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Summer funerals are hot affairs, so I parked my car in what shade I could find. Knowing the church was air-conditioned, I hastened to the nearest entrance and entered the holy coolness.

On the way in, I heard drums. I collected my funeral programme and, true to my heritage and following the sound of the drums, I immediately walked out another door and back into the heat of that Bermuda day. Opposite the church gates, shaded by a large roadside tree, gombey drummers were beating out our unique Bermuda rhythm.

With my foot responding to their beat, I listened for a while, then re-entered the holy coolness. Seated in holy coolness, the church organist started playing a composition written by one of those long-dead European composers. However, the organist, with his musical link to Europe, could not drown out the drummer's louder more strident link to Africa and to my black Bermudian heritage. The organist gave up. The organ fell silent.

The drums and my heritage prevailed.

A crescendo of voices and a stronger beat from gombey big drums announced the funeral procession's arrival. The flag covered coffin came to the church's west door. Led by the reciting minister, handled by six high-head-dressed gombeys, the coffin rolled up the aisle to its place before the altar.

The church service blended formality with informality. Laughing remembrance and poignant memory. Reminisces of 'Pond Hill' and 'Parson's Road'. With the church service over, the coffin and family mourners left the holy coolness and walked back into the heat. The gombey drums beat again.

With three big drums combining with nine snare drums, the gombeys started up the hill to the gravesite. In front of the drummers, the line of gombeys weaved and danced their way up the hill. Behind the drummers came the coffin moving at just slower than road-march pace. All around was a crowd of family, friends, and onlookers. Everybody was jiggling and moving and waving and road-marching and shouting and talking. This was the noisiest and liveliest procession to the grave that I had ever seen.

This cavalcade of drumbeats and dancers and people and clergy and coffin reached the place of final burial. On signal, the drumbeat stopped. The gombeys and crowd fell still and silent. Following church ritual, the clergyman recited the final prayers.

The first note of the 'Last Post' snapped me to 'Attention'. On a silver bugle, the Regiment bugler blew the final notes of the 'Last Post'. A short silence, then 'Reveille' started.

That unique Bermuda drumbeat started again. Around the grave, the gombeys danced for a short while; then they began moving out. They moved down the hill, past rows of white-painted graves, out the gates, onto the main road, and into the just-before-five traffic.

This weaving dancing band of road-marching gombeys with a strong back line of 'chiefs' went past me. Then came the rattling snare-drummers. Behind them three throbbing big drummers. A fluid moving mass of sound and colour and heritage.

My heritage. My Bermudian heritage.

In many ways, some small, some large. Some quiet, some not-so-quiet. Some obvious and some surprising; my heritage and the evidence of my heritage is still breaking out of the mists of a repressed and mostly unwritten past.

For now, we Bermudians publicly wrangle over 'Heroes Day' and the 'Queen's Birthday'. Underneath this public wrangling, there is a quieter process.

For many years, my black heritage has been like an indistinct shape that was difficult to see because of a thick mist of ignorance and repression. Now, slowly spreading and steadily increasing knowledge about Bermuda's past is clearing those mists of ignorance and repression. Slowly and quietly, Bermuda's black heritage is breaking through and taking its rightful place as part of Bermuda's total cultural make-up. Us Bermudians - black Bermudians and white Bermudians - are defining and re-defining ourselves as a unique people.

Us lot took a giant step forward when we put the Gombeys on global display in Edinburgh. We took another step forward when a Bermuda family celebrated the life of 'Gropher' Wilson and buried his body - but not his spirit - in unique Bermuda style.

At 'Gropher's' funeral, I saw a part of our whole national heritage. I saw a part of our whole Bermudian culture. I saw and felt and heard and my body moved to that unique fusion of Africa and England, of black and white. That fusion is what really defines me - and all the rest of us lot - as BERMUDIANS![[In-content Ad]]

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