Many years ago, just after I turned 16, the mother of a close
friend succumbed to a lingering illness. Because she had been a
year in dying and her body was greatly emaciated, the funeral was
private.
Many years ago, just after I turned 16, the mother of a close friend succumbed to a lingering illness. Because she had been a year in dying and her body was greatly emaciated, the funeral was private.
However, the family felt that a wake was appropriate and my friend invited me to it. I was uneasy about going but felt that my presence might better help him sustain the loss. His older brother and sister were there with their father, a few other relatives and many friends.
Mr. McGuire related several anecdotes about his wife, how they had met and their happiness in starting a life together.
But when he mentioned the birth of his younger daughter, not present because she was only 7, the older daughter gave way to her emotions and wept inconsolably. Within a few seconds my friend was weeping too, and several of the women present also broke down.
The father and older brother tried to comfort their stricken family members but all the pent-up emotions that had accumulated for months when their mother learned that her illness was terminal were rushing out in a deluge that could not be denied. Finally, the father and his children just held each other and rocked back and forth in raw grief.
The guests tried their best to comfort them but our poor words and embraces could not stem the torrent or even slow it. Still, we stayed because decency demanded it. I sensed that desertion then would be regretted later, so remained next to my friend with a hand on his heaving shoulders although I would rather have been in any other place in the world.
From time to time over the years, he referred to my presence then, and I was glad that I had not fled the scene. But it ingrained in me a deep-seated antipathy to any of the formal trappings of death.
I went to another gathering three weeks ago. It was made up of friends of a woman who had died a few days earlier. She was a witty and warm person who had never married but had embraced life like a lover for 83 years. She suffered from a long illness and was not unhappy to realize her days were running out.
There were a few tears at the memorial but they were poignant rather than despairing. A number of her friends remembered one anecdote or another that illustrated her humorous insights into life, and a letter was read from the last friend she had made about her tenderness of feeling.
A musician friend played “Taps” in the back yard, an altogether fitting tribute to her Army service during and after World War II. Several hours passed with the guests eating the buffet her best friend had provided and reminiscing, punctuating the conversation with, “She would have loved that!” or “That was so like her!” and the like.
The memory of that long-ago wake came unbidden that evening and a comparison with the celebration of life I had just attended was inevitable.
Mrs. McGuire had been taken while her family still needed her. They were mourning more than the death of the mother, they were also grieving for her over the pleasures she would never know – the marriage of her children, the joys of becoming a grandmother and all that was denied her because of her early death.
The older woman had lived life as much on her own terms as anyone is likely to achieve and she died full of years with the knowledge that her affairs were in order, and death was not unwelcome.
May such warmth and good memories follow you and me and all of us when it becomes our own time to go.
-Herman Wrede is a former editor of the Free Lance. His column appears on Fridays.
