think should even be part of the meal -- was taken care of courtesy of Stoffers.
But we didn’t have perhaps the most essential dish covered: the collard greens. You can’t dress the table without the greens -- people will talk. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I substituted fresh collards for Glory and that the Giant Food across the street absolutely did not sell turkey neckbones, so we used thick-cut bacon instead. Later, I beamed with pride after she congratulated me on a successful Thanksgiving dinner when I mentioned that people had even taken extra plates home!
The art of cooking didn’t pass on to me, but the act of love and kinship did.
My first indication she was dying was when I asked her what she was excited to eat for Easter, and she responded disinterestedly. She died three days before the holiday. That day, my friends gathered at the house with food I didn’t have an appetite to eat. In addition to the repast, Black folks bring food to comfort the grieving. She would have been impressed with the selection: chicken, mashed potatoes, greens. I think she would have been more impressed that I’d found people much like her. People who took the words “comfort food” to heart.