Resurrection, Hope, and the Resurrection of Hope

I initially held off writing this post, thinking that too much of what I’ve been writing this year is more obit than essay. But then my daughter had an assignment in her CCD class to talk to her parents about Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, celebrated on All Saints and All Souls Days, in Mexico and among Mexican Americans. Because the Day of the Dead is based on the belief that the Dead remain with us and, on the Day of the Dead, literally walk among us, my daughter was required to talk to me about some of my deceased loved ones and their influence on me, about the ways in which they are still present to me.

This was a particularly timely assignment for me, because my Uncle Walter had died two weeks earlier. As I flew out to Massachusetts for the funeral, I brought Elaine Pagels’ and Karen King’s book “Reading Judas,” an analysis of the recently discovered Gospel of Judas, which critiques traditional Catholic notions of martyrdom and, therefore, salvation. At any rate, what I took away from the book was the notion that Jesus taught that we must believe in something beyond this life in order to find the courage and will to do the right thing during our time here on earth.

And so, when Alice interviewed me for her assignment, I was primed to tell her about two people who had done the right thing in their earthly lives, my friends Trino and Denise, whose pictures I keep posted on the door of my office. Both of them were advocates and activists for the disadvantaged – Trino for prisoners; Denise for children in poor public school districts. I can say that I’ve had a good day at work if I feel I’ve done something to honor their memory. During the days leading up to the election, as I powered through consecutive 15-hour days of preparation for and then actual poll and election monitoring, I thought of them often.

When the election was over, and Barack Obama had been projected the winner, I cried and thought about Trino and Denise, and how I wished they had lived to see this election day. As story after emotional story was reported in the election’s aftermath, this became a recurring theme across America. African-Americans spoke of their joy in casting a ballot not just for themselves but for so many who had gone before them. Civil Rights activists and their descendants invoked the memories of departed comrades and relatives who had longed for what occurred this week and took satisfaction in knowing, finally, that their work had not been in vain.

The Obama victory also provided me with a slightly different kind of closure. My mother, Walter’s sister, instilled in me the superstition that deaths come in threes – that when someone close to us dies, there are two other deaths of significance to us that occur at about the same time. In October 2008, my three deaths of significance were: Levi Stubbs, lead singer of the Four Tops; my uncle Walter; and the writer Studs Terkel – not exactly kindred spirits, but somehow all tied up in my emotions surrounding the election.

The idea that I would feel a connection to and among them, I submit, is not a totally crazy notion. I actually met Studs several years ago when he eulogized a colleague of mine who had died suddenly and tragically, and though I never met Stubbs, it was not surprising to hear him on WDET, my favorite public radio station, during one of their fundraising drives. Like a handful of former Motown stars, he still could be found regularly around Detroit. At any rate, while Barack Obama was winning the presidency earlier this month, I was having my own Day of the Dead experience as these three men seemed to walk the earth again with me.

***

My Uncle Walter was, in the parlance of Thomas Frank, a true backlash voter – someone who never quite got over the Vietnam War and the sixties. He had no patience for liberals, pacifists, and his nephews who dared to wear shoulder-length hair – my cousin Ed felt this particularly, since he wore long hair while the Vietnam War was still going on. I was much younger and didn’t start wearing long hair until the late 1980s. I am pretty confident that he would not have supported a politician named Barack Hussein Obama.

However, in the same way that Barack Obama spoke about his grandmother, who also passed away just before the election, I cannot say that who my Uncle Walter was, and where he came from, are not a part of me. He taught me how to shoot a bb gun and steer a pick up truck (my legs were too short to drive it), and I always had a great time whenever we visited him. He was an engineer and a good teacher. I find myself repeating things he said to tutor my brother in algebra when I help my daughter with her math homework.

He also was a local activist, serving on the town school board, the board of selectmen, and the conservation commission (proving that I come by my own crackpot activist spirit legitimately from both sides of my family). Though he often spoke as though he believed that the world had gone to hell in a hand-basket, it did not keep him from getting involved at a local level where he felt he could make a difference. Ironically enough, this same spirit of local political involvement was the lifeblood of Barack Obama’s bottom-up campaign.

***

To understand Levi Stubbs’ significance to me, you have to understand my love for the song “Reach Out I’ll Be There.” Outside of the work of Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, “Reach Out I’ll Be There” is one of Motown’s greatest moments. There has never been a more perfect vocal than Stubbs’ in that song – growling, shouting, pleading; no one has ever sung the word “darling” with more passion.

The chattering percussion and rumbling bass that open the song set the tone, with the singer suffering serious emotional turmoil. While the words are reassuring -- "I’ll be there/With a love that will shelter you/ I’ll be there/With a love that will see you through" – the singer’s anguish and vulnerability convey something else. This is someone who needs to be needed; someone who has something to give and has been stymied. That’s why the song works so well as a sing-along. In the dark days after a break-up, I always could growl and shout along with Levi Stubbs – and try to sing, just once perhaps, “darling” as powerfully as he does -- to make it through.

In a similar vein, the socialist singer-songwriter Billy Bragg celebrated the power of Stubbs’ voice in his song “Levi Stubbs’ Tears”: “When the world falls apart some things stay in place/ Levi Stubbs’ tears run down his face.” Music can sustain and transform us. That’s one of the absolute truths of my life and undoubtedly of the lives of many others. When Nelson Mandela spoke at Tiger Stadium 17 years ago, he made a point of noting that the music of Motown had helped him survive his time in the Robben Island prison in South Africa. And so, when Levi Stubbs passed away just before America elected its first African-Americn President, I couldn’t help but think of him as a symbol of all of the musicians whose art helped to sustain all of those (living and dead) who rejoiced in Barack Obama’s electoral victory.

***

It has taken a lot of music like Levi Stubbs’ to sustain hope over the 43-year span of my life, particularly the last eight, but on November 4, all of the long nights seemed a small price to pay. Looking at my own music collection, it is stunning to see how many songs document hard times and misery, and cries for social justice. At times, hope has been hard to come by indeed. That is why Studs Terkel always struck me as such an extraordinary person, and that is why he is the perfect thread to tie together me, my Uncle Walter, Barack Obama, Levi Stubbs, Denise, and Trino.

In all of Studs’ obituaries, it was noted that he had said that he knew Barack Obama would win the election and that he passed away secure in that knowledge. Studs’ faith and hope in America and Americans never wavered. To him, people were too interesting and too unique to give up on. He believed that, in the end, our better nature always triumphed. Every person, from my Uncle Walter to Barack Obama and everyone in between, had something of value to say, in Studs’ view.

This wasn’t just talk, either. I saw Studs walk the walk when he came to my colleague Rose’s memorial, more than 25 years after he had written about her in his chronicle of Chicago, “Division Street.” He didn’t have to do that. Who would have known? But he came to the memorial without fanfare, and he spoke plainly and beautifully enough to convince most of us that we had not known our colleague nearly as well as her friend Studs had, and that he would miss her at least as much as we would.

And so, barely two weeks after The Election Night We Will Never Forget, I find myself beholding an utterly changed world: a world in which the values I have tried to teach my children –love, equality, and respect – again seem real and meaningful; a world in which I can believe that I can use all that I have learned from the departed in the aid of progress; a world in which I can hope again. Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?