What about the hole, Brother?

In my adolescence, which was rather troubled, I went through an obnoxious atheist phase. This is fairly common among intelligent, rebellious teens, I suppose. I got a real kick out of telling my grandmother that there was no God. I was such a little shit.

I remember going to a funeral during that time, probably my great-aunt Bertha's. She was a cool old lady who lived to be 99 and was in pretty good shape mentally and physically until the end. Anyway, I was in the front row of the graveside seats (the plastic folding chairs, you know) enduring the preacher's remarks and probably rolling my eyes. The casket was sitting on a contraption that would lower it into the grave but all of that was covered up by drapery and astroturf.

The preacher was droning on and on about heaven and pearly gates and meeting Jesus and all the usual stuff, and as I sat there staring at the casket the wind blew from behind me and parted the draperies covering the grave. There was the hole. That was where Bertha was going. In a hole. And she was leaving a hole in our lives. And I couldn't see how all the talk about heaven was even relevant to that.

I told this story to my friend John who was a gifted, mostly out-of-control artist/singer/actor who shared my disdain for religion. He turned it into a song. What about the hooooooooooooooooooole, brother? What about the hooooooooooole? I can still picture him holding forth like a revivalist, singing about the grave. He died at the age of 21, of AIDS. That was in 1984.

Yeah, so... what about the hole?