AN ISLAND CEILIDH PART 6: SONGS OF DEATH AND TRAGEDY

When the 50-50 theatrics are over at Stanley Bridge, Dad announces the next song (we never use a set-list at ceilidhs, so it’s always a surprise). “I should get this request out of the way because I want to have the rest of the evening to win back everyone’s approval.” Lord have mercy. “I wasn’t gonna do it but it was a request and I’ve only done it twice this summer. Is anybody here from (…)?” A few hands shoot up. “Every hear of the (…) Funeral Home?”

“If you die don’t go there,” warns Tom.

During the long Island winters, Dad always has his ears perked for a good tale to twist into a song. “Anything with death in it lends itself to the folk tradition,” he tells me. “If you don’t laugh you cry.” In January 2018 he heard a tragic story on the radio. He immediately sat down and wrote a new acapella ballad: “The Worst Was Yet to Come.”

The crowd at Stanley Bridge falls silent as Dad begins to sing:

The husband stood beside the box, his teary face as white as chalk. The coffin lid was firmly locked. But the worst was yet to come.

In the song, a poor husband has just lost his wife. If that isn’t sad enough, he looks into the casket and realizes that it is the wrong cadaver. The workers apologize and return with a new casket.

The husband said I know this dress, the one she called her Sunday best, but this is not my wife at rest. But the worst was yet to come.

At this point, the crowd is laughing hardily. I look down and notice a woman fumbling around in her purse.

They weren’t so swift in their return, and this time with an ash filled urn.

A collective gasp. Hook, line, and sinker.

It seems that her remains were burned. But the worst was yet to come.

At this point in the performance I notice that the audience is passing something down the rows towards the stage. The old fella in the front row grabs ahold of this mystery object and passes it up to Dad. He gives it a good look-see. It’s a small card. Holding it up, Dad leans into the mic. “It’s a business card: (…) Funeral Home.” Everybody loses it. Andy and I are in tears. The old fella in the front row is repeatedly slapping his knee. The woman who had found it in her purse stands up and says she went to a wake at the funeral home a few weeks before the incident occurred. It’s a magic moment.

Reflecting on it, Dad says “A ceilidh is not like- we’ll wait ‘til the end of the night to show him...that’s very maritime-ish, just interrupt the whole thing.”

Dad finishes off the song over the roars of laughter.

And now at home in fading health, feeling sorry for himself, though he has come into some wealth. They paid him off to shut his mouth, and there his wife sits on the shelf. And so the worst has come.