Gold miners dug holes in the earth in search of those shiny nuggets that would sustain or bring richness to their lives. The nuggets of gold I discovered this weekend while the country said goodbye to two of its brightest and best added to the richness of my experience. Yesterday I spent my day reliving my youth, respecting talent and pitying my grandchildren for not having a future of new music voiced by Aretha Franklin.
For those of you in my generation we said a little prayer, for my children they went riding in a pink Cadillac and for the young who, in their naiveté, wonder why Aretha is more of a queen than Beyoncé, they will learn about the nature of a good woman. Funerals for legendary figures draw from the depths of our memories and remind us of the people who shaped our lives; Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight, Shirley Caesar and Cicely Tyson. I watched and listened to those people on 8-track tapes, and TV sets that were once not flat unobtrusive wall hangings but strategically placed pieces of furniture.
I danced with defiance to Respect and gripped my girl's waist, doing those slow drags in dimly lit basement parties to the strains of Do Right Woman—Do Right Man. At the same time, my great-grandmother would wince because Aretha was no longer exclusively a gospel singer, but she always said she would, “come home.”
Aretha went home yesterday and in the Black church that has as special meaning. Services for the dead in my culture are not the staid, scripted ceremonies designed for the utmost display of dignity. They are the definition of the axiomatic ‘organized chaos.’ People huddle together for comfort having to be told to sit. Laughter comes at what may seem inappropriate times because all emotions are welcomed. We celebrate with loud preaching and rousing hymns to soothe and assure those left behind the next stop for their loved one is a relief from pain. The preacher tells jokes, pokes fun at the speakers but always maintains a loving gaze on the grieving family.
If you watched even twenty minutes of what for some seemed like a marathon procession of grief; for those who loved and admired Aretha Franklin, it was not nearly enough time to say so long to musical lore. I heard stories I had never heard and stories of which I had to be reminded. The stories we all knew of her famously keeping her purse filled with the cash for her performance on stage atop the piano or her bailing out Angela Davis from jail were repeated. The appropriately named Basketball Hall of Famer, Isiah Lord Thomas III, told a story of being a “green kid” and draft pick of the Detroit Pistons. He came to Detroit not even knowing how to pay a bill on his own. Aretha Franklin stepped up and into his life along with the first African-American Mayor of Detroit, Coleman Young, and nurtured him and their friendship and watched him grow into manhood.
As if to send a message ‘The Queen of Soul’ left the church in a gold casket. It reminded me that her years of tilling in the mines of America’s heart paid off, and we are all richer for the experience. Gold is a precious commodity, and its shine last forever.
