How Long Will I Cry? (36 page)

A friend of ours, who has a shop right there,
later described to us how she saw Jeff when he was let out of the
van. Jeff walked off on his own and got up on the gurney on his
own, you know. She thought he was going to be okay.

This was the middle of the day. Broad
daylight.

And the backstory to this is the gunman grew
up in a completely opposite way that our family had. His family had
a history of gang activity, and his father was a gang member who
was murdered the year before by people who were in a white van. So
the white van was really who he was shooting at. He could not even
see that these two in the van were not gang members. It’s just
nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.

That weekend after Jeff’s murder, we weren’t
able to come home. We stayed in a hotel downtown, but when we did
roll back in, one of the first things we saw was “J-Def R.I.P.”
bombed everywhere in the community. That was something that his
friends had put up as markers or reminders. But what blew us away
was when all his friends got together and started a car wash. They
washed cars for four days and four nights, in an effort to help us
out financially with funeral costs. They actually managed to raise
more than half.

My God, we got letters. We got letters from
strangers. We got a card from the Chicago Police Department. Cops
see this kind of stuff every day, so for them to take the time out
to write a letter of condolence was really saying something to
us.

There was a peace march that was organized by
a group of friends a couple weeks after his death. The community
was outraged, and it was like, enough is enough. This has to stop.
I don’t know if there’s been a response like that in Pilsen. There
are marches. A lot of them have to do with political issues like
immigration, but I don’t know if there’s ever been one that’s been
sparked by gang violence or by murder. The route of the march
actually was Jeff’s last ride home. It ended up here at Dvorak
Park. It was a really healing thing.

We are artists, and we had to do something in
our own way. So that meant focusing it on making a documentary
about Jeff and sharing his music. The film is part of a greater
enterprise that we call the J-Def Peace Project. The J-Def Peace
Project has a couple components to it: One is a visual art
component, so that means painting murals and raising awareness of
Jeff.

For me, these past two years have been about
trying to keep myself busy enough, but in a creative way. I feel a
very clear sense of intention in what I’m doing right now. I’m the
most creative I’ve been. I’ve produced a series of drawings called
“Secret Language,” and all the drawings were inspired by Jeff. The
goal was to create work that commemorated Jeff but also was really
about how the three of us communicated at home. There’s all kinds
of imagery, from a june bug to a juniper tree, to a scooter, to two
vinyl albums. That was just a way for me to work through loss, and
do so in a way where I wasn’t throwing Jeff’s story down people’s
throats.

After Jeff’s death, I got called by the
Mexican Art Museum and asked if I wanted to paint an
ofrenda
, an altar, in one of the gallery spaces. It was for
Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, a three-month exhibit. I
didn’t want to do it, but I needed to do it. It was just part of
the process.

The final piece of this installation included
a six-minute music video and handwritten notes written by Jeff’s
friends and people who wanted to say good-bye in their own way.
Some of the messages were really personal. Some of them I couldn’t
read. It was almost like reading someone’s diary. I just took
pictures of them, and someday I’ll read them.

In the
ofrenda
, I used vinyl albums to
spell his name out. I used about 80 albums and painted them gold.
The idea “the universe unfolds as it should” is represented in the
clouds and in this passageway. Everybody in the museum had to go
through this portal to exit, so the idea is that this symbolizes
the transition from earth to heaven that everybody has to go
through.

When visitors would come to see the
ofrenda
and spend time listening to the music, and then read
the handwritten notes, I felt like they had achieved a sense of
fulfillment. They knew who Jeff was now. They connected with him.
Now they were ready to move on. And it was good for me, too, so
that I can move on.

It’s easy to lose faith in humanity when
something like this happens, you know? And Elizabeth and I, we have
definite questions about why this happened to us, why this happened
to Jeff. The least likely person. But we do believe that he has
fulfilled his role and is still fulfilling his role. Things are
happening because they’re supposed to happen this way. It’s tough.
But there’s a greater purpose to it. Now, we have to figure out
what that is.

—
Interviewed by Kristin Scheffers

Endnotes

75 Signed into law in the month following the
September 11 attacks in 2001,
the Patriot Act expanded the government’s authority to secretly
search private records and monitor communications. It has been
controversial ever since.

THE FUNERAL HOME LADY

CATHLENE JOHNSON

Funerals have increasingly become the
settings of gang-related violence in Chicago. In November of 2012,
for example, one man was killed and another critically wounded
outside a service for a slain gang leader at St. Columbanus
Catholic Church on the South Side. In the aftermath of that
tragedy, Mayor Rahm Emanuel declared that police would begin to
have a stronger presence at the funerals of reputed gang
members.

As general manager of the Johnson Funeral
Home in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side, Cathlene Johnson
has a unique view of gang-related murders—and of their tragic
impact on the people left behind. When we spoke to her a few weeks
after the shootings at St. Columbanus, she had just completed two
high-profile funerals at which police stepped up security in order
to make sure there were no revenge killings. “We’ve had an eventful
few days around here,” she said.

Johnson has been in the family business at
Smith & Thomas Funeral Homes for 10 years. Her people are from
Arkansas originally, and although she is a native Chicagoan, there
is a slight twang in her voice. Despite frequent interruptions and
visitors poking their heads into her office, Johnson is never too
busy to address a concern. The 40-ish Johnson, who has
old-fashioned views about the etiquette of discussing her exact
age, dresses in suits with minimal jewelry, and describes herself
as a no-nonsense problem-solver. She talks animatedly with large
hand gestures.

