Auto-Eulogy

Thankfully, the holiday season in my house has become less of an exercise in materialistic desires than it once was. Maybe we are becoming more compassionately conservative around here but fiscal restraint is our prime motivation. No longer do we mortgage the future to offset the price of temporary luxury. Christmas, in particular, is for the kiddies and when they grow up, well, things settle down quite a bit.

So, when people go on and on about the mad rush and the busy interlude of family, feasts and friends at this time of year, I am now immediately reminded of Rick Sutcliffe’s infamous and intoxicated radio interview of a few months ago when he was quoted during a Padres game in part slurring, “It’s not that bizzy, man … it’s not that bizzy.”

Ah, yes, that was good.

Now, instead of focusing on what we wish for, it’s more of a time to consider what we already have under the tree. Maybe more importantly, there is a subtle yet pervasive interest in what we may have somehow lost or certain gifts that we may have forgot to even open. And as one who is obsessed with defying anything that resembles circular Cartesian logic, I find a strategic accounting of what is misplaced necessary to the process of deducing what in fact remains.

In reverse order, at the top of the list, we confess we lost a lot of good people this past year.

Well, alright, let’s just say we lost a lot of people. The subjective reference to their “goodness” or “badness” is rather pointless at this stage in the game. Suffice to say, independent of their distinctly admirable or disdainful personal qualities, whatever the cause or by whose hand they eventually succumbed, they are all gone just the same. In spite of their perceived human status, momentary failures or fleeting successes, I would like to believe their spirits left this earth as pristine equals, just as they were once born unto it. Still, some left a lot of excess baggage scattered about the loading dock, making it a bit difficult for numbed passengers like myself to push aside or even step over and ignore.

A consideration that constantly comes to mind is whether all the dearly departed made their exit too early or too late. I hear this complaint a lot and it often leads to some argument. Only the good die young while so many are said to live past their prime and so on. It is all about the timing, you see.

To some, the timing of these things is persistently annoying. Nothing ever seems to decay when it should and all losses occur at the worst possible moment. To others, examples of the common peach tree suggest that most successful fruit will bear off only at a precise day and time of ripeness. Peaches that fall off the tree too early or too late are easy to spot. The delayed and the premature are not tasty and perhaps dangerous to ingest.

Whatever true relationship the peach tree may hide regarding the timing of our human existence, my own observations hint that the annual harvest must take into account the total of the production, the mushy, hard and rotten typically, naturally, and overwhelmingly leveled out by all the juicy, the sweet and the delicious.

Grand-ma-ma recently harassed me for not paying more attention to recent funeral ceremonies for the dearly departed, late or early as they may be, especially the ones of our most prominent folks. She assumed that since I didn’t stay focused to events on the tube like she was, intently noting each speaker and each practiced word of praise, that I was disregarding their honored place in our history.

She will never understand just how foolish and selfish I find all of that. I tried to explain but she didn’t hear my words. The hypocrisy of grand human ceremony may escape her but it smothers me like sticky warm dew on a humid August morning, envelopes me in an uncomfortable pressure, confronts my experience and constricts my tired lungs into short and labored breath. Maybe if I could be less ethereal and more earthly in my description then she would understand me better. Her mind, like her hand, is weathered and tanned by the dedicated trials of a bright shining life while mine may be withered and pale from years of wandering in a dark and pointless cosmos.

I admit the purposeful beating of the drums, the haunting waves of fifes and bugles performed in honor of our departed are all intensely inspirational. Maybe it’s just me, though. Maybe I am the only who is inspired by regalia in such an unpredictable and clearly undesirable direction.

When this illogical man was just a dumbass 10 year old kid, he was dragged to Uncle Harold’s funeral at a small Baptist church in the hills of southern Missouri. The minister did his best that day. He presented the eulogy in a way that he understood. The praise was muted, it seemed somewhat forced to the 10 year old, but it was there nonetheless presumably to soothe the fears of the guests in attendance. The dumbass kid couldn’t imagine what it was those guests were really afraid of but he listened to the prayers and the eloquent oratory, engaged in the hymns and made note of the procession. He fought the apparent lesson but soon it struck him like the blow of Nietzsche’s ball peen hammer up against the head.

“This was not the man I knew,” the kid thought the thought that changed him forever.

The kid, who had probably spent more idle time with Uncle Harold in the previous two years than any of the well-wishers on the rough wooden pews that day, knew who and what Uncle Harold really was and refused to accept any fanciful or spiritual charade.

Uncle Harold was a good hunter, a dead eye shot with a twelve-gage shotgun. He spent his life in pursuit of liberty and Wild Turkey, ravaging scores of the ignorant winged beasts in the Ozark woods and hundreds of the identically branded pint bottles he always found at the near and ready. Other than the usual weapons of destruction, he was most passionate about big, boaty Chrysler automobiles, white or silver the preferred colors, with lots of chrome and red leather interiors. When the summer heat was hottest, Uncle Harold would leave work early to go swimming in a cool nearby ford, taking aimless 10 year old kids with him to watch and explain the harmless water dance of once frightening dragon flies. He rarely spoke a harsh word or complaint. And he never warned the passengers in his Chrysler but would chuckle quietly to himself when he would veer off sharply into the oncoming lane while speeding along one of deadliest curves of a winding Ozark highway to casually deposit his empty pint bottle in a roadside ditch on a moonless and starless night, seemingly without worry of who or what danger may be hidden over the hill, just around the curve, speeding carelessly right back at him.

He died childless and without ever owning his own home. He thoughtlessly spent every dime he ever made on his personal pursuits. He never asked anyone for anything and he came and went without leaving much of a contribution to the few who knew him. By all accounts, Uncle Harold was a simple man, thrilling and a lot of fun in the eyes of a dumbass 10 year old kid, but he was definitely not who the preacher said he was.

