'Homegoing' services draw on African traditions

These services offer comfort with music and doves.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The Rev. John Lakin Jr. paused to gaze down from the pulpit at the dark-clad mourners who packed the church.
Lakin's oration crested like waves washing over the congregation. The sting of sorrow and loss was soothed with blessed reassurance that the tide would turn.
"Bring all your pain," Lakin exhorted, breaking off each word like an offering. "The healer is here."
Heads nodded, bodies swayed and voices responded. "Yes," some said. "Well" or "amen," said others.
Lay Toya Shiver went to the grave in the embrace of her family, her faith and her heritage in a passionate and comforting ritual familiar to blacks.
"The cathartic effect of black funerals helps make African-Americans the resilient and hopeful people we are," said Karla F.C. Holloway of Duke University, who wrote about funeral customs in "Passed On: African-American Mourning Stories."
Grief, pain and a sense of loss are universal emotions when a loved one dies, but death is a defining element of life for blacks.
Slavery tradition
Lay Toya Shiver was 25 and single when she died after an illness. Age and experiences separated her in life from Lorena Long, an 83-year-old widow, mother and grandmother, and Isaac Mack Sr., a 66-year-old husband, father and grandfather.
But their deaths, within weeks of each other, underscored a shared heritage as each was laid to rest.
Slaves often were forbidden from having burial services for other slaves, so they would secretly meet in the dead of night, in the middle of a field or woods, for services.
The grave would be near water if possible, and the body was placed facing east, symbolically allowing the spirit to flow back to Africa. That ritual is no longer practiced, but the yearning it expressed for freedom and home remains.
Today's services, often lengthy and dramatic, serve as a release "for the weight of living black in the United States," Holloway writes.
When Lakin reached out to the congregation in Shiver's name, many raised their hands in shared affirmation.
The call-and-response tradition between minister and congregation evolved from tribal burials in Africa and fundamentalist Christianity.
Spiritual symbols
In funeral traditions, the power blacks long lacked in society would be brought to bear on what they could do for the dead.
"People used to feel living was an arduous task and once you die, you're free," said Michelle Hurley, whose parents own Manigault-Hurley Funeral Home in Columbia.
Open caskets are common before and after the service. The viewing is less formal before the service. A mourner took photographs of Shiver.
The casket, closed during the service, is reopened at the end. Attendants empty pews, row by row, and mourners file past the casket and the family, who stand in a receiving line.
Gwendolyn Wilson Shiver, Toya's mother, wore a white dress with gold trim. Female members of the family often wear white as a symbol of the spiritual. In some African cultures, the dead also were believed to dwell in a white, watery world.
Music reflections
The hard times from slavery to segregation that shape funeral services also are reflected in the music.
For Shiver's funeral, Herbert Branch offered simple, reedy solos of "One of These Days" and "Last Miles of the Way." Gospel and blues mixed in his warm voice.
Betty McFadden sang an a capella solo of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" at the Columbia funeral of Lorena Long. Long's son, Dr. Willie Long, praised McFadden before offering his own rich baritone tribute to his mother with "He Looked Beyond My Fault."
"Traditions are so deeply connected with our culture," said I.S. Leevy Johnson, a Columbia attorney and owner of I.S. Leevy Funeral Home.
He recalled the funeral of a prominent Eastover woman: "She was a matriarch in the community. She made sweet potato pie that was so good it made you want to throw bricks at your mother.
"At the visitation, everybody was whispering about that recipe and her recipe for life. She was a good parent, a good spouse, and she loved God. Let us go feast off her recipe."
"Everything we did has some kind of tradition to pacify the living or the dead," Hurley said of the origin of some black rituals. "The minister will never say anything negative about even the worst person. You have to make the deceased happy so they won't come back to haunt you."
'Homegoing'
Printed programs for the Long, Mack and Shiver services begin with the words "Homegoing Service."
"Homegoing" refers to the transition the dead make in leaving one world for another, said State Museum curator Elaine Nichols, who wrote "Last Miles of the Way: African-American Homegoing Traditions, 1890-Present."
As services ended for Long, Shiver and Mack, most mourners walked the short distance from the church to the grave sites. The weather was rainy and cool for all three services. They would return to the church for a communal meal, often referred to as a repast, a tradition that prevails at many Southern churches, black and white.
A white dove was released at Shiver's grave. When young R & amp;B singer Aaliyah died in a 2001 plane crash, white doves were released at the grave. When Harlem star and Broadway sensation Florence Mills died in 1927, blackbirds were released.
They were fittingly dramatic touches and spiritual signifiers, passed from one generation to the next, keeping a cultural identity passionately alive.