It’s always kind of funny when people walk up
to you on the street or in the grocery store. Of course, I know
where I know them from, but they don’t always remember. So they
say, “Hey, I know you…” I give them a little time, and we talk. And
then it comes to them. “Oh, you buried my father,” and I’ll say,
“Yes,” and I always try to remember little details about them. It’s
a chance for the community to connect with you. Just as a
person.

Smith & Thomas has been a big part of the
Austin community since 1984. I worked downtown for so long and,
just being here in the Austin-Oak Park-Forest Park area, it has
that downtown flavor without that hustle-bustle. It’s kind of artsy
and diverse. It has a simplicity about it that I like. And there’s
a lot of openness, too. Openness of people. It has a small-town
feel to it.

I think it’s important to get to know your
neighbors. These are my neighbors, and they call me the Funeral
Home Lady. We are part of this community whether the people want us
here or not. Death is a part of life. And so the funeral home is a
part of the community. We will handle the death part, but we
participate in the life part of the community, too. That’s what I
want you to know about us: that we are an essential part of the
community.

I left the
Chicago Tribune
, where I
was in human resources
,
in 2000 to start my own business.
And I did that, consulting, for a little while. Then my aunt here
at the funeral home, Miss Williams, got sick. She asked me to come
over and manage the financial and accounting operation while she
was doing her recovery. And so I came over here to help out, and
I’ve been here ever since. So that’s how I got integrated into the
family business.

When people come in here, they have no idea
what to do. It’s just an emotional shock, a spiritual shock, a
physical shock. And I have the opportunity to help somebody who’s
very distraught, walk them through a process, be gentle, have them
come out with an end product that’s celebratory of somebody’s life,
something that they’re proud of. So, just to help somebody through
a very, very difficult time—there’s a lot of satisfaction in
that.

To be a general manager—I like to think of
myself as insurance. I am Miss Smith’s insurance that everything is
gonna go well. I do a lot of trouble-shooting on issues. One of the
things about funeral service—you only get one chance to do it
right. There’s no do-over.

Now, at services, people have all kind of
things going on. They have musicians, they have choirs, they have
video presentations. So you’re doing a lot of little things. People
not being here on time—you rework the service sometimes. Keeping
things orderly, which I would say is the most important thing that
we do during a service. Because people sometimes respond to grief
in a violent way, you can have a service that gets emotionally out
of hand. You have to call the police. You have to escort people
out. You also have to be sensitive to what’s going on with your
staff. You got to be looking to see if you have a problem, if
somebody is a problem.

Man, we’ve had a couple services. We have
learned our way through young people’s services, especially when
it’s related to violence. Because we’ve had lots and lots of
incidents at the funeral home related to violence. One of our
policies is we don’t do night services for young people who have
died of violence. The family has to have a day service. We have
undercover police who come to do security. We have emergency
buttons throughout the funeral home so, if you have a situation,
all you have to do is push the button. During those services, we’re
all on high alert.

Crowd control is so important. You may need
to bring in additional staff, because they come out in droves. I
mean, you get these really large crowds and a lot of young people
congregating. We had one service where people were lined up from
the funeral home about five blocks to see this guy in a single-file
line.

I always call Mr. Thomas over to work the
front door because, all these young guys, they come in with their
hats on. We have a no-hat policy. Mr. Thomas, he says, “Young man,
remove your hat!” A lot of their hats, they have gang affiliations.
And then some of them say, “I ain’t taking off my hat!” And then
Mr. Thomas says, “Young man, you got two options. You can remove
your hat and go into the viewing or you have to leave the
premises.” We are never disrespectful no matter how disrespectful
they are to you. And some of these people—they get really mean.
It’s not because they’re bad people. It’s because they’re
overwhelmed by grief and they don’t know what to do with it. And
sometimes, my staff gets the brunt of their anger.

We’ve had fights at the funeral home. One
time, we had a shooting. This was at the other location, on
Madison. It was a huge night, so many people there. I heard
shooting, and then the next thing I heard was just
total confusion. I mean, people ran and scattered everywhere. The
good thing about Madison is they’re right across the street from
the 15th District police station.

I had a family, we had some problems with
them going to the cemetery in terms of the procession. They blocked
off the traffic. They escorted themselves, which they can’t legally
do. It’s their boy, and they’re out there drinking, and it’s just
crazy. I told my staff, “Don’t pass words with these young men. If
it got to be aggressive, just walk away.” You never know what
people might do in response to their grief.

The number-one question I get is, “What
happens to dead people? What happens to you after you die?”

Young people will ask that question. That’s
one of the saddest things for me—seeing children so torn by death.
And the easiest thing is to go to a religious answer, but I always
ask them, “What do you think?” Because what they want to do is
talk. You don’t necessarily have to push your beliefs off on
anybody else. All you have to do is sit there and listen.

The kids think that they’re invincible. And
so then they’re faced with someone they know who they also thought
was invincible, so it challenges everything they thought they knew.
All of a sudden, you realize you don’t know nothing.

The young people have different ways in which
they express that grief. There is some of the traditional crying
and mourning, but I see a lot of artistic type of things. Lots of
poetry and, you know, they have raps. You have to give them a
voice, incorporating young people into the service so they could
have a form of expression, so they could have closure, too. I
definitely see some changes in the industry in terms of how younger
people funeralize people. They don’t want to do traditional things;
they want to do their services their way.

When younger people die, memorial T-shirts
are a big item. The kids wear them the day of the service, but then
they frame them and they
put them up in their rooms. The shirts actually become a memorial.
But
the other thing that I saw, too, was older people will buy them
because it’s
an easier way to dress young people for the funeral. They can honor
the memory of that person and they don’t have to spend so much
attention on
what are the kids going to wear. It’s kind of an appropriate thing
to do now at the service.