A friend’s mother died recently and I was invited to the funeral. I have seen countless requests about what to wear to such an event bandied around. It was a solemn occasion and I found myself thinking that a boldly striped suit would be too distracting and too business-like. I felt that a single breasted navy suit with a self herringbone was quiet enough to give the proper impression. A white shirt, a 180s with a forward spread collar and French cuffs . Titanium white and unworn, one of the handful of shirts I keep for emergency situations. A black solid crepe de chine tie a pair of simple beaten sterling button cufflinks, navy socks with small bath tub green spots and black cap toes finished the outfit. No watch for an event where, in so many ways, time is irrelevant.

Am I a hypocrite to tend to such worldly matters at a time like this? Did I honor her memory by wearing my best? Was the darkness of the suit and tie and the whiteness of the shirt symbolic? Whether you believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or some other spiritual force can one deny that clothing plays a part? From the finery of the priests to that of the funeral home director, to the Marines in full dress, clothing communicated the mood.
I in my H. Lesser  11oz suit which made my thighs feel bitterly cold because of its refined smoothness and the shirt’s silky properties doing the same to my chest. I felt that I was honoring the departed and that my white shirt was in line with the light of heaven, that my suit and tie reflected the gravity of the matter, the suit cloth particularly mirroring the shroud and clay that hold the dead in the ground. My outfit was quality without flamboyance, comfort and solidity without visual excess. And there was perhaps divine inspiration in the construction of what I wore, the absence of machine perfection but the presence of manmade excellence all guided by the cosmic contract. Perhaps god really does reside in the details.

I felt it wrong to dwell on what I would wear and why, most of this occurred to me in the twinkling of an eye. Although this morning my shirt sat spread out on my bed for a good while before I could muster the strength to put it on. The hardest part of a funeral for the living is getting ready for it. When you arrive you can celebrate life with the others but in that striated grey, winter dawn, the morbid nature of why I dressed brought a lot of things home.