The Pall

We moved at a snail’s pace. I watched the feet in front of me carefully. The weight of the casket pulled on my arm. But it felt good to hold my nephew - even if just a little bit. His father asked if I would be one of the pallbearers and I said yes, “I’d be honored.”

Though traditionally a male privilege to carry the body of a comrade, friend or family member, this practice is not gender-specific. My brother-in-law said he would prefer it be someone Carmine knew than to an unknown member of the funeral staff. I lined up behind a heavily tattooed gang member that was a friend of my nephews’. He was one of nearly 100 members who came to pay their respects.

We carried the casket to a small, glass enclosed trailer that was attached to a Harley Davidson trike. It was bedecked with maroon valances and pretty gold tassels. The members who secured the casket and drove the short distance to the church took their job quite seriously.

Once there, we again lined up and carried the coffin into the sanctuary. There, the priest placed a heavy cloth over the coffin - the “pall.” Not familiar with the term, I learned the pallbearer is used to signify someone who "bears" the coffin which the pall covers. In Roman times, a soldier wore a cape or cloak called the pallium. In medieval times the term pallium was shortened to pall. Christians adapted the use of a symbolic pall to cover their loved ones when burying them.

It is hard to say goodbye, especially to someone so young. When the white and gold striped ‘pall’ was put in place, it felt like a blanket, like a way to comfort the journey. It shimmered a little just a few feet from where I sat; where we stood, sat, knelt and prayed for this young man born the same day as my own son.

Carmine wrote on one of the many journals that he kept, “A life of promise; wasted.” This is a different kind of “pall:” the kind that covers or hides the light. A pall can refer to a dark cloud that hangs over a life, a situation.

It’s hard to know why or what or even when this pall began. Carmine was an adorable kid - spunky, curious, mischievous. He was quite talented at sports and riding motorcycles, but he was just a little too smart for school. It never really interested him and that can be a bad recipe. Lord knows his family and those of us who knew him tried to help connect him to something positive, but I fear ‘bad choices’ had a greater appeal.

That’s the thing: How can you compete with someone you love’s choices? You can’t. It’s their life. But turning a blind eye isn’t right either. While you make excuses for someone, are you really just enabling bad behavior?

We’ve all been asking ourselves these unanswerable questions. Of course, we would have preferred to have this big “shindig” for him while he could enjoy it. He would have loved to hear all those Harley’s fire up their engines - just for him. He would have reveled in the many, many old and new friends that gathered at the funeral home - some from twenty, thirty years ago - to see him. He would have cried at the song one of his friends dedicated to him and was played as a final tribute.

We all felt the promise that he embodied get covered in that cloth.

As I was walking in the park the next day, I felt so very unsettled for my nephew. A light rain fell from the sky. Where was he now? "Please God, remember his struggle to hold on to you in the darkness." The air around me began to shimmer gold. I looked up to the East and there it was, the brightest, clearest rainbow I’ve ever seen. The cover unveiled.

(unfiltered photo, May 31, 2025)