today, I went to a funeral.
they’re now called memorials, or celebrations of life, rites of passage.
there are some mile-markers in life, in the monumental history of man, that never change, despite the changes in terminology and ornamentation that we apply on the outside.
this was the father of a good friend, a gentle and handsome man. a man truly wearing visible sweetness of the soul in his everyday demeanor.
the church part was old and musty, as churches are. going thru the words, the motions, the ancient white robes and gold crosses that all needed ironing, cleaning, melting, re-cycling. the libations and cookies and water, and turn to page 587 in the withered hymn book that is more dead than death itself.
but the eulogies, the praise of the living for the soul of sweetness that humans long for, this was worth wading through the bulrushes. a small glimpse into the life of a man that came and went – a man who just happens to be a short distance ahead in the Line-up Of Life, the same Line-up that I stand in, and wait in, and wonder in, day after mysterious day.
it’s all about being human. we wear the robes of “this and that”. we arrive in different cars and eat different cookies and water different house-plants. but we all stood in that insane musty chapel, with the sun streaming in sideways, and we all realized that this was only a practice, practice, practice for the day when we are the lead actor. the dead actor. the producer in repose. the director on permanent Leave.
we don’t look at such things and talk about such things, because the coffee cups and cucumber sandwiches take precedence; the arranging of candles, the procession of strangers, the filing system with a house of cards, each in its approved, rightful, deadly-earnest position.
and we walk on.
we leave the door of another harvest moon. another Final Picnic. another House-call by the dreaded Doctor. another small drop of medicine in a body that never gets well. and we’re out in a world of sailing planes, flapping flags, wandering dogs. they call to us and we respond, dreadfully thankful to be called away from the Great Appointment List, the doctor’s Waiting Room, the place where the quiet moments of Sun announce the unbinding of Time, the disassociation of Molecules, the return of all books to the Great Library.
and we wander. we wander long. we wander gone. we wander like drunken kings and corporate whores. we wander, “found” in our lost-ness, confused in the clarity that lands us once again in our pet-home, our cardboard box, our waiting room full of strangers.
through this incessant wandering, some of us ask. some of us know. some of us long, pine, yearn. some of us reach inside our hungry hearts, with a troubled hand, and hang on. hang on for dear life. hang on to the pearls at the center of life. the dainty necklace, that fragile ring of diamond. that sparkling dust, that dust of us, that dust that sings and breathes and renews and renews and renews.
that dust of “us”.
reduced to what i can be no more, boiled down to the single, sweet, saucy, angelic, symphonic, glowing, growing, screaming, praying, dreaming, crying, laughing child that sits
and looks
with eyes of wonder
seeing life, and more life…