By John W. Fountain
IT WAS ONE OF the most difficult things I have ever done: Eulogizing my mother. But as a protective son charged with carrying her when Alzheimer’s—and later cancer—took their hold, I promised Mama I would handle her affairs, carry her until the very end.
Making final arrangements with the undertaker for her funeral that August, 12 years ago, it also meant making sure Mama’s hair was styled nice and pretty, buying her a new dress—a handsome, soft navy-blue piece I picked out. It meant selecting a final resting place near two towering emerald evergreen trees in a west suburban cemetery not far from her home and only a field away from where her mother lay buried. It meant carrying Mama just as she had asked me because she said she “trusted me more than anyone in the world” and called me, “the best man she knew.”
“I got you, Mama,” I had reassured as she sat at my kitchen table years earlier. Then on August 22, 2014, Mama took her final mortal breath, although not before I had set in place the plans to properly and lovingly lay her to rest.
Inarguably, the hardest part of my final duties as a son was to eulogize Mama. It was a decision I arrived at easily. For I had witnessed more than enough funerals in my lifetime where preachers miscarried that final task, trying at times to preach the deceased into heaven or sometimes to condemn the dearly departed to hell.
Or I had seen preachers seize the moment and crowd gathered at funerals—usually much larger than their own congregations and Sunday service attendance—to preach at length as if they were the star attraction, then afterwards holding an altar-call or signing up new members. I had seen preachers speak as if they really knew the person lying in the casket, although having only cursory knowledge of that person’s life, their story or impact.
I had even seen preachers speak so glowingly of the decedent that I had to scratch my head in disbelief and wonderment and make sure the undertaker hadn’t switched the body because the departed person who so many of us knew them to be in life was hell on wheels. I wasn’t having any of those shenanigans. And being a licensed minister and ordained elder in the Church of God In Christ myself ensured that no one could question my credentials, although my chief qualification was my heart for my mother.
Choosing to eulogize Mama was actually never really a choice. It was my final act of protection as a son who witnessed as a child those abuses by men against my mother that still make tears swell in my eyes. By a son who often (though in hindsight not hardly enough) bought his mother flowers, or candy and other gifts or stopped by her job to visit because I knew it would make her beam with pride and joy. A son who promised her that I would always come home for Christmas. A son who sought to show his love because I rarely remember as a boy seeing a man truly adore and dote on my mother; witnessed too many sad and lonely tears late at night as she stared out of our apartment window.
A son who cherished how much Mama sacrificed for me and my siblings even to her own hurt. A son who had long come into the truth that no woman will ever love me as much or in the way my mother did—not withholding anything, without qualifying conditions and with no expectation.
I wanted to be to her the best man that no man ever was. A man on whom she could depend in sickness and in health. In life and in death.
As a loving son, that means, at times, quietly standing, carrying weighty things when the load upon your shoulders is crushing, exhaustive, seemingly unbearable. And yet, the cargo is so precious that you cannot, will not, let go even when you feel as though the assignment carried in love is killing you—at least a part of you. For you would rather die than fail like every other man. I chose Mama.
As we prepared for the funeral service, I spoke with my grandfather (my mother’s father) who founded our family church—True Vine Church of God In Christ—about the order of service.
“Look, I’d like to have a place for the bishop and other preachers to speak,” my grandfather said to me over the phone.
“Uh, Grandpa,” I said, “They can’t speak at my mother’s funeral.”
“Why not?” he asked quizzically.
“Because they didn’t know my mama,” I said without hesitation and defiantly. “They didn’t come visit my mother in the hospital or at the nursing home. …They can’t speak over my mama.”
“…Well, they’re coming here to support me,” Grandpa said. “…I sure wish you would change your mind.”
“They can’t speak,” I said before finally offering a compromise. “The bishop can speak for all of them. But he’s got five minutes.”
“Ok, John. I sure appreciate it.”
I appreciate that my grandfather understood—at least did not fight me. The bishop spoke briefly at Mama’s funeral that Friday.
And I stood in deep pain and love to utter final words over the woman who gave me life. Broken, fighting at times to stay composed, but standing even above her open grave as workers filled it with Earth after everyone else had left the cemetery. I told Mama I had kept my promise and I wept.
I miss you everyday, Mama, especially upon the arrival and passing of every Mother’s Day that will never be the same. I am because of you. Love, JOHN
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Excerpt From John Fountain’s Eulogy:
"…I stand here today
To praise
To honor my mother for loving God and Family first
As a God-fearing woman
Who stood
Until she could stand no longer
Holding to God’s unchanging hand
I stand
Not boastfully, Not angrily, Neither reluctantly
But only as a loving son
For just one reason and no other:
To keep my promise to my mother
And in eulogizing Gwendolyn Marie Hagler Clincy,
If I had to take one lesson
From her life & times as I move forward from this place
It could be boiled down to one single word:
STAND
Mama always stood.
Sometimes fiercely
With a quick tongue, and armed with, well, let’s just say, a few choice adjectives
But my Mama always stood her ground.
And when life knocked her down
She got back up
And she stood her ground
And while among her most important lessons to me are:
to Live, to Laugh, to Love,
There is none greater for me than the lesson she taught me
By her fearless and unrelenting courage
By her dogged tenacity and the simple audacity to
Stand.
