The only important childhood friend I lost was Darla. We'd gone together for a couple of years in high school, then broke up shortly after our arrival at Berkeley. She was killed in a car accident during – I think – our junior year. Like an idiot, I didn't go back to Bakersfield for the funeral. Fortunately, her mother called me when I was home for Christmas vacation and asked me to come and see her. She had a gift for me – Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet" – and another gift – advice. She told me how important funerals are, and how I should have at least called or written her and Darryl when Darla was killed.
No one died in my family until I was 31. Granny was the first. I was in New Hampshire just a few days shy of my PhD. I didn't have much money, and my folks weren't the kind of people to say "please come" and to buy me a plane ticket to California. So, like an idiot, I didn't go.
Pop wasn't keen on funerals. One afternoon when I was in high school, I went up to Greenlawn Cemetery to pick Darla up after work. (Her dad was the head funeral director there.) She wasn't ready to leave, so I walked through the cemetery. It dates back to the early 1930's, I think, and my Grandfather Harvey was buried in the oldest part -- he died while Ma was pregnant with me. I wandered around by the pond, where I found many markers from 1939 and 1940, but I didn't stumbled across Ed Harvey's grave, and I didn't ask for directions. That evening, Pop confirmed that I'd been in the right area. When I asked if he ever visited his father's grave, he said, "No, and if you ever visit mine, I'll come and haunt you."
(Darla is buried by the pond. I've visited her grave. The stone says "There's a Song in My Heart", honoring her love of making music.)
Ma hated funerals. She didn't go up to caskets and look at the bodies, and, even as a young woman, she insisted that we give her a closed casket service when the time came. She didn't go to Uncle Ed's funeral, or to the funerals of any of her four brothers, although she was getting frail and travel was really unpleasant for her. (She did travel to Sacramento for Uncle Dick's, but I wasn't there.)
So I didn't go to Granny's funeral, and I always regretted it. When Granddad had his stoke, I didn't fly to his bedside, because he was comatose. I wanted to be able to attend his funeral, and I didn't want to make two trips to California in a short time. He only lived two or three days longer, so I wish I had gone to him, to hold his hand, to whisper "I love you, Granddad" to him before he died.
His was the first corpse I ever saw. Cold, waxy, it didn't look like him, and I don't remember the image of him there now. I was a pallbearer, and, after the service at the chapel, we rode out to the gravesite for final words. They didn't lower the casket until after everyone had left. As I walked away from the grave, I decided it wasn't right for none of us to be there while he was put into the ground, so I asked Ma's permission (! - I was 37!) to go back. Jed went with me, as I remember, and we were the last to say goodbye. The only really hard part for me was when they put the lid on the vault holding the casket. I think it was concrete, and the sound was really disturbing.
The first really good funeral I went to was Luke's. I'd never been to a visitation before, but the Weavers are of that European Catholic tradition that is more comfortable with death and emotion than the midwestern Protestant stock from which I'm derived. Everybody touched and patted him, and the kids stuck things in his pockets or dropped them onto his chest. I remember the feel of the short soft growth of hair – he was recovering from chemo – on his cold skull. Ian was really torn up. He had just turned eleven, and he'd really loved Pop-Pop. He couldn't understand how a big strong man like his Uncle Karl could be in tears one moment, then laughing and telling jokes in the next, and then sobbing again soon after.
I say this was my first really good funeral, because that's when I learned that there are good funerals, and how important it is to grieve openly.
Bud Suddath died suddenly, just past his 50th birthday in the early 90's. I was at a Gordon Conference in Rhode Island. At lunch, I was seated at a long table that ran from a central aisle in the cafeteria all the way to the window. Access was only from that aisle, and I was next to the window. Helen Berman came to the other end of the table and signaled that she needed to talk to me. From the pain on her face, I knew it was bad news -- really bad news. I thought perhaps Marie or Ian had been seriously injured, or worse. But it was news of Bud's death, and a request that I call Lee. She asked me to be one of the speakers at the funeral, and I flew to Atlanta for it. Bud's was a terrific funeral. The Ramblin' Wreck was there, along with a couple hundred people or more. The first speaker was Bud's high school coach, and the last was Pat Cressine, who was then President of Georgia Tech. I went second. I don't remember what all I said, but I did read the Edna St. Vincent Millay poem "Dirge Without Music" (see later post). It was a great funeral.
Ken Pruitt's funeral made me think of one other: Jim Campbell's. The eulogy was given by Harden (?), a close friend from college. He opened it by saying, "We're here today to say goodbye to Jim Campbell, a real son of a bitch." It wasn't a joke. Apparently there were serious unresolved issues between Jim and his four sons, who ranged in age then from the teens to the late twenties. We learned about both Jim's good and bad qualities, and the eulogy was aimed at helping those four young men come to terms with their dad in a way that they hadn't while he was still alive. It was a good funeral.
I love a good funeral.
