& ROSES TO DEADEN THE CLODS AS THEY FALL:

Filename: Bagpipes, funeral (ANDREW GELLER, 6/02/04, Durham Independent Weekly)

I played the bagpipes at a funeral at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church on Chapel Hill Street in Durham this morning, just a couple of blocks from the house. [...]

As always, it was nice to help out, a gift to share. Also, as always, being able to watch the nonspiritual side of the funeral preparations was comforting--seeing death as a daily event, a regular occurrence. Since I was not at graveside this time, I did not hang out with the "vault man," or watch the funeral home people place cloth covers over the folding chairs and unload the floral wreaths from their van for placement around the burial site. But I did watch the women of the church, casually efficient but not somber, laying out the food as they have undoubtedly done many times before. The police arrived about 15 minutes before the end of the Mass, earnestly inquiring about the location of the funeral, not trusting, apparently, the sight of the limousine and hearse in the parking lot. The funeral director inadvertently gave me the check for the organist.

Grief is peculiar. As part of the funeral machinery and as an outsider, I did not feel deeply at the event. But a young man died at UNC this week, an apparent suicide of a gifted boy, and I shed tears reading his story in the newspaper today.