Encounter with an Ancestor: Funeral Songs

This is the second story in a series about Brooke Neal. Readers are welcome to start with the first story here or to jump in here:

Janet Schaeffer is one of the first friends I made after moving to Greensboro in 2020. Introduced by a mutual connection, she and her husband Eric opened up their home and lives to me, about 45 minutes north of town. When I told Janet what neighborhood I’d moved into, she introduced me to Brooke via facebook, since Brooke lived about a half a mile from me. 

“I was made for friendships,” Brooke had said during our first recorded session at her house. “That’s my best thing.” I’d never shared space with Janet and Brooke at the same time, and I wanted to get a sense of how that would feel. Their friend Kathi Thompson also makes a visit.

Janet is a cancer survivor who had one of her lungs removed, and when we first met, she’d told me about how if she got cancer again, she didn’t know whether she’d pursue treatment. Getting the two of them together was my way of cherishing their decades-long friendship while Janet was still with us, not realizing how soon Brooke’s death would occur. 

September, 2021

Brooke led the way as I drove us to Janet’s house, 45 minutes of conversational ease, curiosity, delight, with positive anticipation. As my life in Greensboro had picked up speed, I’d made the drive to Janet & Eric’s less frequently. So I was stoked. After parking the car, I grabbed an audio device and started recording. It opens with the sounds of our seatbelts unbuckling and a big dog barking greetings. I've edited the recording for brevity and flow.

Brooke: "Let me get the random stuff I brought." 

Will: “Hi Pop Pop.”

Brooke: “He obviously doesn't take us as a serious threat. Hey Pop Pop.” She turns to Janet’s husband, Eric. “Hey, What are you doing? Raking leaves?” 

Eric: “These are marshmallow seeds, I just mowed a patch down there.”

Brooke to Janet: “I overbought mayonnaise, here.” 

Janet: “Oh no, give it to somebody else. I'll show you.” Janet opens a fridge to reveal a huge tub of mayonnaise.

Brooke: “Okay. Okay. And I got this. It's a bra, but it's a large bra for a teenager. Here.” 

Janet: “I'll try it. I'm going to give you some red wine, Okay?”

Brooke: “Okay.” 

Birdsong is audible from Janet’s screened-in porch, while a table is set with pita chips, hummus, and two kinds of nuts. 

Brooke: “I would have been happy with just pistachios.” 

Janet: “The main thing is to sit down in the chair.” She gestures to the microphone clipped to Brooke’s shirt, “So, that looks like a complicated…”

Brooke: “Yeah, mine's wired up.” 

Will: “And if you do not consent to being recorded, then I can delete what we've done so far.”

Janet: “I consent, I consent. Yes, oh please.” 

Brooke: “This is good hummus.” 

Janet: “I like it. I had it for dinner and lunch today too.”

Brooke: “Well, I've never had a message from Facebook that had a red ring around it. It was an emergency message and Kathy Eaton had had a heart attack.” 

Janet: “Really?”

Brooke: “Yes, you know her don't you?” 

Janet: “I think I met her once. I don't know her.”

Brooke: “She's my lesbian friend too.” 

Janet: “Well, she's going to make it, right?” 

Brooke: “I'm supposed to pick her up tomorrow and take her home.” 

Janet: “That would be nice of you.” 

Brooke: “It took me most of my life to figure out that being nice was fun.” 

Janet: “Well, you certainly learned your lesson.” 

Brooke: “I was certainly not very nice for a long time.” 

Janet to Pop Pop: “What are you barking at? Eric? Oh, Kathi's here. Hey, Kathi, we're out here.” 

Kathi: “Hey. You look great.”

Brooke: “Well, I slept about three hours last night.” 

Kathi: “Me too.” 

Brooke: “Welcome to the club.” 

Kathi: “I didn't know whether you were going to require a mask or not.” 

Brooke: “Well, I've had my booster.” 

Kathi: “I haven't had my booster yet, but it's on the way.” 

Will: “How do y'all know each other?”

Janet: “We used to party, we all went to Hot Springs one weekend. There was about ten of us. Now, at least one of us is dead.” 

Brooke: “Yeah, the organizer, the ringleader.” 

Will: “This is the woman you told me about getting people together?” 

Janet: “God, she was incredible.” 

Kathi: “And Pat too.” 

Janet: “Yeah, Pat was there. She's dead. Two of us. I got a whole magazine from Lion's Roar. It's a Tibetan Buddhist magazine. And the whole thing is about death.” 

Brooke: “Well, it's a subject everybody spends their life avoiding.” 

Janet: “It's funny to get a magazine and every article is about death.” 

