CRYING IN THE CHAPEL
Due to my hectic lifestyle and constant travelling over almost four decades, I haven’t been in regular contact with family members over the years other than my mum, although I have kept the lines of communication open. I have always been aware of what’s been going on in the lives of my brothers and sisters, and of Pastor Burris’s kids, especially Trevor, who is, in every sense except by blood, a brother.
I know my family are very proud of me, but it frustrates me sometimes that none of them have read my work more thoroughly. I don’t think any of them could do a three-minute lecture on what my poetry or writing is really about – if they had, I would have employed them! I sometimes feel they’re proud because I’m famous, and not because of what I stand for or have created. If I think about that, it does break my heart a little. Still, family is family and sometimes you have to take care of each other and love each other unconditionally.
In 2012 I was made aware of what was happening to Pastor, who was still in the States, and getting older and older. He had started to show signs of dementia, and he needed a carer. His situation was complicated, due to US citizenship issues, but it transpired that he was being ripped off by an unscrupulous woman who was siphoning cash from him but not doing much in the way of caring.
I started calling him regularly around this time and could hear he was fading. In October 2013 Trevor went over and couldn’t believe the appalling conditions his dad was living in. This woman had completely neglected him while helping herself to his money. So Trevor said, ‘We’re going back to England’, and put him on a plane almost immediately.
When they arrived at Heathrow there was a scene, as he was so ill. He was taken immediately to hospital. He was in there for a while, then came out, got very sick again very quickly, was readmitted and then, on 13 January 2014, he died. I visited him before he passed. All his kids saw him. But this is where it gets weird. We began making arrangements for the funeral. There was no autopsy or anything but the hospital had his body and told us, ‘He’s a foreign national – you’ll need to pay the costs.’ The family was presented with a bill for £18,000, which they couldn’t afford.
The hospital wouldn’t give us the body back until they got the money. I was astonished. I went to one doctor and said, ‘This is crazy, you’re holding the body to ransom. What are you going to do? Are you going to bury him? If so, can we come to the funeral?’
They went on about him not being a UK citizen, and how the government was clamping down on ‘NHS tourism’. But he’d been in England since he was a very young man. He was one of those guys who’d worked all his life, never gone sick. He’d worked in security, welding, all sorts of jobs. I explained how he’d become a US citizen only after he’d retired, and that he’d paid his National Insurance contributions all his working life. For a while it was like a gangsters’ stand-off from Peaky Blinders: ‘We’ve got your dad and we’re not gonna give you the body unless you pay up.’
In typical surreal Zephaniah fashion there was a twist to the story. I was actually doing promotional work for the regional health authority, helping to publicise awareness of HIV in the black community in the West Midlands. In fact, it was a doctor from the very hospital Pastor died in who’d got me involved. I calmly pointed this out, and there was much hand-wringing and apologising, with them saying ‘It’s not us, it’s the government.’ A week later, they called to say, ‘It’s okay. You can have him back. No charge.’
At the funeral, Pastor had an open casket, and people were filing around to pay their last respects. Now, I’d been to many funerals in my life, and I’d never cried at one before, but when it was my turn at the casket I looked at Pastor’s face and quickly hurried into a corner – where I just cried and cried. I mean really cried. It took me over – an emotional reaction I could do nothing about. When I composed myself, I expected people to be staring, or that some aunties would come to comfort me, but it seemed no one had noticed. A couple of acquaintances were chatting casually nearby: ‘Yeah man, how you doing? Long time no see. Y’alright Benjamin, man.’
I don’t remember crying when my dad died, but there was something about that last moment looking at Pastor that really touched me. He’d been like a real dad to me and, despite him chickening out on marriage and breaking Mum’s heart, I’d obviously held stronger feelings for him than I was aware of.
Mum came to the funeral, although she hadn’t visited him in hospital, so she never said goodbye as such. She told me after he died that she thought he was the only man who had ever really loved her. When she was in the kitchen he would come up behind her and put his arms around her or cover her eyes, saying, ‘Guess who?’ or give her a peck on the cheek – playful little gestures that meant a lot. She’d never had that kind of affection from my dad. And she said, ‘You know, I’ll never forget those things . . . black men don’t do that kind of thing very often.’