Just a Little Extra Time

Originally read at the

CELEBRATION OF LIFE FOR

BESSIE LOUISE IGLEHART

on October 26th, 2024 at

Jesus is The Answer Ministries

Pittsburgh, PA

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Amen, family.

We’re gathered here today to give honor to God, church, Pastor and congregation, and to offer up our gratitude for the many blessings that we have received. With the blessing of my sisters, Lesha and Gloria, It’s my honor and privilege to be here today to offer a reflection on our one and only mother, Bessie Louise Iglehart.

I’ve chosen to call this a “reflection” rather than a “eulogy” because that feels to me like a far truer descriptor. Bessie didn’t like funerals - at all - and she rarely attended them. As you can see, she hasn’t even come to her own! Bessie much preferred to celebrate life and to expend her energy in support of the living, and in this she was unwaveringly faithful. It didn’t feel right to me to compose words that focused on our mother being dead when she was so fixated on life. Also, in every way imaginable, I embody Bessie’s essence: I look like her, I have her mannerisms, I even laugh like her. When I was a kid, some relatives even called me “Little Bessie” when I got flustered, and eventually I had to concede that, okay, I was Little Bessie. As such, I’m not really offering up a reflection of Bessie, today -- I am a reflection of Bessie, every day.

And it’s my hope to bring to you now a personal understanding of who and what Bessie has been in her many roles during her lifetime, and what she would have wanted her legacy to be. Her life was so full, and our relationship so intricate, that I could speak about her here for hours…but I won’t. Instead, I’ll try to keep this on point, and I’ll do my best to watch the time.

A Fact Written in Twilight

Photo of Bessie Louise, age 31, taken by my father,

Floyd Walker, at Pittsburgh's Buhl Plantarium in 1970.

THE TWILIGHT HOURS are good for reflection, where abstract thoughts and memories buried fathoms deep for decades come washing ashore on waves of tears. I hope you don't mind if I share some of these thoughts with you. There will come a point very soon where I'll be speaking about my mother Bessie's physical life in the past tense. But for now, she's still here, and I'd like to honor her by writing about the experience of being in her orbit for so long.

How the Rest is Remembered

Originally read at The FREE ASSOCIATION Reading Series

on March 5th, 2023 at Alphabet City, Pittsburgh, PA

Five years ago, almost to the day, our opening writer read at FARS to share part of his own story as a child who’d lived for a short time at McIntyre Shelter, a youth compound that existed for decades in the North Hills.

His previous FARS story was titled “How the West Was Lost” and revolved around a toy he’d coveted and briefly owned, a Johnny West cowboy action figure. Today, he returns and invites you to join him as he takes us back to McIntyre Shelter and explores the memory of things lost in Pittsburgh.

This is “How the Rest is Remembered” by Marcel Lamont Walker.