Hanging out by the exit

 Notes while at the funeral of a friend: 

This is how it all ends, as a piece of paper in hands at your funeral. a few lines about the things that mattered. 

Family+faith+providing+career+hobbies. 

10:30 am Not many here, but I;m early. I suppose attendance at a funeral is driven by when we die. Churches are packed when the dead is under 30. Die at 85 and the only people left are your pastor, your family and a few others. 

10:45 am Big clap of feedback from the AV system of this little church (aging janitor type guy in pony tail finally figures it out).

Guitar instrumental very nice... In the Garden. Old Rugged Cross. A very plain Baptist church, like those I grew up in.  Painted pallets nailed to wall behind pastor. (an homage to warehouses?) One wooden cross. 

As is the custom with all Christian faiths, the Pastor proclaims that the deceased is in heaven (though he does not really know this, and does not know that he doesn't know). Nice sermon and obviously one who cared about this man. 

This is a real funeral, though program calls it a celebration of life. There is a body and a casket and tears and a wife and a preacher. Not a jar of ashes to be found anywhere. Good move. 

11:32 am Cue the mourner who does not know to turn off a phone when inside a church attending a religious ceremony. 

11:33 am In the silence of the sanctuary, you can hear the same phone vibrating as voicemail arrives.  

I chat with the guitarist on the way out. He is talented and knew the proper decorum for a funeral. There is hope for his generation, as mine hangs around the exit, waiting for people like him, and the pastor, to show us the way home. 

The Five String Banjo at the cracking of the day

 Today I watched the musical Camelot, the Richard Burton version. In it Merlin helps young Arthur in his education by getting him to "think like" other creatures. The owl, the perch, the hawk. 

I don't know what this has to do with the banjo, but my brain is chewing on it. Perhaps I need to think like a banjo. What would that be? "It's dark in here", "Hang on shoulder, hang on wall, hang on shoulder, hang on wall," "My strings itch".  

The more I practice and the better I become, the more private my playing. Another counterintuitive aspect of my life. Having spent my business career on stage, my retirement career is much more in the shadows.The gooder I get, the smaller the audience.  

It is indeed the most intense aspect of my life. 

At times even more so than hospice care, or "waking the dead" as one of my patients likes to call it.

It burns me good. 

Listening to my eulogy at the rehearsal for my funeral

 I recently had the experience of attending my funeral, via the imagination of my granddaughters. It was one of those experiences you could not think up or plan. The two masterminds were ages 8 and 6. 

We built a fort in their basement with blankets, cushions, pillows, etc. I was the bad guy they had trapped inside. When the fort collapsed on me, one of them said they needed to have a funeral for me. In enacting the funeral I was transformed from the bad guy to their real grandfather. 

The younger of the two, Ava, went first and said that I was "the kindest and nicest man" she had ever known, and how sorry she was that I was dead. That was very very nice to hear. 

The older, Lillian, began to recite the act of contrition, which she is learning for her first confession next Spring. She missed a few pieces of it, but basically she said something like this, 

"I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things. I firmly intend, with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. In his name, my God, have mercy"

I thought it was rather fitting, and I think she changed a word or to so that it would sound like it was coming from me. But it was sweet and true. Her way of voicing the most serious thing could think of at a very serious, though make-believe, event. 

Most of us will attend our own funerals, at least in body. This "rehearsal" was short and to the point and was just about as good as the one that awaits me down the road. I hope they both speak when the time comes. 

Post-game comments

Funeral homes have online guest books. You can leave comments about the deceased. It is a very impersonal way to connect to the family during one of their most personal and emotional experiences, the passing of a loved one. 

Today I ran across an entry I made on one of these a while back. It was for someone I had known for a few years who had passed away. Someone I did not really like, nor dislike.The type of person I would not go out of my way to see. Like a distant cousin you don't know very well.

I found myself thinking, "If I would not say these nice things to the person while they are alive, why I am writing them today?"

I am certainly giving the impression to his family that this person was someone I liked much more than I did.

Am I a bad person for doing this? Perhaps this is something we all do, which is the worst excuse there is. There are several ways to look at this.

1) I want to give the false impression to others that I am nicer than I am. That I cared for this person more than i actually did. 

2) In the passing I am reminded that in spite of our faults, we all have nice qualities. (how trite) I want the family to know that I remember nice things about their loved one. 

3) God is telling me that I was wrong to not have reflected His love toward this person. I rightfully feel guilt. I want to make amends but only with a gesture that is tiny.