Brooke: “It takes a little while to sort of sink in for people.” 

Janet: “I remember when I learned, when I got lung cancer, I was like, well, why shouldn't it happen to me?”

Brooke: “Yeah, this is what happens.” 

Janet: “I feel like I've joined the human race now. I really do feel like I've entered some sort of a sorority, kind of. One thing about the dying people that was funny, this man tells you to do certain things that if I die, what will something be? One of them is, when you die, what song do you want played? Have you got one?” Janet turns to Eric and says “Join us, Babe,” and Eric pulls up a chair while Brooke responds to Janet’s question. 

Brooke: “I just want it to be cheap when I die. I don't want my kids to have to pay anything. And I want it to be over.” 

Will: “What's your song?” 

Brooke: “None. I don't want anything. I don't really want anything.” 

Janet: “What comes in your head? Mine was, she'll be coming around the mountains when she comes. Eric's is, what was yours?”

Eric singing: “Happiness runs in a circular motion, thought is like a little boat upon the sea. You can have everything if you let yourself be.” 

Janet singing: “All our souls are deeper than you can be.” 

Brooke: “I just don't want anything. Now, my friend, whose memorial picnic I went to, had it down to the, even to somebody playing fanfare for the common man.” 

Kathi: “Oh wow.” 

Brooke: “Well they all thought it was funny because it sounds like the queen is going to arrive and he was a queen. So it was appropriate, but he really, I mean he talked about his Green Burial, and he had a DNR tattoo (Do Not Resuscitate). But I just don't… My Daddy was an atheist and he didn't want anybody at his funeral but me and my half-brother. I did invite his oldest friends, and what we did was we stood around and watched them cover the casket up, because there was no service. And it really seemed fitting to me that not a word was said, I mean it wouldn't have changed anything about who he was. His life was enough of a thing that you didn't have to talk about it.” 

Janet: “Well (Eric’s brother) Emmett did the thing, their relative had an airplane and Emmett went up with Bob's ashes and poured them out in the window, and they all came back in! So then he had a whole bunch of ashes left, I have the thing, and I mixed Bob's with Eileen's and I keep thinking, go get rid of these, but never do.”

Kathi: “This is my song. I don't know if it’ll play or not, but listen if it does.” After some technical adjustment, the sound of a guitar started playing from Kathi’s phone.

A man’s voice sings: “Lay me down in a field of memory. I’ll be waiting by cool waters, where the river meets the sea. I found a place where I can linger…”

Janet: “Where I can?”

Several people: “Linger”

Janet: “Linger!”

The music continues: “Lay me down on a bed of melody. I’ll be waiting by cool waters where the river mets the sea.” 

Kathi: “When Fred wrote that song and they sent me the CD, I'm like, That's the one, if I had one, that's the one I would want to have.”

Brooke: “I just really don't think I want anybody to sing anything.” 

Janet: “We're not going to sing.” 

Brooke: “You can sing anything you want to, but I'm not there.” 

Will: “It's not for you, it's for us.”

Brooke: “Yeah, sure.” Brooke gestures for Janet’s cat Quito to join her. “He's a nice boy.” 

Janet: “He likes Kathi. Of course he likes everybody. He's a great cat.” 

Brooke: “To me, male cats have always been more friendly, more sociable.” 

Kathi: “This breeze feels so good out here.” 

Brooke responds to a BANG on the metal roof: “What was that?” 

Janet: “Oh, that's them walnuts. Sometimes I think, my God, thank God I haven't been hit by two or three of them all at once. It would knock me out.” 

Kathi: “Well, you remember that day we were sitting on that step right there talking and one fell on my shoulder. You don't remember that?” 

Janet: “Gone,” Janet chuckles, “Gone.” 

Kathi: “I was like, oh God.” 

Janet: “I'm sorry! I'm so sorry. You could have sued us!” 

Kathi: “No. Never.” 

Janet continues laughing. By this point, the sound of nighttime bugs chirping has grown louder outside Janet’s screened-in porch.

Kathi: “Yeah, we're all getting old and it's an interesting thing.” 

Will: “If anybody's interested in answering how old you are in age, I don't think I know people's age.” 

Janet: “I'm 77.” 

Kathi: “I'm 68.” 

Brooke: “I’m 79… I was always the youngest in my crowd because I was certainly the youngest person at the PTA having had a child when I was almost 16. And now I'm the oldest.” 

Kathi: “I love your haircut.” 

Brooke: Oh, I need it cut again. 

Kathi: “Oh man, I just love it.” 

