"Let us Eat and Let us Drink, for Tomorrow we Die"

If there was a celebratory funeral that I've attended, it was today's. A friend's 80-near-90 something Dad died. I don't know that I ever met Hal but clearly told myself that I would've liked to have spent some time with him. Politically argumentative, aggressive at 9-Ball, and loved by his two grown kids and his live-in girlfriend (who he was with for 6 years after the death of his 50+-year bride). The kids and his woman-friend spoke of a charismatic old codger who lived the Good Life. Pretty cool!

"Don't ask for whom the bell tolls" and all that, I was sitting there pretty much silently with M, remembering Jeremiah, the Bachelor Prophet's words: "Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Somewhat younger denizens of the Third Quarter on nearby benches were talking about commuting and what a pain it could be. Fourth Quarter types and Overtimers seemed to be a bit more circumspect. Most of the gathered smiled at the jokes the kids told about their Dad ... M and I did, as well.

Couple months back, I was at another memorial service for a near 90 year old. He had an active professional career ... plied his trade for some 60+ years. A number of wives ... bunch of kids. Lots of folk said nice things and one who had taken care of him at the end wanted people to know that he had left a bunch of kids -- including her -- when they were quite young.

Then, there was Lily's funeral. Snow had already begun when her body arrived quite late. Clergy spoke for well over an hour and a half as Lily lay there in her casket saying nothing. Then ... nobody knew the way to the cemetery and by the time the procession of cars arrived two accidents occurred ... One between a Pontiac Grand Prix and a Family Funeral Car and the other between an Oldsmobile 98 and a number of tombstones. And the gravediggers refused to open the gates to the Cemetery until they got their overtime. People can get pissed off even at or in the details surrounding a funeral. Most of the people at Lily's funeral are, themselves, dead, now.

I can't quite figure out whether life -- including its closing Act and Scene -- is more a Comic Tragedy than a Tragic Comedy. What carries through is the depth of feelings than anthropos feels for a certain limited number of other members of this curious tribe. I wondered walking out with M whether Jeremiah -- the Prophet that was disallowed the symbiotic attachments of matrimony -- could understand, even in his facetious aside to the sinning Jeshurun, that the attachments we make that draw us to mourn together may make the whole screwy and very complex stage show somehow worthwhile.

Chesterton put relationship this way in his homage to Dickens:

"The hour of absinthe is over. 

We shall not be much further troubled with the little artists 

who found Dickens too sane for their sorrows and too clean for their delights. 

But we have a long way to travel before we get back to what Dickens meant: 

and the passage is along a rambling English road, 

a twisting road such as Mr. Pickwick travelled. 

But this at least is part of what he meant; 

that comradeship and serious joy are not interludes in our travel; 

but that rather our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy, 

which through God shall endure for ever. 

The inn does not point to the road; 

the road points to the inn. 

And all roads point at last to an ultimate inn, 

where we shall meet Dickens and all his characters: 

and when we drink again 

it shall be from the great flagons in the tavern at the end of the world."