Bud Suddath

Bud died in 1992, and I still miss the guy and his outrageous sense of humor.

One beautiful spring morning when we were living in Vestavia, I was getting into my car to drive to work when I heard Bud teasing me in a singsong voice:  "I don't have to go to work today!  I don't have to go to work today!"

So I shot right back at him, "Yes, but you're dead!  Yooouuu're DEAD!!"

I know he appreciated that.

I Love a Good Funeral

I never attended a funeral as a kid, and I didn't understand funerals as a young man. But I responded to them instinctively. I'd always liked cemeteries.

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.

Ken Pruitt's funeral

Ken Pruitt's funeral was a good one. Ken loved classical music and had been given a tuba on his 60th birthday. (I was at that party, and it was among the inspirations for Marie giving me an accordion for Christmas a few years later.) I didn't know it, but Ken gave Angela a French Horn for her next birthday; I knew he played in a brass group, but I didn't know that they played together in a large amateur orchestra for several years.

Honoring these loves, we were welcomed into the beautiful polygonal Unitarian church by a brass quartet playing Beethoven, and the service included two Handel pieces (adagio and allegro) for tuba and piano, plus "Sing Me to Heaven" sung a capella by the University of Montevallo Chamber Singers. There were a couple of hymns droned out by all of us, though I'm not sure why.

Joyce Benington, a life-long friend gave a long set of "Remarks". (Do Unitarians have trouble with "Eulogy"?) Ken introduced her to her husband Fred, and he was at their side during Fred's final illness in the 90s, and Joyce talked about family. I never knew Ken's first wife (and the mother of their four kids), and we later learned from their son Keith that she was the most beautiful co-ed at UNC when Ken won her heart, in spite of his big ears and geeky ways. (I learned later from Betty Lou Lacey that she killed herself...) I'd not known that Ken was a novelist, publishing under the nom-de-plume Wilson Abut. I've just ordered one of his four novels from Amazon.

Ken also loved poetry, and Joyce read AE Housman's poem:

   With rue my heart is laden, for golden friends I had,

   For many a rose-lipped maiden and many a light-foot lad.

   By brooks too broad for leaping, the light-foot lads are laid.

   The rose-lipped maids are sleeping, in fields where roses fade.

Virginia Volker commemorated Ken's long service at UAB, beginning when her father-in-law had just become the first president of the newly separate university. Hers was the driest presentation, but the one that connected with the things I knew about Ken.

The most interesting eulogy was from Ken's son Keith. He talked about the gifts of "sweetness and honey" his father had gotten all his life, some in spite of bad choices he made. He drew on one of the Psalms, which talks about honey oozing out of a crevice in the rocks in the desert, where apparently bees make their nests. The gifts of water and honey to a traveler in that hostile land are gifts from God. Keith didn't explain what bad choices his dad had made, but their was the implication of distance from the kids and their mother. It reminded me of Jim Campbell's funeral ... about which more anon.

At the open mike session, Jim Lacey told about Ken as a mentor, Jack Lemmons talked about not knowing him as well as he should, and Judy Vines and one other administrative assistant to Ken talked about what a wonderful boss and friend he was. I wished I'd asked Betty Campbell if there was something she would have liked to have said, and maybe I could have spoken briefly for her.

Ken was a generous man, although I knew only about what he did for me. At least I got to tell Angela and Elise about that in person yesterday.

But it made me wonder -- I know people who would say lots of nice things about me at my funeral, but I can't think of very many acts of generosity on my part...

Ken Pruitt

Herb called me this morning to tell me that Ken had died last Friday, after a long illness. He was 75.

I owed Ken a lot, in two ways. First, he took me under his wing when I was a very young pup. He was my only mentor other than Herb. They were the only ones to ever talk to me about what it means to be a professor, and how one should progress up the ladder. And they were also the only two real scientists in the puny little Biomath Department. Second -- and I learned this only years later -- I owed my tenure to Ken and Charlie Bugg.

When I came up for tenure during that fateful sixth up-or-out year, I got turned down. Jane Hazelrig, who was a couple of years my junior, also got turned down. By chance, I got to see her rejection letter from the dean; it was identical to mine, except mine had one paragraph that hers didn't, describing the appeal process. Today I realize that perhaps that extra paragraph may have appeared in every letter to someone in their final chance at tenure (Jane still had another chance coming). But, at the time, I interpreted it to mean that Jim Pittman was encouraging me to file an appeal. I talked to Malcolm Turner, my chair, about it, and he supported the appeal. To my delight and surprise, I got promoted.

(I hadn't expected it and didn't really think I deserved it, because I was so slow getting started, scientifically. In thinking about what I would do if I got booted, I figured I'd move to Idaho and pump gas. After years of focusing on a career, I thought perhaps I'd try focusing on recreations instead, which meant I should move somewhere close to the mountains.)

When Charlie Bugg retired in the mid-90's, Herb took me aside and said that he guessed it was finally OK to reveal something confidential: that Charlie and Ken had both been on the SoM Tenure Committee when I came up, and they both fought for me. Although the Committee voted me down, their arguments were sufficiently strong in my favor that Jim Pittman decided to promote me on appeal.

In retrospect, I think Ken, Charlie and Jim made a good decision for all concerned.

Thanks, Ken. I'll miss you...

Happy marriages

Old ycronam is still far enough under the weather that we canceled our dinner plans and stayed home last night. Dinner by the fire and "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing", a sweet 1987 Patricia Rozema film about art, honesty, imagination, love and life.

So, how is it that I'm so happily married? What does it take?

Some, like CW, insist it's all about commitment, determination, sticking it through thick and thin, and so on. I guess if you don't get lucky and/or make the right choice, that's the only way to get through the damned thing. Maybe one can have a successful marriage under those terms, but not a happy one.

