His death, heroic and tragic, proved to be the occasion for recognizing the two Gene Meatyards. For two funerals were required. The first was Protestant and, despite the distinguished people who came from all over the United States, thoroughly dull. I felt, as Cocteau had at another such obsequy, that Gene had not cared to attend: It was so formulaic and uninspired that I had to go and stand with my hands flat against the coffin to assure myself that I was at a funeral at all.

But there was another funeral, a true Meatyard funeral, one at which the rites were made up out of the family fund of inventiveness. A small group of us, Madelyn, the children (Mike with his wife and child, Christopher, and Melissa), Joy Little, Bob May, Jonathan Greene, Bonnie Jean and I, went into the Red River Gorge which Gene had explored and and photographed and tried to save from the ravagements of politics and greed. It was a fine spring Sunday. We climbed to an eminence that Gene had liked, a place as remote and quiet as any forest that has not yet heard the buzz saw and the bulldozer. Here we drank a wine that Gene had brewed. I read aloud a poem that Christopher had written, Mike emptied the canister that held all that could die and be burnt of Gene over the ledge of a high rock--a few dry bones which sifted into the tall treetops below. Melissa cast after them a bagful of flower petals.

The we walked to another part of the forest and ate a feast, picnic fare of the outrageously copious and toothsome and rich kind which Gene had fancied for a proper outing. Had Homer been a Sybarite, he would have described such a meal: chilled wines and cold chicken, crisp vinegary salads and homemade bread. I cannot describe it for I don't think I got to see it all, the choices were so great. I remembed that when we could eat no more there were still plums swimming in port passed around in small round glasses.

And this funeral Gene attended.