What Has Happened?

About forty years ago, I attended a funeral that is still fresh in my memory. One of my good friends was a very prominent black physician. He came from one of the finest families in our city. He told me once, “my grandmother told me that if I went out and got into trouble, I need not call any of my family. Your family has worked too hard, and is too well known and respected in this town to put up with any meanness on your part. If you go to jail you will stay in jail.”

I knew the grandfather and grandmother, and when the grandfather died, I attended the funeral as an honorary pallbearer. I knew a little about black funerals... I had witnessed a black funeral procession in New Orleans...carrying the casket down the street accompanied by many New Orleans musicians with creole music. The funeral was held in the cities largest black church, crammed full of dignified, well-dressed people of every color. I remember the pallbearers all dressed in black, wearing white gloves. I remember nurses dressed in white uniforms attending to the inconsolable family members. I remember the carillon (chiming bells) with their mournful drone, the many speakers, the well-expressed music. The service was worthy of the person in the casket.

Yesterday, one of my friends told me of going to a funeral where the pallbearers were wearing flip-flops, jeans or shorts, and t-shirts. I am told that very few people even dress formally for a funeral anymore. There was a time, when we had “Sunday clothes”, we attended church well-dressed, and so we did for funerals. We had enough respect, not only for God in His house of worship, but for the family of the deceased. Every thing you do for a deceased person who knows nothing about what you are doing, is done for the surviving family, to show your respect and concern for them.

What has happened? Friends sit on my front porch at my beach house and describe the language, appearance, and attitude of the young people walking by my house to the ocean. In this time of the “liberated woman”, the girls are more carnal than the boys. It has been a long time since I had a woman working for me who did not smoke cigarettes. It has been a long time since I have known a woman, working for me or otherwise, who cared very much about her appearance: her hair, her makeup, her skin. People describe the tattoos they see on woman's bodies, just the parts of the body that they can see. In the era of bikinis, almost nakedness, there is not much left for exploration. My grandfather, in his day, seldom saw a woman's ankle. Women were almost totally covered, modest, feminine, delicate talk, delicate movement.

As communist ideology takes over, the first thing to go is the idealism pertaining to children or women, women become just breeders. In China, Russia, third world police-state countries, as was the case before Christ was born into the world, women are a little more than slaves. Women have been stripped of their femininity, “butch” haircuts, lackadaisical attitude towards shape, or the qualities of beauty.

An interesting study would be the effect on the female personality and purposefulness when kept as separated through clothing, veils as is found in the Islamic traditions. Do Muslim women, so separated from everything by Sharia law have a direct effect on Muslim men and Muslim children. In traveling Muslim countries you seldom saw Muslim women, they stayed in their homes and cared for their families. Outside the home, always fully clothed, always veiled. In talking with one in a business situation, through the holes in the veil I could only tell if she was wearing glasses. I could tell nothing of her features: hair color, shapeliness, but they all seemed very intelligent, and evidently most are content with their place in life, especially in relation to the men and the children in their lives.

If the Islamic system, the Islamic traditions, the Islamic law did not work, I feel sure it would have been changed long ago. I believe the Muslim believers in America like the Jewish, the Amish, Mennonite, and other religious traditions in America make whatever alternatives necessary for living in this country at this time. Overseas, you respect the traditions of the country you are visiting.

There are two kinds of courage in the world: physical and moral. Most of us have neither...not the physical courage to defend right, or the moral courage to condemn wrong. I believe that faith is 90% courage, and most spiritual believers do not have courage, not even enough courage to correct children, not even enough courage to uphold decent traditions. Not even enough courage to teach or show the absolutes of right and wrong.

Three times in our life, we are called upon to demonstrate courage: physical pain, hardship, and death. When my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that I had experienced hardship in my life, I had experienced physical pain in my life, I had experienced disappointment through blindness in my life. I prayed for the faith and courage to face death. The last thing we must conquer is death, and life is so unpredictable, there are about as many short graves in a cemetery as long graves. It can happen any time, you do not have to be old to die. Courage is a virtue for teenagers, but all should realize as was once said in a very remarkable movie: we are all “walking-dead'.

My life, your life, matters. Life is a gift. When some young girls get old, they will appreciate the beauty of youth, many will wonder: why did I have these tattoos and piercings? Why did I give away my decency, innocence so early?

One girl told me, “I was so infatuated with this boy, I felt that I must give myself to him in order to attract and keep him. I just knew that he would be totally crazy over me because he had taken my greatest possession. The first day I was so surprised that he did not call. The second day I began to get saddened. And then, I saw him on the street and he did not speak to me.” Remember, most people are just animals, wanting what they can get, right now, without thinking of anything.

One of my grandmother's sisters went to visit her only daughter in New York, who was enrolled in a college there. My grandmother, like my mother and most women of their day, wore beautiful hats. My own mother was known for her “wide-brimmed” hats. There were hat shops which specialized in women's hats.

My father never tired of telling this story: My grandmother had her sister bring her back a beautiful hat from New York. My grandmother, after returning home from church, put her purse and her new hat on the bed. It just so happens that in the flowers on the hat was a beautiful bird. The family cat, Lucy Mae, thought the bird looked very delicious, and the cat leaped on the bed and made rapid destruction of this new “big apple” hat.

What has happened? The world has changed, but human beings need not return to the stone age, to the uncivilized conditions of the cave people.