For a happy marriage, you've got to have two people who are each capable of happiness, a good match of attitudes, values and interests, and a large dose of kindness and patience.

There's a lot of luck involved. First, in that combination of nature and nurture that yields two adults that are both reasonably decent people who are happy with life's prospects. Genetics can produce a colicky baby who grows up to be a whiny adult. Or a child might get good genes but grow up in an emotionally unsupportive environment that produces an adult who is untrusting, or unkind, or frequently depressed. Unhappy adults rarely have happy marriages.

The second piece of luck comes in being at the right place at the right time. If Mister Right or Miss Perfect doesn't cross your path when you're both available, you are SOL*.

And the third piece of luck comes in the extent and duration of the match. It's hard to know in a matter of months just how well matched you will be for the long run. You may both love some shared activity early on, but there's no way of knowing how long either of you will stay interested in it. You may have the same religious and social values at the beginning, but there's no way of knowing whether or not one of you will have some revelation later on that will take you in different directions. One of you might discover that your faith is hollow and that you cannot believe in God. Or religion may not be important to either of you at the beginning, but then one of you wakes up one day and finds Jesus. When you first meet, you cannot know how either of you will feel about wealth, or poverty, or middle-class life or whatever financial fate awaits you later. If you're childless when you meet, you cannot know how the stresses and joys of parenthood will affect your marriage. These depend in unpredictable ways on whether you have one child or many; whether your children are healthy or not; and on the kids' personalities.

And there's no way of knowing how age itself will affect you:

I once heard a woman in her late sixties -- call her Sally -- complaining about her 90-something year old mother -- call her Nel. Sally said that, years earlier, Nel's own mother had been a very difficult old lady. Back then Nel had said, "Sally, when I get old, don't let me be like my mother!"

Now Nel is old, and just like her mother. Sally recently reminded Nel "Mother, you said you didn't want to be like Grandma when you got old." 

The old lady responded, "Yes dear. When I was 65, I was a real expert on being 90!"

So there's a lot of luck in whether you will grow apart, or stay close, or grow even closer with the passing years.

I've been very lucky on all accounts. M is my soul mate, my life companion, the person I admire and love most in all the world, the woman who loves and understands me, the woman to whom I never have to explain myself. Well, the last is a bit of an overstatement -- of course I sometimes have to explain, but she's always been understanding and completely supportive of me. To my good fortune, it's always been easy for me to also be understanding and completely supportive of her.

Advice for those considering a life-long commitment? The only suggestion I have is the one my own mother made to me when I was a young man: always be gentle to one another.

-------

* Shit Out of Luck

Happy Anniversary

22 very happy years of marriage celebrated today.  Don't know why, when I first awoke, I was thinking of the worst day of my life, an awful Christmas Eve fight three years before I met Marie.

Between Marie and me "never a cross word" would be an exaggeration, but there's never been a fight. The cross words are rare. They're sometimes provoked, sometimes not, but they always produce an apology on one side or the other.

Marie is my soul mate – she understands me so well that I never have to explain myself to her.

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, too. Of course there are times that I have to explain myself. But she always understands the explanation and never argues with it. And I've never had the impulse to argue with her when she explains herself to me.

There are lots of ways in which we see the world differently. After all, she's an artist and I a scientist, so we are presumably dominated by our right and left brains, respectively. But our fundamental attitudes are completely aligned. Neither of us thinks that whatever truths we each hold go beyond the personal to the universal; neither of us thinks that others who see things differently are screwed up; neither of us thinks that we have to force or persuade others to see the world as we do. Both of us see life as a gift.

I remember a windy, rainy late afternoon in Birmingham when Marie was a few minutes late picking me up. This was before cell phones, and we'd agreed on a time and place. I was shivering under an umbrella on a dark street corner, dodging splashes from passing cars and growing more miserable by the minute. "Where the hell are you, woman???" I kept muttering. I was in a bit of a snit when I climbed into the car.

But she's like me -- she was genuinely sorry and apologized with feeling. And I knew that, had the situation been reversed, I might have been a little late and she in a bit of a snit. I knew that she had no ulterior motives, and I knew as I warmed up that we'd soon be sharing a drink, appetizers, good conversation and, a little later, a good meal. Life is too good and too precious to waste on anger at small unintentional offenses. By the time of her second apology, I could honestly say "That's all right. Forget it."

Sadly, this cold has be so far down that we'll have to delay our anniversary dinner tonight to some other time.

Philly

M and I had a long weekend in Philly with the kids.  Such a delight to see them coming into their own.  Mandy loves University of the Arts, and Ian is within sight of his first promotion with Chipotle, which will get them to a reasonable place financially. They love their tiny apartment and are making friends...

We shared a belated Christmas with them, exchanging gifts in our room at the Latham Hotel.  Then a couple of crammed days of tourism -- the rare book room at the library was an exceptional event, and Michael, Elizabeth and Jessie came up for the day to join us at the Franklin Institute.  The best part of the visit was lingering over meals together, with long, easy talk and just being together.  A round of Carcassone on the last day was fun, though the Kid clobbered all the rest of us.

I did lose the battle with the chest cold I'd been staving off for some time, however.  When we got home Sunday night (after a delayed flight, of course), I took to bed.  I've probably averaged 12 hours of sleep each day since then.  We had tickets for the Chick-Fil-A Bowl for last night (New Years Eve) but gave them away rather than go out.  A good thing, too, as LSU was merciless.  Our opening kickoff was out of bounds, and they scored in about half a dozen plays. We managed a field goal, and then it was downhill from there.  A 28 point second quarter (none for us)...

Today enough energy to go out for the matinee of "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime" with Kristin Scott-Thomas.  A beautiful and heart-rending film.  Home for Marie's hoppin' John for the traditional New Year good luck dinner.