Janet chuckles while Brooke responds: “Well, that's just how it grows. I mean I don't do anything to it, and when it grows out much longer it's just at war with itself.” 

Janet to Will: “And you're 30-something, right?” 

Will: “36” 

Kathi: “You look so much younger.” 

Brooke: “Yeah, he looks 17.” 

Kathi: “Oh, you're so cute. Are we allowed to say that? That you're so cute?” 

Will: “It’s fine.” 

Brooke: We have consent? 

Kathi: “I've thought about that so often, with the Me Too thing.” 

Will: “Oh, consent? Well I appreciate you being sensitive. The reason she was teasing me about consent, they're both mic'd up as you can see. And I made a thing about getting consent earlier. And I'll ask you to drive your consent to record.” 

Kathi: “I'm an open book.” 

Brooke: “Yep, we're all pretty open books.” 

Janet: “There's a song there. (Janet sings) Look, look, my heart is an open book. I just love the way they pop in your head.” 

Kathi: “Yeah, they do.” 

Brooke: “I know what I want them to play at my funeral.” 

Kathi: “What?” 

Brooke: “‘You Want It Darker’” 

Janet: “Well you told me you wanted ‘Hallelujah’. What is ‘You Want It Darker’?” 

Brooke: “That's the one that Leonard Cohen wrote right before he died. And it's dark.” 

Kathi: “That CD is, he's just a genius.” 

Brooke: “I got that CD as Pete was dying, as my second husband was dying. I got that and listened to it a lot. And I would have sent it to Pete, but I just felt like, you know, it was, they had their little circle and they didn't need any help from me.” 

Will: “What was their circle like? What do you mean they had…” 

Brooke: “Oh, his wife, his daughter, his son, my two kids that were his. I got to say goodbye to Pete. I did.” 

Janet: “You talked to him?”

Brooke: “They were here for the summer. They'd get a bed and breakfast and then we'd have the big Fish Dinner Family Reunion, and I went to their family reunions. But I felt like, they were in Minnesota, and Pete didn't need any help from me. It had gone to his brain when he died, and they put him in hospice and he didn't know where he was, and that was really sad.” 

Janet: “He was a neat guy, for sure.” 

Brooke: “Best conversation... I mean, it was a seven year long conversation with its own vocabulary. He… he could tell a story and bring you all the way back and around, And... He was wise, but I think that at some point he started believing everything he thought.” 

Janet: “Oh, that's a trap, isn't it?”

Brooke: “Yep. Yep.”

Will: “Well then did he come back from that after y'all divorced?” 

Brooke: “He joined Eckankar and sort of parked his… his…”

Will: “Crazy Wagon?”

Brooke: “Yeah his Crazy Wagon, his psychosis, his Crazy Wagon there.” 

Kathi: “What is Eck-en-car?” 

Brooke, suppressing a laugh: “It's the ancient science of soul travel.” 

Kathi: “Oh my gosh.”

Janet: “But it's really the, you used to say it's really… that kind of yoga.” 

Brooke: “It's really Raja Yoga with a price tag and a Dairy Queen Aesthetic. That is my line.” 

Kathi: “A Dairy Queen Aesthetic!”

Janet: “But those people, I know those people, some of those people that were into Eckankar, they did do, you know, soul travel. Randy Fosner, one of the first times he did it, he was going to paint the inside of the apartment he was renting. And he left his body and was cleaning his house! But he was amazing, Randy Fosner.”

Brooke: “I think it's a bigger trick to be in your body.” 

Janet: “Well, that's wise. Well, I remember when I went to meditation retreats, it was a lot more fun to look at my pain than my thoughts. I mean, you could look at your pain and after a while it would just get, it’d feel like little pieces of space objects, nothing connected to you. It was just interesting. But thoughts? Oh my God…” 

Brooke: “Right. Well, you know, I realized that if I was in my body, I was relatively safe in the moment. But if I was out there running my head about things, I wasn't at all safe.” 

Will: “Could you turn off the fan?”

Kathi: “I thought I was feeling the breeze!” 

Janet: “Will, do you have anything?” 

Will: “Facilitation-wise? Yeah. We were saying last time that we were going to try to do a general trajectory of past to present to future., and I feel like being here is so much more present than anything else. And so I'm honestly so glad to just get a taste of the flavor of y'all's interaction.” 

Janet: “Oh, cool. Right, cool. Are we ready for chocolate?” 

Brooke: “Chocolate? When were we not!” 

Janet: “Okay.” Janet gets up and starts shuffling toward the door.

Brooke: “You are so tiny.” 

Janet: “I know. I'm gaining weight, though.” 

Brooke: “Good!” 

