Funerals.

Last week, there was a funeral every single day in Lupeni.  I know, because I see the marching band from my desk in the office.

Marching band? you may ask.  Yes.  A marching band.

I haven't yet attended a funeral in Lupeni.  But from what I have observed so far, it seems that the funeral service and the burial in the cemetery are connected by a long parade through town, accompanied by a marching band.  The band, which contains trumpets and clarinets and tubas and a big bass drum, marches slowly in front of the hearse.  The hearse is flanked by pall-bearers, who wear colored bands on their arms and carry enormous funeral wreaths.  Following the hearse is the crowd of mourners, dressed in black, walking slowly to the beat of the big bass drum.  The most bereaved walk in the front, and in the back are usually some stragglers who are chatting and maybe even answering phone calls.  It depends. 

The music is slow and rhythmic.  I would use the word 'stately,' but it just doesn't fit -- there's something almost comical, or at least heartwarming (and not at all stately), about the slightly discordant caterwauling of the clarinets and the strange, repetitive melody the band always plays.  It doesn't make you want to cry.  It doesn't make you want to smile.  It just is -- a slow, steady, honest tune which gets caught in your head, which you find yourself humming while you weed the garden hours later.  It reminds us that death is real, and sad, and a part of life in this broken world, but that it's not the end of all things.  The song is simply too practical for that -- it marches on, slow and steady, with moments of sadness and a groaning tuba followed by moments of smiles, the squawk of a trumpet.  That's how life is, right?  And I think it's appropriate, actually, to be remembering mortality as a community this way, all of us reminded of each other's fragility and sadness and hope through the honest, straightforward strains of the funeral march.

Everyone notices funerals here -- the parade takes up half the street, and cars have to sneak by guiltily, or hover awkwardly behind the walkers until they can turn off the main road.  And that seems right to me too -- that we would all be aware of each other's loss, even as life goes on.  The funeral march goes right by the cell phone store, by the kids playing in the park, by the maxi taxi stop and the street dogs fighting there.  Everyone notices.  Everyone gives deference.  But life goes on.  And that seems right -- because death and loss should be noticed and cared about by communities, even if it takes a marching band to herald it.  But death and loss don't have the last say, and neither does the funeral.  Eventually the music fades, and the parade passes by, and life goes on.  I return to my desk and resume work --glad that death isn't the end.