A Deck's Face Cards
by James K. Noble, Staff Writer

My father is a funeral director, not an undertaker. Call him an undertaker, and he would correct you, like a janitor would prefer the title of custodial engineer. I suppose one usually thinks of creepy images with the term undertaker, which is why he chooses the more professional name. At one point in my childhood, my father told me that he was a landscaper, primarily dealing with planting and the soil. His slightly twisted humor went right over my head, although I do not blame him for the white lie. I would not have understood the truth anyway. Or I should say truths. After all, death has more faces than a pack of playing cards, including the ace of spades. To a child though, its face usually ends up as the scary Grim Reaper's, similar to how parents introduce the Boogie Man to explain fears. And while most childish thoughts disappear with adult reasoning, death's complexity usually goes right over people's heads. It went over mine.

As I got older, I systematically learned what it means for a person to die, and what it means for a family to mourn. It is quite natural for a son to help out in the family business; the funeral home was owned by my grandfather and operated by my father and uncle. I worked as a pallbearer. A pallbearer is required to don a crisp, black suit, along with a professional, stoic disposition. There are six in total, and their task is to carry the casket with utmost respect from location to location: funeral home to hearse, hearse to church, church to hearse, hearse to cemetery. Interacting with the family too much cannot occur. A pallbearer can never say, "Good morning" as a greeting because the family is mourning; the morning is not so good after all. He simply confronts death, picks it up, moves it around, and then goes home with a paycheck without a second thought.

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Everyone dressed in black and wore sullen faces, as if they were dead themselves.

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I was a nervous wreck the first time I picked up a casket. My suit and tie were in orderly fashion, yet my mental state was nowhere near close. The six of us lined up, three on each side, and the casket was slowly pulled out. A tense silence lingered in the air as the family watched the routine procedure. Everyone dressed in black and wore sullen faces, as if they were dead themselves. All eyes stared as we carried death carefully and slowly, up the stairs of the church, as if it was a spectator sport. My worries ran deep since I was inexperienced with the situation. The casket was heavy, but a catastrophe never happened; everything went perfectly according to schedule that day. Steady steps and a firm grip made death a little easier for me to handle; my Dad told me that a pallbearer should never lift the casket by the handles. I dared not cross the boundaries of my duties by trying to approach death in a different manner.

The Notorious B.I.G. was killed on March 9th, 1997, in Los Angeles. The funeral took place in Brooklyn, New York, where he was originally from. His sophomore album was released days later on March 25th, ominously titled "Life after Death." I was a huge fan of B.I.G., also known as Christopher Wallace, when he first debuted in 1996. I still am a fan; he is my favorite hip-hop artist. His death shocked the world, but the CD jacket of "Life after Death" suggests a different message: one of defiance. It pictures Christopher Wallace standing in profile next to a hearse, which presumably is his since it has the letters B.I.G. on the license plate. He sports a black overcoat and a matching derby, along with a stern, serious facial expression. The tones and layout suggest that it his own funeral and he knew death was coming; yet his disposition contradicts the mood. Not only is B.I.G. not in the hearse, he has his back turned toward it, as if dismissing the notion that he is dead.

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