When I was in maybe 7th or 8th grade, I read a poem by my favorite poet of all time,

Langston Hughes.

It was called As Befits a Man, and it's about a funeral, but it's not morbid or even

about death really.

It straddles the line between mourning the loss of life and celebrating that life.

It's not a long poem, so I'm going to read it to you.

I don't mind dying, but I'd hate to die all alone.

I want a dozen pretty women to holler, cry, and moan.

I don't mind dying, but I want my funeral to be fine.

A row of long tall mamas, fainting, fanning, and prying.

I want a fishtail hers, and 16 fishtail cars, a big brass band, and a whole truckload of

flowers.

When they let me down, down into the clay, I want the women to holler.

Please don't take them away.

Oh, don't take daddy away.

Now I had never heard or read anything like this about the routine and inevitability of

death, but also what happens right after you're gone, and about going out funeralized in

style.

But it wasn't just the fancy cars and the women that got me.

It was how this poem spoke about ritualizing the act of mourning and saying goodbye.

To be black and American means to be in a perpetual state of limbo.

Holding in one hand the joys of life steeped in the beauty of the cultures and traditions,

...