Ezra's Funeral
by Philip Goutell

© 2023 Philip Goutell

Some funerals are better than others; not so much for the deceased but for the spectators. I've attended only a handful of funerals in my life but among them Larry's stands out as the best.

Larry was a friend. I had met him at church and, although he was older, we usually had coffee together after the Sunday service and shared our thoughts for the week. We both attended Dr. Caliandro's early service rather than Dr. Peal's eleven o'clock service. It had become a habit for both of us and I'm not sure why.

When I walked into church one Sunday, John, one of the ushers, approached me and told me that Larry had died. I hadn't known him to be sick. The news came as a shock. Ezra Larrier was a good friend.

Ezra had come, reluctantly, to the United States from Panama. His life in Panama must have been better than what he found in the United States. Here his life was a struggle. But his wife had already come to the U.S., seven years earlier. She was a nurse and he wanted to be reunited with her.

Ezra was a cabinet maker by trade. In Panama he had worked on boats. In New York he worked for people making cheap, unpainted furniture who laughed when he declined to share their marijuana. He also did numerous handyman chores for the ladies at church and he collected rents in Harlem for a lawyer who worked for the buildings' owner. The women in those building would ask him if he could find work for their sons but when he asked about their son's education and skills, the answer was generally, "He plays basketball." Larry had to break the news to them that he had no leads for basketball players. In the winter when the budget for oil was too thin to provide pleasant heat, Larry would canvas the tenants who would then chip in to pay for more oil. They trusted him that their money really would go for oil and they really would get more heat. When collecting rents he carried a wrench in his pocket, just in case. He was never robbed.

Having coffee together after church was a regular event. Sometimes Lenny would join us, which is how I got to know Higginson. Higginson had been exiled from Barbados as a teen over an incident with a girl and had grown up in Panama. In time he bought some property there.

As I write this the desk I'm writing on bears witness to Ezra's work. This big wooden desk was saved out of the trash in the Flatiron Building for me by Keith, one of the building's porters, who knew I was looking for &mdash and was in need of — a desk, having just moved into an empty office without any furniture. It was missing the three top drawers. Ezra crafted three drawers for it and they are here today. He also helped me lay down some parquet flooring when I moved from renting "desk space," aside a collection agent and a piece goods salesman, into this new office of my own.

At the time of his death, Larry was probably the best friend I had. Those were lonely years for me. Life was a struggle both with money and with marriage. Larry was constantly upbeat, regardless of his own personal struggles. For months after his death I kept thinking I was seeing him on the street and, even though I had seen his body at the viewing, the funeral was just a fantasy. He had made that strong an impression on me.

The only family member I knew was his nephew, Roland Flowers. Larry had once presented him to me as someone who needed work. I hired him off the books and under the minimum wage and then fired him when he couldn't show up to work on time. He had met a girl. She had warned him to be punctual but he was head over heels and work was the last thing on his mind. When I met him at the viewing, he thanked me for firing him. It was, apparently a lesson learned and he was now the assistant manager of a shoe store and doing well.

To the best of my knowledge, Marble Collegiate Church did not typically hold funeral services, although I have read that when Dr. Peale died, his funeral was at the church which is as it should be. More often, Marble offered memorial services, remembrances for the deceased. That, I'm sure, was what Art Caliandro thought he was getting into when the service was announced for Larry.

The service was held in the evening and well attended. Ezra was well loved by quite a number of women who he had been kind and encouraging to. Art kicked off the service in the usual stately manner of such events, going through the usual prayers of comfort. Then, at the point where friends of the deceased might add a few remarks, he turned it over to the funeral director. In retrospect, he probably thought that the funeral director would call on some to eulogize the deceased. This is not what happened.

Now Marble Collegiate Church had a rather conservative history. At one time they were known to refuse to marry actors, actors being unfit for their recognition. Actors who wished to be married were directed to "the little church around the corner" which apparently had lower standards. (My parents were married there!) But now, at the funeral director's command, the front doors of the church swung open and Larry's casket was wheeled down the center aisle to the front of the church by the funeral director's crew. I think that Dr. Caliandro was too shocked to speak. Then, having set up the casket at the center of the church, the crew opened it to reveal the good work of the funeral home. Not a peep from the pulpit.

If you had grown up in a mainstream, conservative, protestant church, you might think that this was pushing to the limit, but there was more. The ladies now began to line up to file past the casket with their little flash cameras. All was respectful but their traditions were not those of the Collegiate Churches.

Some weeks later I ran into Art on the street. I told him I thought he had done a nice job for Ezra. "Do you think so?" he replied. I think he was still suffering from shock. Thankfully he kept his job — I don't think any of the church elders or deacons had been at the funeral — so everything worked out fine.