A Hearse in Jamaica

Jamaicans and a Hearse sent me plummeting backwards down a smoky hole towards childhood in Jamaica. The dreaded hearse looms in the background, never something children wanted to be near or in my case, to see.

A culture full of “duppy” (ghost) stories, and weird sightings, leaves a child petrified of the dark and the black cars that shuttle the dead between Church and Cemetery. As a child the sight of a hearse coming up the road sent me scurrying to the nearest fence, gate, tree or person, behind which to hide.

They were omens, they carried the potential for unwanted company, curses or worse! Even now, 40 years later, friends from childhood ask me if I remember the days of running from hearses. Yes I do, and it hasn’t become funny in retrospect. We don’t like hearses, they conjour feelings of dread, silence, respect, fear, loneliness and loss.

My most vivid memory of a Hearse is sitting in a car parked behind one that carried Uncle Archie’s body. I didn’t want to actively go to the burial and opted for waiting in the car. Well, the Universe smote me by sending torrential rain which changed the normal sequence of the burial. Everyone went to the grave, leaving the coffin in the Hearse, and me in the car parked directly behind it. I never took my eyes off it, expecting the doors to fly open and Uncle Archie’s face come popping out, rain bouncing off his head.

A Hearse isn’t something I ever look at without flinching. Living here in the US hasn’t changed my cultural disposition, well maybe just a tiny bit. Anyway, enough of this, even writing so much about it is creeping me out.