Free Growing Up King by Dexter Scott King, Ralph Wiley

even came to Atlanta and played with us, trying to distract us. On the day of
     the funeral, Jackie Kennedy came to our home, looking stricken. People came from all over to offer condolences. The phone
     was always ringing.
    The funeral was at Ebenezer that Tuesday morning. The sanctuary was packed with nearly eight hundred people—there would have
     been many more, but that’s all the church could hold. Tens of thousands more were outside, millions more were there in spirit
     and via TV. You could feel the weight of everyone’s mourning. The day before, Uncle A.D. gave a sermon Daddy had planned to
     give that Sunday at Ebenezer. It was called, “Why America May Go to Hell.” I heard Daddy speak at the funeral—a tape-recorded
     sermon he had given in February. Bernice roused when she heard his voice and looked around, but slumped back into Mother’s
     chest when she did not see him, only his remains in the casket at the front of the church. Then there was the lonely clip-clop
     of the mule-drawn wagon, and the tired, trudging feet of tens of thousands, an ocean of moving bodies that accompanied his
     body and his spirit across town from Auburn to Vine City, onto the campus of Morehouse, where a memorial service was held
     at Harkness Hall. There the Morehouse Glee Club sang “O God Our Help in Ages Past” and Miss Mahalia Jackson sang, “Precious
     Lord, Take My Hand.” I tried not to feel. I watched Bernice instead.
    Afterward… we went back to our normal routine, though we knew it was a somber and serious time. I didn’t take in the seriousness
     of the moment in terms of understanding what it all meant to everyone else. I was sad because my father was dead. I didn’t
     realize many people felt almost the same way I did even though they weren’t related to him. My own reaction was held inside
     me, like Mother’s, like Yolanda’s. I never cried over my father’s death. I watched Mother and took cues from her. I never
     saw her seem agitated or disturbed. She knew how closely the four of us watched her. If she’d gone to pieces… But she didn’t.
     I thought that was the way you were supposed to act. That was the first death really close I’d been exposed to. I do remember
     her and Yolanda in the living room, sitting there, Yolanda wringing her hands in her lap and telling my mother she was so
     wonderful, she was so magnificent— what else was there to say? That was my clearest vision of my father’s leaving—my mother
     and older sister sitting alone, consoling each other over the death of a husband, a father, working it out, being strong,
     as African-American women have been for generations, whenever their men’s lives were summarily cut short.
    It is the way of our people.
    I must have heard clearly and taken as subconscious command Mother’s instruction to sleep. For the longest time after Daddy’s
     death, my sleep patterns changed. No more deep, dreamless sleep. Now I had dreams. In these dreams, he was still alive. We
     did a lot of the things we’d once done together, riding bicycles, playing softball, sitting in his study, me on his lap; I’d
     have pleasant dreams; it was exciting to see him alive, I had no feeling of him not being alive in the dreams; they were in
     color. Then I would wake up and find myself in the bedroom with Martin, who was asleep, his breathing buzzing, rustling under
     the covers. I knew then it was a dream and our father was dead. In the dreams I was happy. Then something would awaken me,
     I’d realize he was not here, and feel betrayed. Why is he here one minute and gone the next? For years I had the dreams. When
     I was dreaming, it felt real. It was my way of holding on. Don’t know how crazy or weird it sounds, but I know if you love
     someone you’ll go to great lengths to keep him or her with you.
    None of it had happened. It was all some big April Fool’s joke. The top came off the casket and he pushed it aside and sat
     up and smiled at me, and