Janet: “Under pressure. Some girlfriends started bugging me. Really bugging me. And so I… Joko Beck help me to say, ‘Well thank you!’ I sent her a Thank You note, and I have gained about three pounds.” 

Brooke: “Ice cream!” 

Janet: “Well, Chocolate, too. I am gaining. I'm getting close to 80.” 

Brooke: “She's too little for me to find clothes for.” 

Janet: “Did you get chocolate yet? Did everybody get chocolate? This thing is lots of chocolate, so have all you want…”

Will: “This is going to keep me up tonight.” 

Janet: “How is school going?”

Will: “It's good. Yeah, it's good.”

Brooke: “I made some really good friends in graduate school, and then they just sort of scattered, and I was left there. I was really depressed for a while.” 

Will: “I need to get myself ready for that because some of my friends are getting ready to go.” 

Brooke: “Well, it's easier to stay in touch now. I mean, I barely had a landline. And when I did, it was a party line.”

Kathi: “I remember party lines.” 

Brooke: “Well I'll tell you what, if you got something on fire and you got a party line, you got a volunteer fire department there right quick.” 

Kathi: “Yeah, I didn't think about that, but yeah, it's true.” 

Brooke: “I had it happen a couple of times.” 

Kathi: “Wow. From your wood stoves?” 

Brooke: “No, from my son, Tommy!” 

Kathi: “He's an arsonist, huh?” 

Brooke: “Yeah. He set the backyard on fire while I was bedridden and pregnant with twins.” 

Kathi: “Oh my gosh.” 

Janet: “Poor Tommy.” 

Brooke: “There is a song that says something about, ‘I lit the match, but I didn't start the fire,’ or something like that.” 

Janet: “That's a good lyric. I like that.”

Kathi, whispering: “Hand me some more chocolate.” 

Janet: “Oh, they're so good, aren't they?” 

Kathi: “I had one, I'm going to have two more.”

Brooke: “I know what I want them to sing!” 

Will: “Wait, what was the first one that you said? It gets darker?” 

Brooke: “‘You want it darker.’ So this one is,” she sings, smiling, “‘You picked a fine time, to leave me, Lucille.’” 

Kathi, after singing along to the last phrase: “Oh, I hate that song! Oh God, alright.”

Will: “It's kind of fun to have control, right?” 

Brooke: “Well, you know, I've never exerted any control over my kids. When I was real young, we'd go to the grocery store, and I just got’em whatever they wanted! And after everybody got grown, I wouldn't arrange for when everybody's going to come visit me. I would let them all make their own arrangements if they wanted to. And so I would just have them coming and going one right after another. It would drive me crazy, but still, I didn't want to… It gives me a belly ache to try to control people. So maybe that wasn't such a good idea, but maybe I'll make it up for it with this funeral business! And the funniest funeral anybody ever had.” 

Kathi: “I better get before it gets dark. I don't like driving in the dark too much.” 

Will: “Well, let's at least take a break.” 

Janet: “And we’ll put some stuff up. Kathi, I'm glad you showed up. That was fun.”

Brooke: I am too.

Kathi: “I felt like I was busting in, but…”

Brooke: “No, well I'm glad to see you.” 

Kathi exits.

Will: “Can I take a picture of y’all?” 

Brooke: “Sure!”

Will: “Is that okay with you Janet?”

Janet: “Yeah. As long as I don’t smile.”

Will: “I love your smile! What are you talking about? What are you talking about? You've got a great smile.” 

Janet: “I'm going to be the clown. I do have a Minnie Mouse hat.” 

Brooke: “This is us.” 

Janet: “This is us.” 

A cell phone camera takes a flurry of pictures.

Janet: “You might find one of those hopefully that looks good.” 

Will: “Yeah!”

Janet: “Surely. Okay, guys, I'm going to turn the light off”

Will: “Good night.” 

Brooke: “Goodnight.” 

The sound of bugs dominate the soundscape as Brooke and I step out of the house. Janet rushes back with a plastic bag. 

Janet: “I got the mayonnaise.” 

Will: “Oh, the mayonnaise! She's got the mayonnaise for you, Brooke.” I rush through the house to retrieve the bag with the mayonnaise. 

Will: “Good night, Pop Pop.” 

Janet: “You got it? Cool.”

Will: “Good night! See you soon!”Janet: “Bye”

Will: “I love you, Janet.”

Janet: “I love you, too.”

—

This is the second story in a series about Brooke Neal. The first is here, and the next will be posted with the next full moon, when Brooke will talk about her complicated relationship with the medical system, and what it was like to come to peace with death.