Left to my own devices

T wenty-three years ago today, we buried my dad. I use the collective "we" to imply Lewis's family and friends who were there, though none of us did the actual grave-digging and burial. It was a Tuesday. his visitation had been the previous day, and he'd died on Thursday of the preceding week. All of this occurred in Springfield, IL. I was living in Champaign. The drives to and from the cities on those days felt like the longest drives of my life.  Lewis, who'd been a sergeant in the Vietnam War, is buried in Camp Butler National Cemetery, just outside of Springfield. I'd say his thoughts on his military service were conflicted. Back in the early nineties, at the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War, dad and I had a phone conversation about what was going on. I was nervous about the conflict continuing for years, and the possibility of being drafted once I'd turned 18. I could see the sneer on Lewis's face through the telephone line. "Don't you lo...

M y dad died twenty-two years ago today. He has now been gone for longer than I knew him. The other day I was thinking about how much of a factor time plays in the effectiveness of our relationships with people. While it is certainly important, I think it plays less of a role than we give it credit for. The bonds we forge with people can be made relatively quickly, their intensity dependent upon a multitude of factors -- time being only one of them.

Recently I read a piece from NPR that, in a nutshell, suggested we always attend a funeral if at all possible. Not every funeral, of course, but the ones for those we knew in life, or (perhaps especially) the funerals for loved ones of someone we know. Our attendance can mean so much during those occasions. The piece is almost twelve years old but, as with most things these days, nothing truly dies on the Internet. It was resurrected recently on social media, and I read it with interest. Over the years I have attended funerals and visitations that ran the gamut from sparse to overwhelming attendance. Some funereal proceedings were an odd mix of fire & brimstone religiosity that decided to use the occasion to touch upon seemingly every hot button topic except for the deceased, to ones that were intimately personal ceremonies that provided those present with comfort. memories and closure. I've even been to one where a group of my cousin's peers performed a beautiful ...