Why I Decided to Have My Mom's Funeral at a Black-Owned Funeral Home

By Joshlyn Thomas

*A picture of my mother and I on my graduation day. December 13, 2019.*

My mother’s homegoing was at Mabrie Memorial Mortuary, a Black-owned, family-operated funeral home in Third Ward. My mom loved visiting me every weekend when I was in university, driving from Kingwood to Third Ward to visit me at UH. She loved this part of town. She was so proud to claim Houston as her home since 2013 after living in El Paso since she first immigrated to the US in 1992. Even if we could not arrange a funeral that was more in accordance with our ancestral traditions as Catholics from Kerala (which I am learning about in bits and pieces from my family after my mother’s funeral), arranging my mother’s funeral and burial was the last act of love I could do for my mother in the aftermath of her untimely demise on April 7, 2020. Knowing that she had to die alone in a hospital that was on lockdown because of COVID-19, I did not get to say goodbye.

Frankly, I was not ready to trust white people with my mother’s post-mortem care, especially after such a rough stay at the hospital. If they fail to honor BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) in life, how can they honor them in death? Since receiving the news of my mom’s death from a (read: white) nurse who was quite callous when notifying me, the next of kin to her patient, I knew that the only way to do right by my mom was to make sure that she was in the care of people who shared our experiences, rather than people who saw us as an anomaly.

While I understand how difficult it must be for a healthcare professional during a pandemic, I still feel terrible that my mom was in the care of someone who showed very little empathy. What came as devastation for my family was just routine for her and the medical-industrial complex, the same one that killed my mom slowly over two decades as a nurse and ultimately failed her during the last three months of her life. The roles were reversed from nurse to patient; and my mother became the patient for viral meningitis and was in the ICU at the hospital she used to work at. Two weeks later after being sent home, she was back with pneumonia, then transferred to a hospital almost 50 miles away and finally, pneumonia-induced sepsis made her organs shut down. Why couldn’t the hospital save one of their own? Did they even know she was a nurse for the past 25 years? These questions flooded my head as I struggled to understand.

But within minutes of that phone call from the hospital, I called around to different funeral homes. Thanks to mortician Caitlin Doughty, I knew what rights I had as the bereaved, and that some places would try to take advantage of my family while we were vulnerable. Immediate red flags were raised by the first place telling me that I had to get a casket for my mother to be buried in the state of Texas (not true). The second place was more kind, but the prices were still out of range. By the third call, I reached Mabrie and I heard the voice of the person who would later be the funeral director who guided my father and me through the arrangement process. She held space for us and our grief in a way that felt genuine. I am forever grateful for the guidance and comfort that was given to us as we were trying to navigate giving my mother the care she deserved, without the direction from a will or advanced directive.

I stand by my decision to have my mother’s homegoing service at a Black-owned funeral home because they understand. The care they took was down to the details, like making sure her hair looked the way she had it in the picture I had shared from my beloved cousin’s high school graduation, which took place within the same month as mine in 2015. They know firsthand that the violence of white supremacy does not stop when life does. We are witnesses to that now as police continue to murder Black people after ongoing demonstrations, petitions, and other forms of trying to hold them accountable.

The hesitation for non-Black people to seek funeral arrangements from a Black-owned funeral home is rooted in segregation in the funeral industry. Even though all people die, there was (and still is) an insistence that even in death, we cannot rest together. Support for Black businesses can extend to Black-owned funeral homes. Even if you are not Black, you can have a funeral arranged by a Black-owned funeral home. In fact, I encourage you to. Grief is something I am still struggling with, and I know I will continue to, but having the support of other BIPOC was something that carried me through the most difficult week of my life.