Tag funeral

Going to need extra chairs

normanjameson Leave a comment

Me in the middle, with Janet and Bill in 2021.

When my grandmother died in 1979, I drove my young wife and one-month old son from our home in Nashville, TN to the funeral in Wisconsin. Grandma was young enough to have a large funeral, just 72 years old. My age.

Of course, in Rio, WI, population 788, funerals were as big a social event as Friday night football at the field in Fireman’s Park. I didn’t play football. I ran cross country instead, which I convinced myself was harder.

But I was at the football games, either running the sideline keeping stats, or in the stands playing “CHARGE” on my trombone.

After grandma’s funeral service at Redeemer Lutheran, one of six churches in town – equal to the number of bars – everyone gathered in the church basement for a lunch prepared by women of the church. Because the meal was free, and there wasn’t much else happening in town that day, the room was crowded.

My wife was most concerned with the one-month old son not accustomed to the noise and crowd and whose only real concern was keeping his tummy full and his diaper dry. So, he started fussing and wailing and that’s not the sound you want to hear piercing the din of chattery family members chowing down on store bought dinner rolls filled with a slice of ham and a slab of butter, potato salad and red Jell-O with marshmallows.

Suddenly, from across the entire fellowship hall, packed hip to hip at the folding tables, my aunt Janet yelled, “Give that boy some titty!”

Now, in another context other than a rural Wisconsin farming community, that comment might have seemed out of place, even impolite. Certainly it caused all the blood in my wife’s body to flush to her toes and then recongregate in her face, making her flush a brighter red than the Rio High School Vikings mascot. But, it also gave her the freedom to excuse herself, find a quiet Sunday School classroom, and take care of our son’s immediate need.

Aunt Janet died this week, at age 91. She was my mother’s last surviving sibling and mom preceded her in death by 29 years. They were two of eight siblings, prompting my grandpa McFarlane to say he had “Two and a half-dozen children.” When grandma McFarlane died, petty sibling grievances broke familial bonds and later on, as one sibling after another died, obituaries did not list all surviving family members, as if they never existed.

But Aunt Janet was always a friend, in part due to the loquacious character of her husband, Bill, a former police officer and much longer a seed corn salesman who knew every farmer and what they needed most. Bill preceded her in death by three years.

I confess Janet’s was the first bare breast I ever saw, as I stood wide-eyed at age five while she fed her first born son, Mark, a man who grew up to be a Presbyterian pastor, nurtured as he was on the milk of human kindness. He could preach from I Peter 2, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.”

Janet and Bill had five children and 10 grandchildren and money never flowed like water over Niagara. Janet always put her hand to the wheel to find additional resources, driving school bus for more than two decades and making wedding cakes for lucky brides and grooms.

She looked at driving bus as ministry, taking the opportunity to offer a bright, encouraging word to children with dour faces, lifting heavy, reluctant feet up the step on the way to school.

She was certain of opinion and ready with advice.

When Janet learned my cousin Allen smoked, she asked if he would rather kiss a girl or an ashtray. Allen, sarcastically defending his nasty habit, told me he responded “Ashtray.” He’s since grown beyond that – both in girls and habit.

 Janet and Bill built a house on a hill overlooking that of her mother Eva and she was diligent in looking after her mother to the end. Eva –my grandmother on my mother’s side – expressed concern that bad weather would limit the size of her funeral. She was mentally comparing her eventual celebration to the big crowd that showed up for her husband’s sendoff. In her mind, her funeral would suffer by comparison and somehow that would reflect negatively on her life.

Though such comparison is a false equivalency, if every person whose life Janet affected positively were to attend her funeral, ushers will need to bring in extra chairs.

Funerals, and other fun rituals

normanjameson Leave a comment

I attended the funeral of a friend and former colleague today. A man younger than me.

I learned of his death while driving home from a Florida vacation. I didn’t know he’d been sick, as he was a private man. As his son said in eulogy, “My dad was the most private public person in the world.”

The somber, intimate public gathering of persons who want to see and support the surviving family and who want to hear good things spoken of their deceased friend is a valuable human ritual. Loved ones recount memories and sometimes reveal things previously unknown.

Careful speakers offer subtle lines to confirm suspicions while lauding the deceased with praise most discerning supporters take with an appreciative grain of salt.

 I’m glad I attended the funeral several years ago of a former boss, who was the most difficult human I’ve ever worked with. It was healing for me to hear good things spoken of her, to hear friends recite positive qualities well disguised in our days together.

I delivered eulogies for both my parents. Some of my observations were meant specifically to comfort some quietly sobbing friend. Other words were to lighten the somber atmosphere.

My mother, who died at 64, was a very private, reserved person, not given to bawdy humor, even when the men around her were cutting up. The first night I brought my new bride to visit in the home, I found an apple on the bedside table. The next morning, I asked mom about the apple.

“That was a contraceptive,” she said. Immediately I thought of several ways that might work, none of which I voiced to mom. Instead, I asked, “Was I supposed to eat it before…or after?”

“You were supposed to eat it…instead,” she said, laughing. Those at her funeral laughed, too, at the telling.

My grandma was proud of the large attendance at grandpa’s funeral. She surmised that she didn’t loom as large in the minds of neighbors, community and family as he did, and she bemoaned that her funeral would be much smaller. “If it snows, nobody will be there,” she speculated.

If you want a large funeral, die young.

Part of my father’s lament toward the end of his 86 years was that all his friends had died. He was tired of attending funerals of his buddies, each of which left him lonelier.

I listened with great respect as the first born son of my friend delivered an insightful, humorous, sad and intimate portrait of his father. I knew this boy when he was just a kid and now he’s a man with gray hair at his temples. And I realized his relationship and age relative to his father, is the same as my oldest son to me.

And I imagined my son standing in front of my surviving friends one day. But I could not imagine what he will say.

I eulogized my father 21 years after my mother. Many of the same faces peered up at me. Many were absent, long gone to their own reward. And I realized the value of the ritual, the support those faces and kind words offered, the life they’d shared with my mother and father – experiences they recounted to fill my own my memory portfolio.

In his song “Standing Room Only,” Tim McGraw talks about this end of life ritual and encourages us to “Be somebody that’s worth rememberin’, to live a life so when we die “there’s standing room only,” at our funeral.

Since I’ll be laying down, or my ashes will already have been blown away by a strong wind, I’m not concerned about standing room. But when my children and friends go to rememberin’, I hope a smile crosses their faces.