the grief or the celebration?

So which is real, the grief or the celebration? Both, simultaneously, and that is why it is profound. You might sometimes see a mother dancing behind a casket containing the body of her own dead son, with tears of grief running down her face. Most funeral traditions in our society are there to remind us that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. In New Orleans the funerals remind us that Life is bigger than any individual life, and it will roll on, and for the short time that your individual life joins the big stream of Life, cut some decent steps... No individual life lasts forever, and it is the responsibility of those left outside the walls of the boneyard to keep life going. This isn’t escapism, or denial of grief; it is acceptance of the facts of life, a map of the profound relationship to the grief that is a part of life, and it will tell you something about why the real New Orleans spirit is never silly, or never just silly, in celebration, and never maudlin in grief. Under ordinary circumstances the word “irony”, might come to mind, but the detachment but the detachment implied by that word doesn’t seem to quite fit the situation. It is a way of containing the opposites that are a part of life in a way that allows the individual, and the community, to function with style and grace, even wit, under the most adverse circumstances.


Tom Piazza, Why New Orleans Matters. Regan Books. 2005. p. 31, 32