Bells...they toll...

For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth

for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

James 4:14 - Bible

“Tell mama what happened big boy!!!” “Please tell mama what happened!!!”

And so it was at the beginning of the funeral service at the end of that young man’s life.

Barry and Benny…yes indeed…the Merchant brothers. I was starting high school in Fairmont, West Virginia – a small town nestled in the softness of the Monogahela Valley on the sides of the river also so named. Fairmont, West Virginia one of those small towns whose existence owed itself to the back-breaking work of bituminous coal mining. It was surrounded by some spent; some active mines and the brick and mortar ghosts of what were once company towns. Company towns…an appropriate name for institutions that kept workers forever in just enough debt to the ‘company store’ whilst inflicting black lung and other chronic diseases on the laborers for whom there was little chance of escape.

It’s funny how the ever-expanding busyness of youth brings with it a naiveté that, in retrospect seems so obvious.

Barry and Benny were African American kids, living in the lines of demarcation that separated the black and white communities. Benny and I were in the same class. Barry, the elder, played basketball for the varsity team at my high school. He was one of the best athletes I had seen at the time, but he played primarily a back up roll. I didn’t understand why in that day and only later realized this was due to a social demarcation related to “…the color of his skin…” not “…content of his character…” Those words had not yet been openly spoken...it was the early 60s.

I admired that Barry Merchant. He was quiet, thoughtful and had a twinkle in his eye. He understood, in a way I did not for many years, the role into which he had been ‘caste’ – pun fully intended. I spent a fair amount of time playing with African American kids in those days, and didn’t understand then, as I came to understand later, there were certain expectations for me as well as them. I was oblivious at the time, and as I look over my shoulder, am grateful for my ignorance.

My father was a Baptist minister in this town – a minister at one of the more social churches. He did the things most pastors’ do, and he did them well. He gave his life to the elusive woman of faith, and in doing so, helped many for whom life seemed simply too much to endure. Being a minister in this particular church was somewhat of a paradox, because while my father was white, he was an activist.

The circumstances that brought me to this particular day were part of the tapestry of my father’s life and my emerging adulthood. In Canada, my dad had grown up from the streets. A tough kid who believed the underdog – in any fight – deserved an advocate. The first educated in his family, he carried with him this life history that had lead him to be a vocal and social activist as a youth, and as a minister of the Gospel. Wherever, in his judgment, there was a wrong, he felt obligated to fight the good fight. So it was with social activism of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Because of this unwillingness to be silent, he had become trusted by the African American Community and had been asked to participate in Barry's funeral. It was here I found myself with my dad, in this little church filled to the brim on this warm summer’s day.

Barry had only had his driver’s license for a short period of time when, for a completely unknown reason, he left the highway on a clear straight stretch, and ended his life at the base of a tree, even less forgiving than the social environment into which his birth had brought him.

This morning, as I wrote the words that began this piece, I once again felt the electricity and presence of a mother’s pain and open sorrow as she draped herself over the open casket holding her son. I still feel the collective sense of loss amongst the community from which this young man had come. It was rich…it was deep…it was healing. My father and I were the only white faces in a group of people from whom came a shared agony I had never known…open and vocal expressions hoping for some understanding as to why this young man had been so senselessly taken with no warning.

I don’t know what is was like when these unanswered words of confusion and doubt were uttered, “…my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me…,” – A son to his father.

I do know, however, what it felt like when a mother cried and hoped for the unanswerable “…tell mama what happened, big boy, PLEASE tell mama what happened…”

- ted