Apologies up front for the frivolous title to this post. But it reflects the fact that for the second time in my life, I learned something from a funeral.
If you’ve read more than a couple of ‘Rants and Musings’ on this site, you may have figured out that I missed out on the spiritual gene so many years ago. If that makes me less worthy of the moments invested in reading this, so be it. You’re now officially warned. Perhaps as a result of that deficiency on my part, religious ceremony has never held much sway with me, including funerals.
That changed about fifteen years ago, when I finally had a glimpse of WHY funerals persist; why we need them. (Yeah, I’m a slow learner.) The occasion was the loss of a high school student of mine in a car accident. Actually, two students within a day of each other. Two funerals on the same afternoon. In two churches, a couple of miles and hours apart. It was awful. I knew both of them. I can still see them in my mind. Molly and Coy. Sweet kids, full of promise. Tragic losses. But on that day, for the first time in my life I understood the sheer utility of a funeral service. It was Funeral 1.0 for me, as dozens of young people I cared about sobbed and shook; overwhelmed by the wrongness of it. But at least the services gave them an outlet. A socially sanctioned chance to grieve. I sort of got it. Even if I wasn’t able to join in (probably part of that same genetic deficiency).
Fast forward to today. A very different situation. A funeral for a fifty-eight year-old colleague. We were on friendly terms and I respected him, but it would be presumptuous of me to claim him as my friend. He was the only person I know of in the Medical School teaching faculty, whose first name was not ‘Doctor’. Yet despite his blue-collar pedigree, at his funeral today I was lucky to get a seat in the balcony of an AME church in downtown Raleigh, a church filled to capacity as this man was eulogized again and again. On one eulogy alone, given by the Dean of the School of Medicine, I would have lost two bets. One that I would have EVER heard this particular Dean cry. Second, that anyone EVER (much less routinely) greeted the Dean in life with a bear hug, as apparently did the departed. He was that special.
What was special about him? What brought people from all over the country to his funeral? The same thing that offered me my Funeral 2.0 upgrade – another reason why funerals matter. As the memorial service played out, an atypically mixed race congregation bowed, wept, and laughed but mostly listened as the life story of the deceased played out. His life’s mission was there for all to see. It was the reason that half of the people in attendance were African Americans under forty. Yet unlike the deceased, a child of the South in the fifties, these hundreds of people who followed his lead in the 80s and beyond all now wear the title of “Doctor”. They survived against the odds (especially in the early years) thanks to his guidance. To his support. To his drive and determination that they would not fail. Year after year, he almost single-handedly increased the percentage of minorities in our medical and dental schools by cross-country recruiting, by nurturing fledgling students, by fund-raising and anything else it took.
And today, they came from time zones away to say thank you. I recognized face after face, and many (but not enough) of their names. An obstetrician in Atlanta. An emergency medicine specialist in Virginia. But today, unlike my earlier funeral, there were fewer tears, less need to grieve. These were adults. Physicians who understood that their mentor of years earlier had been in much pain and young adults who appreciated that there is a positive side to death even in loss. But today, like my earlier story, I realized an obvious purpose to funerals that had escaped me. For these young people had not only put busy professional lives on hold to catch a plane in order to pay final respects to the man who had served as their tutor, confidant, father-figure, etc, so many years ago.
Beyond that, they had come to pick up the flag as it fell. To carry it forward. To affirm that his work was worthwhile and that they would not see it die with him. It was so obvious. How could I have missed it before?
Posted on February 22nd, 2010 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Rants and Musings
Thank you for this thoughtful meditation on the meaning of funerals. It puts me in mind of two related experiences.
The first mostly provided a humorous insight into just how tactless it is possible to be on such occasions. To be exact, it wasn’t at a funeral, but at one of the viewings that come earlier. My father-in-law had died, a decent man who had over a lifetime raised a family, been a hail-fellow-well-met to his workmates and cronies, etc.
Approaching his widow–in a wheelchair at the time–the wife of one such person looked down soberly and explained, “We were in the neighborhood to see my son and thought to kill two birds with one stone.”
It resonates, doesn’t it?
The second is very recent. It has to do with the opposite effect–that is, being in circumstances that prevent you from being heard, from testifying if you will, in the public forum provided by a memorial service. Retired myself, I have stayed in touch with members of my department at Lawrence Technological University. On a day in the week between Christmas and New Years, Harold Hotelling went down to the street to collect his mail. He slipped on a small patch of ice, fell backwards, and never regained consciousness. Typical of him, he had arranged for this eventuality by signing the documents for organ donation. Because I spend winters in Florida, it was possible but not really rational to fly to Michigan for the service. I wrote remarks to be read, but they got lost in the shuffle and were never heard. To this day, I am bothered by it, by not having the chance to stand up and tell others how much I miss the man already, and will go on missing him.
Barry Knister
P.S. Your comment at my site wants authentication, of what I’m not sure. My wife Barbara is my muse and the source of the better lines in Drinks Before Dinner. I’m the writer, and solely responsible for all missed cues and dropped balls. And: is Self-Sufficient Steward a continuation of Jack-of-all-Thumbs? I am unable to locate the latter.
Funerals are for the living – that’s what Daddooooo always taught us. I was teased at my grandmother’s and I’ll not be forgiving the grown-up who did it any time soon. We gave a group back-rub, in a circle then switching directions, all of us wishing Paw were receiving and getting instead of just being the reason we were standing in Ashland Ohio on a sunny May afternoon… but we knew he was there and glad we were loving each other… and saying goodbye just as we always did before leaving for a trip. After all the pain and suffering, there’s coming together and sharing.
Of course, knowing this as an adult, and watching teens mourn the loss of a classmate (or a classmate’s parent – a school bus arriving with sobbing 10th graders is a sight I’ll not forget) is an entirely different matter. But funerals like your colleague’s are wonderful events, I think. It’s watching the torch continue on its road – and you wrote it beautifully.
a/b
This is a beautifully written piece, Jack! I read it last night and re-read this morning. I felt a visceral Yes arise to the notion of picking up the flag and carrying it forward; there are some great flags out there, in great variety, and we are very privileged to meet their earnest bearers.
I ran across a piece in this morning’s NYTimes that might absorb you:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/are-there-secular-reasons/
A place to grieve, and place to dedicate to moving forward as a standard bearer. Excellent perspective.
Thanks to all. We all have stories and often they intersect. Barry’s comment about “killing two birds” had me in a different sort of tears. Humans say the darndest things….. And then he reversed course with his lost opportunity to eulogize Harold. We’ve all been there in one form or another. And finally, the site was named “Self Sufficient Steward” in a wanna-be sort of way. Jack-of-all-thumbs is the name I go by here in the blogosphere.
Ashleigh, what a touching story indeed. We have a similar ritual that involves holding hands and a goofy cheer at every family gathering. I’m waiting for my mother’s Alzheimer’s to take this gesture from her as well, which will undoubtedly happen. But thanks to your comment, I promise that we’ll do it at her memorial, despite the fact that it will be perceived to be as ‘inappropriate’ as your group back rub. Thank you.
And thanks to Nance for the compliment and the link to the Stanley Fish essay. It is indeed deserving of multiple reads.