Ten-Finger Exercises

a tale of four brothers and two funerals

Funeral number one today was for Flora, the lady I wrote about yesterday. Let me begin by describing her sons more fully.

Al, the mild-mannered one, is an engineer. He has a pretty wife, two children and four grandchildren. Yesterday he was distressed because he wanted to bury his mother in the dress she wore to his son's wedding, but Bob, the other brother, who had been visiting from the East Coast for months to be with his dying mother, had put her things in a storage locker. Al had searched through box after box and had not been able to find it, or any other dress, for that matter. And, he couldn't find a single dress for sale in town that would be satisfactory. In fact, the only dresses he found at all were cocktail dresses, he said. (I guess that must be why I shop from catalogs any more.)

Al has short hair, an easy smile, blue eyes, a gentle voice. He made most of the arrangements for the funeral, like a caterer for a lunch afterwards, etc. They shared the business of picking flowers, and found it very difficult and unsatisfying. They wanted a particular flower that was her favorite, but is seldom found in commercial floral arrangements, just in home gardens in the summer.

Bob is taller, has dark eyes and hair which he is constantly brushing back from his forehead. It is about ear length with a touch of gray. He carries a shoulder bag and wears a leather jacket and jeans. Today he had on a charcoal suit and shirt, but didn't keep the jacket on for long. He speaks louder, faster, with more emphasis. He is an extrovert, like his mother was. His wife is back east, couldn't afford to come right now. Yesterday he had had so much caffeine he was bouncing off the walls. I asked the funeral director how he was today, and she said he seemed pretty well controlled, but that he was often a little manic. Brother Al is the rock of the family.

These are both very bright men, and the comments Bob made on the scriptures really impressed me. He caught onto the real meaning, in sort of an aha, although, as he said, the passage was very familiar. He paralleled Jesus's statement to Philip in John 14:9 with the inability of all of us to see God's kingdom all around us.

Anyway, the service went well. Bob talked at length, which he'd said he might but hoped he wouldn't. It was fine though, gave me a real picture of what his mother was like. A child of the depression, she didn't like anything to be wasted. The sons recounted a time when she saw a truck load of onions headed for the dump and rerouted it to her backyard. She called everyone around to come share the onions she had salvaged, and then only gave out two or three per person as if she might run out.

+++The second funeral was entirely different. Two of the sons were jazz musicians, and they played four pieces on piano and sax, with a grandson on the bass. Then several people shared stories about the wonderful, charming man who had died.

I won't go any farther with this because we just got a call that Bill's son and daughter-in-law are on the way to the hospital for Zachary to be born! So we need to get some supper, get to a Mikado practice, and get the bubbly cold for later.

Praise God for a varied and full day, and the love of so many people shining so brightly.