A few months ago, a week or so before Thanksgiving Day, my buddy JK went hunting near a corn field on a cool Saturday morning. Without warning, only an hour or so into the hunt, JK was found motionless on the ground. A fellow hunter tried to revive him but it was too late. JK’s heart gave up and he died naturally at the age of 41 under an old elm tree at the edge of a corn field while deer hunting.

JK was a member of a large, loving family in a small town where his death was quite a shock to everyone. It was definitely considered untimely. As far as times go, he and I briefly shared some good ones. Like the others in these parts, I knew him to be funny and compassionate with a wonderful personality. He was an attractive and strong man who had everything going for him. And, I can attest, he was a hell of a good dart thrower.

Days later down in the Ville, the huge crowd at JK’s funeral ceremony spilled into the streets. The small funeral home wasn’t built to hold that many people. At the last minute, I decided I would give it another try and go to this one. I don’t know why but I felt like I needed to be seen there by the others who knew JK.

Standing outside, I listened to several good natured folks in the crowd suggest that his early death should be a lesson to us all. It should make us think, they said, about how short our own lives may be. I thought that was a perception we should take care to remember ever day.

“Young folks always have a lot of people at the ceremony,” Grand-ma-ma advised me in a hushed tone as we waited in line to enter the chapel. Rather than an experienced revelation, I took her words as an early explanation as to why so few would show up at her own ceremony. Most of her friends would already be gone by then. I had never thought of it that way and I didn’t comment on that but she was correct, of course.

I shook the somber hand of Bill, the Director and mortician, inside the chapel. I had met Bill before. He stops in the Tavern every now and then, occasionally popping in for a quick beer to clear his mind before returning to his late night duties. Owing to his proclivity to talk so much about his work, I’ve noticed most of the Tavern patrons are happier when he leaves the bar than when he enters.

The pews were full, he apologized, so I stood in the ante-room while Grand-ma-ma gladly took Bill’s offer of a lonely bench seat near the desk in his back office. Standing and trying not to notice any of the weeping guests too directly there in the ante-room, I listened to the ceremony over a loudspeaker and tried to imagine what the crowded scene must have looked like further inside the chapel.

The first speaker was an older gentleman, I presumed to be JK’s uncle. In the course of twenty minutes or so, the old man ripped off five different prayers from the Bible word for word. I know because when he got to the third consecutive prayer, I began counting them just to make sure. All of the prayers begged God to accept JK’s soul into heaven.

How needless, I thought. JK had a great soul. He’d be perfect up there. God would have to be a fool not to accept him into heaven and from what I hear God can’t be considered a fool. Besides, I thought, JK had left days ago and these requests all seemed a bit belated to me. But the prayers went on for several minutes presumably not to help remember or describe what a good man JK was among us but as a solicitation to God for his soul and to comfort his grieving family.

That done, I wiped my brow and noticed most of the standing people in the ante-room were, like me, intently eyeing the ceiling tiles.

A young woman’s voice then echoed from the loud speaker. I guessed it was JK’s niece.

The young woman described her uncle as a warm, loving man. She told how he liked to give everyone special pet names and how he loved to get drunk and dance like a wild man at family gatherings. She told us how much he enjoyed hunting, bike riding and how his favorite phrase was “Head On!” urging everyone around him to not wait for sunnier days but to do exactly what they wanted to do at that very moment. One could tell by the way she talked that her uncle’s life had a strong influence on her. Some of those in attendance laughed quietly and smiled at what she had to say.

Once the young woman was done, I heard a younger boy step up to the microphone. He was there to close up the ceremony but he didn’t really know what to say. Just then, Grand-ma-ma tugged me on the arm and said we should leave now before the crowded chapel entryway got all jammed up with people. OK, I said, as the young boy could be heard asking if someone should do the rosary.

“Shit!” Grand-ma-ma whispered as she dragged me out into the street, “Don’t they know they can’t do the rosary without a damn priest?”

Well, no matter. In spite of Grand-ma-ma’s misgivings and my own irritation at the overt and pointless tone of the ceremony, as we walked out I felt touched by the truth in the story told by the young woman. She had at least tried to make some sense of JK’s short life. Still, I was disheartened that nobody had said a word about what a good dart thrower he really was.

All of that got me to thinking over the past couple months. I’ve started to wonder what my own funeral will be like. I hate to think that folks will be forced to fill up time in a stuffy ceremony with pointless requests and time-late prayers on my behalf. I know they’ll find some nice things to say, nobody will dwell on the bad stuff. I wonder, which of my weaker qualities will they choose to gloss over? Which of my extra bags will they force me to leave behind in honor of my memory? How will they know what to emphasize and what to stay quiet about and, in the end, who is in the best position to make such critical decisions?

So, I’ve decided to write my own eulogy. I want to make sure there’s at least some truth to it. I don’t want a picture painted of a man who didn’t exist.

It’s a work in progress and it’s not easy, let me tell you. Editing your life story is painful. Bottomless sorrow fills the empty space every time a needless word is cut or a mishandled phrase is shortened. After several rewrites I can see now why this job is probably best left for someone who is not so close to the main character.

One thing is for sure, though, when we boil our life down into a paragraph or two, we suddenly realize things weren’t nearly as hectic or busy as we thought they were at the time. Perhaps plenty of misguided activity scattered about but, nope, just not that busy. And like any good PR person will admit the trick seems to stay focused on what we gathered and what we built, even though the tendency is to home in on all the missed opportunities and everything that we lost along the way.

The most difficult part of this process is to imagine who we may have influenced over the years. That may be the biggest piece of excess baggage left behind, a surprising holiday gift that is best left wrapped securely, only to be opened after we’ve gone.

Cheers,

Mb