Weddings and funerals

By Roger Owens

I spent a few days at my mother’s house last week, about an hour away in Melbourne, Florida, and I will spend a few more next week. Unfortunately, Mom fell and broke her arm and can’t be alone just yet, so myself and my brothers are taking turns staying over. Ironically enough, she fell at a reunion of the Harbor City Volunteer Ambulance Squad, which has been defunct for many years, but the house was full of people who have spent their lives caring for the sick and injured and carting them to the hospital, so at least they knew what to do.
    It is very enjoyable spending time with my family. Of course, lamentations are uttered about wishing the circumstances were better, but the truth is, when the circumstances are better we all have our comfortable little lives to lead and generally get together only on the holidays, and for weddings, and for funerals. And promises are made – that we will get together, that we will do lunch, that it will not be so long next time – and we all know they are as heartfelt as they are untrue.
    Now, in a way, what I’m getting to is one of those sappy “go see your family and friends before they (or you) are gone forever” kind of missives, and in a way it is not. Because it is not just spending time, but being reminded of things we tend to forget.
    Like how my oldest brother, Don, is so intelligent, so solid, a father, grandfather and great-grandfather, a pillar of the community, church-going, God-fearing, funny, well-read, witty. He recommended a couple of books and movies I had not seen and we enjoyed one one night, the war movie Fury. Worth watching, he said, even if depressing, and he was right. He usually is.
    Or how the next-oldest, “Red,” with his parade-ground voice and blustery, opinionated manner, could be seen as a bit of a buffoon until I remembered how utterly capable, forceful, and hard-working he always was, until his health deteriorated so badly and took so much away from him that had made him who he was. He was the assistant superintendent of a large condominium-construction project at 19 years old, telling men twice his age what to do, spouting the breaking strength of two-by-fours with twelve-foot centers, or the proper configuration of a “C” column of steel rebar, without missing a beat. How he had hired a friend of his who kept screwing up on the job, and how, after the third warning, he called the super and told him to bring that guy’s last check or his own, he didn’t care which. After that he never heard a peep from any of the other guys about keeping the columns and concrete forms and snap-ties exactly the way he wanted them. Hell, he’d fired his own buddy and clearly wouldn’t hesitate to fire anyone else.
    Or my youngest brother, Hugh, every bit the absolute rocket-scientist brain our father was, working for the DIA, DOD, and God knows who else, and I used to brag he had a higher security clearance than Bill Clinton. He still does, and still can’t talk about much of what he does for a living. Top secret.
    Or what a caring, loving woman Mom is, who turned her compassion into reality by riding ambulances and running the Squad as commander and president several times each in a thirty-five-year unpaid career of caring for others in their worst hours. Of telling them they would be all right when she knew they would not, of gently informing the distraught mother that no, her son would not be coming home after his motorcycle wreck. She still hates motorcycles; rescue people call them “donor-cycles” for their propensity to provide donor organs from brain-dead riders.
    By all means, go see your family and friends while you still have them, and they you. But never forget that it is not just catching up on the trivia of lives led separately, and reminiscing about good times had and hard times survived. It is an exercise in remembering who you are, where you came from, and how you got here. If you are a better person, they had a lot to do with that; I can point to exact moments in my life when a friend or family member demonstrated by word or deed how I was failing at becoming fully human. And it usually didn’t happen at a wedding or a funeral.

Copyright © 2017 by Roger Owens