Forget the Funeral
By Leoneda Inge | WUNC
Late last year, I knew something was wrong with my mother.
She’s heartbroken, I thought. We’d just buried her first real love — the only boyfriend, husband and father of her children she’d ever had: Leonard L. Inge Senior. I’m named after him, if you hadn’t caught on. But when Mama’s sadness and fatigue seemed to persist beyond the normal signs of grief, we took her to the doctor. She was admitted to the hospital for test after test: Stage four, inoperable pancreatic cancer. The diagnosis came a few days before Thanksgiving and the doctors said she might not last past Christmas.
The only thing to do was celebrate.
My siblings and I decided to break all the commandments of big, Black funerals. We needed to figure out a way to have a homegoing celebration for Mama, before she died. After my dad passed, Mama was resigned not to have a funeral for herself. “I’m not putting no more money in the ground,” she chuckled. What she wanted was a party. So on December 14th, 2019 — we threw her a huge homegoing that was more family reunion than funeral.
Saundra Jean Roland Inge was especially beautiful that day. Cousin Eulinda cut Mama’s long braids into a modern, layered style. My sister Cassandra painted Mama’s face real pretty, finishing the look with a pink sweater and flowered scarf to keep her cozy and classy as she greeted guests. We could tell she liked her reflection in the mirror. Underneath the sweater, Mama wore a green t-shirt that read, “Still Here,” in pink cursive letters. The Tallahassee weather was bright, brisk and perfect. And far more than our family showed up to celebrate my mother.
Saundra Jean attracted young people like a pied piper. She worked for more than 30 years at Florida A&M University. During those years she served in director roles in the offices of Financial Aid and Student Activities. She spent much of her life singing the praises of historically Black colleges like that one and making sure Black college students had enough money to finish school. Mama would sometimes spend her own money, buying bus tickets for students to get home for the holidays. She even allowed some students to live in our home when they were out of options. Many of these now middle-aged FAMU graduates eagerly adjusted their winter plans to hug, kiss and share their appreciation for a woman they affectionately called “Mama Inge.”
Music, laughter and the warm smell of fried fish filled the air outside the FAMU faculty clubhouse that day. Watching her, it was easy to forget for a moment how sick she was as she delighted in her loved ones and sang along with her sorority sisters.
It’s such a special memory — made even more extraordinary by world events that shortly followed.
We know now that if our “love fest” for our mother had not happened when it did, it would have likely never happened. A few months later, the global pandemic changed every tradition around large gatherings like the one we had for her. There have been frightening reports of so-called super-spreader events — like an African American funeral in Albany, Georgia with hundreds of mourners that resulted in dozens of relatives falling ill and more death for an already grieving community. Similar event outbreaks have made news in Detroit, Chicago and Sumter County, South Carolina.
Mama got to live long enough to see just how much and how fast our world changed due to the virus. She lived for nearly seven more months after her party. Those final days were not easy for me or any of her other kids and caregivers. But we knew we had fulfilled Mama’s wish — something we couldn’t have completed in this new normal. When Mama died on Sunday, July 5th, 2020, there was no funeral. But there was no feeling among the folks who loved her that we hadn’t said goodbye in the best way possible.
Hear sounds from Saundra Jean’s homegoing party — including her singing — and meet North Carolina funeral director Nina Jones Mason, who discusses how to keep some Black funeral traditions alive during the COVID-19 pandemic on WUNC’s Tested podcast.
