Singing not only helps allow it to move through the body but it alchemizes what grief can become.
Since I first started singing as a little girl, I yearned to become some incarnation of Whitney, Mariah and Celine. By my 20s, I was working as a funeral singer, still pining for the big time. In 2004, I thought I had come exceedingly close to embodying the diva trifecta from my childhood — I auditioned for “American Idol” and made the cut from tens of thousands to 200 hopefuls. I told producers that funeral singing was my steadiest gig, thinking that the job would soon be moving to my rearview.
But when the platinum-haired reality-show producer lifted his slate eyes from his tea, steam rising to his chin, I didn’t expect what came next. “Stick with singing at funerals,” he said. “You can sing a lion to sleep … but you don’t have enough diva potential.” His posh British accent made each word sting more.
I winced. My chest clenched. I thought back to that gangly, intense child who discovered that sounding beautiful was something she could do. I ached to book stadiums. Yet, here was this Hollywood gatekeeper sending me the message that not only was funeral singing a low bar, but the only one I could aspire to.
When I first sang at a funeral, at age 10, at the invitation of a music teacher, I remember trembling as I headed up the church aisle. But when I heard my own voice ring out, calming yet strong, my anxiety melted away. It was as if my scrawny body was becoming something bigger, something more. In the years that followed, I lost sight of what a sacred, purpose-rich privilege it was to lend my voice to those who were mourning — to let it become theirs, to allow it to give breath to sentiments not yet realized.
By the time I auditioned for “American Idol,” I had sung at hundreds of funerals. I had worked with dying people who requested, matter-of-factly, that I, then only a teenager, stand with them at their piano and run through a hymn they wanted sung at their memorial. I regularly performed with the same organist, and we named our most requested set list “Standard Operating Procedure,” which included “On Eagle’s Wings” (“Iggle’s,” we joked, in Philly-speak) and “Prayer of St. Francis” (“St. Frank”). For secular funerals, “My Way” and “Hallelujah” ruled.
I had sung at funerals where no friends or family of the deceased showed up, at services mobbed with slouching mourners wearing coats that drooped to their ankles. Some smelled of rain and perfume. Others stiffly handed out tissues. There were children, some restless, some transfixed. I stood close to heartsick mourners and worried that I would not sustain the enormousness of their spiritual weight. I had always preferred singing at funerals over weddings. To blissed-out couples (and sometimes Bridezillas), I was an ornament, a decoration. I didn’t feel as meaningfully alive as when I beamed all my focus toward soothing the bereaved.
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