During a recent visit to New Orleans, I attended the funeral of Antoinette K-Doe--she had passed away on February 24th, the first day of Mardi Gras this year. Owner of the popular Mother-in-Law restaurant in Treme, one of the oldest African American neighborhoods, Ms. K-Doe was a well-known and much-loved figure in her community. Inside her restaurant, she had erected a shrine for her late husband Ernie K-Doe, a musician of the hit song, “Mother-in-law,” who, as the story goes, she saved from a later sad, somewhat dejected life. Additionally, she took twenty-seven foster children under her care and was indeed a fixture on the Krewe de Vieux floats during Mardi Gras parades.Although funerals usually offer us a good reason to pause, reflect on living, and give due respect to the departed, I have also found them to be uncomfortably solemn events with little or no room for levity. Not so at Antoinette K-Doe’s farewell. That warm, drizzling afternoon, standing with a dear friend in the street, as musicians played on trombones and people swayed to jazzy melodies, I found myself light-hearted and in the mood to dance. At a funeral, yes.
And I had never seen anything like it before.
About fifteen minutes after we got there, a horse-drawn hearse pulled up and waited outside the entrance of the small church. Wearing pink-feathered hats, three young women, dressed in black pencil skirts and high heels, wandered about the crowd. And it all grew especially interesting when a mannequin was carried out of the church—a life-size Ernie K-Doe, dressed to the nines in white and wearing a long wig! Hilarity. He was placed in an open carriage that had pulled up behind the hearse and fitted with a white top hat. Apparently, if I had seen one of the Krewe de Vieux floats during Mardi Gras, I would have understood more fully what I had just witnessed, as this Ernie K-Doe often accompanied Antoinette K-Doe on it.
And the band played on, while the crowd grew larger by the minute--and when the coffin was carried out of the church, the crowd became more chaotic and rather animated. People jumped about almost gleefully with umbrellas and danced even harder. A man with a brown, furry Mardi Gras suit danced the hardest, his headwear inches taller than everyone and bobbing up and down wildly yet rhythmically. A woman in a purple Babydoll costume appeared with the coffin, then led the procession while dancing in step with a few others.
We followed the funeral procession as it snaked its way noisily toward K-Doe’s restaurant. The opulent sounds from the trombones prevailed. People continued to dance and sing. I didn’t see one tear shed—however, I did notice some solemn faces. At the restaurant, the coffin was pulled out of the hearse and lifted three times to hearty cheers from the crowd. “Ernie K-Doe” got to go in first; then, Antoinette K-Doe was taken into her brightly-painted restaurant for the very last time. A well-dressed man then stood guard at the entrance, and the rest of us milled around outside, even as the musicians finally took a break.
Thirsty now, I went around to the other side of the restaurant to see if could buy a bottle of water and came upon a colorful, crowded garden, filled with flowers in purple and yellow bathtubs and a shopping cart parked at one end, decorated with Mardi Gras beads. A small dried-up Christmas tree stood atop the cart. I noticed a number of plant beds, displaying colorful flowers, many of which were not real--and underneath my feet, patches of green carpeting unfolded everywhere.
For a fleeting, disorienting moment, I had no idea where I was—and how I had found myself there. Like Alice, had I indeed fallen down a wondrous hole? And when I came back to my senses, I realized that I had forgotten yet again, as I would over and over that afternoon, about mortal endings, now obscured by a fervent celebration of a fascinating life. And that was precisely the point of all this merriment, I thought, as I caught a gentle smile from the woman in purple Babydoll costume and then slowly made my way back to my friend. Behind me, someone started up a soft tune on a trumpet--yet another reminder that day, of course, that life inevitably goes on.
[A new version of this piece will appear in the April issue of Wild River Review with additional photos. Please look out for it.]
