Today, I went to my dear friends memorial/celebration/funeral. It was nontraditional, you see. His parents would not allow his friends to attend. They published his death the night after the funeral. I am grateful that another one of his friends had the brilliant idea to have this ceremony for him. I had not given thought to an idea close to it.
The ceremony was quaint and sweet. I guess bittersweet. I am happy about the turn out, but I honestly expected more. People are very strange about the way they hold false grudges and earthly conflicts in their hearts even after the death of a loved one. It is known that you can love a person from a distance, but I felt he deserved a larger crowd of family to give collective respects. Those that did not show probably had reasons of their own.
I did not sleep until the sun began to rise this morning with the party only being a few hours away. I fell asleep and woke far later than I hoped to. I took a quick shower and hopped into my car, then endured the 45 minute drive to the memorial. When I got there, I dried my eyes with the sleeves of my thick blue sweater and stepped into a large muddy puddle, then looked up to the sky to appreciate the irony of the gray and cold sky perfect for a funeral. It was lightly sprinkling and trying to rain the entire way there. I told myself as I approached the building,” Alright, this is it. Stop crying and get your head on straight. We are going into public with people around.”
I arrived almost an hour late, but just in time. People were very quite and not talking. Occasionally, someone would speak up and talk about him with a 30 second pause between people. My god, those pauses felt like lifetimes.
After a while, people began making more jokes and it became light-hearted. I am grateful for this because I was crying on the inside and it was slowly seeping out of my eyes, but the jokes made it more tolerable. In those moments, I learned that it is important to breathe properly. You have to intentionally breathe so you do not drown in an sea of your tears and turmoil.
The service continued. It was very informal. I loved it. Everyone was sitting around like it was just a coffee shop and we were having some group chat. Like I said before, they were telling jokes and talking about the good times. All I wanted to do was cry for David. I wanted to allow myself to cry the tears I had not before. I did. I gently let the tears slip out of my eyes. They warmed my cheeks and throat.
Eventually, someone went out for a smoke break. An unbelievable amount of David’s friends smoked. I might say one or two people out of twenty did not. I was glad, because I intended on chain smoking and apparently they did too. We smoked and talked. I met very cool people that had heavy heart as I did. We shared our stories and our love for our fallen friend.
We all decided that we were going to drive to the cemetery were his parents laid his body to rest. In our vehicles we went.
It was kind of touching that drove in a straight line like a procession would at a normal funeral. It is funny that his funeral went down like this because his entire life was outside the realm of normal. There was no normalcy and this includes his funeral. Mind you, its still sprinkling, cold, and gray. These people drove from Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, and all over to give David collective respects all the way down to southeast Alabama.
As we were driving together, I look at the cars in front of me and the one behind me full of gratitude for the ones who came. We pulled into the Malvern Baptist Church parking lot. I, then, realized it was Sunday and that the regular church services were happening, so that was a bit off-putting, but we continued. Actually, I think I might have been the only one to bring attention to it and when mentioned there was a slight draft of fear, most likely because we are in the bible belt and queer people and weird people have had hate crimes constantly be committed on them, especially in the south.
We all walked around the cemetery trying to find David’s grave. Using context clue like, the grave being new and his family name, we found a new grave, the only one of its kind, covered in red dirt where plastic roses with black veins sat. We kind of stood around for moment slowly talking. Scott decided it was a great time for a collective cigarette smoke for David. We all pulled out cigarettes to smoke, sharing them with the ones who didn’t. We were bound together in ceremony just for our friend. I think he would have been satisfied with the turn out. We played music for him and for us to remember the good days and memories. Eventually, people needed to leave, so we slowly walked to our vehicles, gave each other warm hugs, and planned for another time.
R.I.P. David Hawkins Forever 31, hopefully in the afterlife he can pick a better age than that. Lol Much love and good luck to you. I hope you leave us sooner rather than later and don’t linger around here long. Pass on with glory and a great ass.