Through sickness
And hurt
Stand
Through disappointment
Uncertainty, fear, confusion and pain
Stand
That when everyone else counts you out
You just Stand
And that is, for me, the lesson that resounds so clearly from her life today:
Stand
For I believe we all have a better chance
If only we would stand
We can achieve our hopes and dreams
If we stand
Our families
Our communities
Our churches
Our nation would be better
If we would only stand
But too often, unfortunately,
We would rather sit down
Would rather leave the heavy lifting of others who need our help
For someone else to carry
Or else simply to leave those in need in their debilitating or degenerative conditions
lying down
O, if only those of us who could
would stand
Too often today, men are Missing In Action
Weak-kneed excuse makers who by their do-nothingness
abdicate or vacate their rightful place of headship in the home—
In time becoming impotent
with no legacy
And no throne
Too often today, women dwell in foolishness and folly
Neglect their children and homes
Deceived into thinking that their beauty and their bodies
are the way to a real man’s heart
And by a foolish woman’s own hands
is her family torn apart.
And yet, the answer is to Stand
Stand, sisters
Understanding that for some of you
The greatest man you’ll ever know
Is the one you raise.
Stand, brothers,
Understanding that your greatest legacy
Is your children
And that if you put nothing into this life
You certainly can get nothing out.
And Let the church, Stand
For too often, the church is M.I.A.
Missing In Action from the frontlines of any so-called war on poverty
Missing In Action from the neighborhoods where murder rages
and the blood of our children runs red in the streets
The church is Missing In Action from the highways and hedges where the people perish and also languish in sin and sink in consuming social waters of a world in which “we” the church, are supposed to be the light
Let the church Stand
Rather than being Missing In Action
from the modern-day pools of Bethesda, where the lame, the deaf, the sick and disabled gather, longing, someday to again be made whole
Let the church lead the way and Stand
Rather than to be Missing in Action
in a day when we seem to have forgotten the difference
between “church work” and “God’s work”
A day when outreach seems to have become an hors d'oeuvres
rather than the main course
A church that seems
Stuck on having service rather than engaged in serving
On going to church rather than on BEING the church
Stuck on attending church meetings and convocations
Rather than meeting the needs of the widow, the poor, the orphan
And healing the nations
A church that is too often
Missing in Action from modern-day Lo-Debar, that place in ancient Israel that, according to the Old Testament, was a town of forgotten people.
Lodebar
Home of the sick, the cast-aside and neglected
Land of the Forgotten
Through my mother
I came to visit Lodebar many times
Lodebar:
The myriad nursing homes,
Rehabilitation Centers
And Hospitals
where so many sick and the hurting dwell
and where most of the people I saw
never had anyone to come and visit them
Sit with them
Talk with them
Touch them
Lodebar
Land of the Forgotten
Most conspicuously absent
With the exception of a few faithful angels
Was the church
And I am convinced that for all of us, our great challenge today
Is whether to be Missing In Action
Or whether to choose to become the difference maker in the lives of others
Instruments of change
Transformers
The hands and feet of Jesus
Our challenge
Is simply whether we are going to continue sitting down
Or whether we will choose to stand up
That is the challenge I embrace today
The challenge that will live on as my mother’s legacy from this day forward
The challenge I wholly accept
To continue to Stand
Understanding that by standing we help others also to Stand
This is the legacy I will carry from my mother I will always remember standing:
Standing to walk to all of those parent-teacher conferences, concerned about her children’s future and education…
Standing to enroll me and my brother and sisters at Providence-St. Mel, sacrificing to her own hurt to pay tuition, going even without stockings or a winter coat, so that we might have a better chance…
Standing, when we had little food and no money, to make fried potato patties so that we could have something to eat and the times when she wouldn’t eat herself so that her children’s bellies might be full…
Standing when my natural father abandoned us, giving me his DNA and his name, but little else…
I will stand from this day forward on the legacy of a mother who wasn’t afraid to stand to protect her children and loved ones from friend or foe…
On the legacy of a woman I can still see:
Standing when her heart was broken, and nights were dark and long;
Standing, even when she had to stand alone with her children, standing in the faith that somehow, by the grace of God, the sun was going to shine again…
Standing to take us to Sunday School,
Standing with a sense of moral purpose and social conscience for what was fair, just and right, and instilling within her children a moral compass
The legacy of a woman standing up to teach her children that we then who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak;
That people are all that matter;
And that family, even when they let you down, is all you’ll ever have…
The legacy of a strong black woman
Standing up on those mornings when she didn’t feel like getting up to go to work,
Standing through migraine headaches and whatever new crisis arose
Standing with the audacity, tenacity, and ferocity to never give up the fight
Standing by her beliefs that the fact that somebody else’s wrong is never an excuse for you NOT to do right
Standing, no matter what came her way,
Standing; Still standing.
And by His Son Jesus Christ, one day, she will once again be raised
To stand.
That is the blessed hope.
And my blessing from above: A mother who stood for me
and who taught me my greatest purpose as a man:
To Stand.
Until that great day, Mama
Rest in Peace
I will see you again."
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