The 87 Year Dash
I went to the funeral of my favorite uncle on my mothers side a few weeks ago. He was a genial, funny old country guy who I have never heard an unkind word said about. One of those guys who was liked, seemingly, by everyone he ever met.
During the service, the preacher was doing the eulogy, and after introducing us to who my uncle was, and telling us who he was survived by, said something that caused me to really pause and reflect.
He pointed out, on the little program that is handed out by the funeral home, my uncles birth and death date. He then went on to make a little analogy of the way it is written. He showed us that it said 1924-2011, and pointed out the dash. He said that 1924 marked the date of his birth and 2011 the date of his death, but the dash was what we should concentrate on. The dash represented his life, and was like a race. Like a hundred yard dash. In my uncles case it was an 87 year dash, but it was the race from birth to death, the race from the worldly to the spiritual, the race from here to heaven.
I drifted out at about this time, as I am sure you have done many times in similar situations, and began to go through memories of my uncle through the years.
My uncles kids were some of the only cousins we had that lived close enough that we saw them a lot, and we spent a lot of time with them. One of his kids and I are only 1 year apart, so my cousin and I practically grew up together. We spent lots of weekends with them at lakes and in woods camping and fishing, or up at their farm in the summer with my dad and I helping out so that they wouldnt have to hire help.
My uncle had been a larger than life man. One of only 4 men I have ever met who seemed to be as large and alive as my father was. These 4 were the only ones who could stand toe to toe with my father and joke and play and enjoy life on an equal basis. And here I was to bury the last of the bunch.
I remembered what seemed like a thousand nights at the lake, fishing with my cousin, while my father and uncle laughed and talked smoking cigars under the starlight. My cousin and I seldom caught fish because we were impatient and wouldnt wait. They never caught fish, and never cared because they were enjoying swapping stories and remembering back in the day. This taught me a valuable lesson that catching fish is not necessarily what fishing is all about, and is a lesson that I have tried (somewhat successfully, I hope) to impart upon my own children. Neither of these men drank, and they sat there drinking iced tea or Cokes, and this taught me another valuable lesson; you dont have to. Its quite possible to go out to the lake or the woods and have a great time without it.
I remember what seems like hundreds of Saturday afternoons sitting around a camp while something cooked. My father always cooked because my uncle couldnt boil water. Once I was grown, this task passed to me, and I always took a grill or smoker to the lake and served huge BBQ meals for these get-togethers. This continued right up until last summer. By this year, he was just too sick and frail to get out there, but the last time I saw him he told me he was sure looking forward to getting up to the lake so I could put something dead on that smoker for him.
He was the best natural mechanic I have ever met, which is a talent that neither my father nor I possessed. I remembered when I was about 8 or 9, him pulling up to our house one afternoon, while my dad and I were unsuccessfully trying to get a lawn mower started. Wed been working with it all day and couldnt even get it to fire. He took it into the garage, set it on the workbench, and what seemed like 15 minutes later, it was torn down to a million pieces (I mean all the way down to valves in hand) and we were going to the lawn more shop to get parts. Upon return, after what seemed like another 15 minutes, it was together and my cousin and I were taking turns mowing with it.
I remembered when I was about 14, and had purchased my first truck, an old 1959 Chevy. My dad and I took it up to my Uncles place, and my cousin and I worked on it while Daddy and Unc sat there in lawn chairs complaining about being too old to get under it while drinking iced tea and telling stories. Unc told us what to do and how to do it. He never even looked under the truck, just told us from memory where every bolt was, what to do, and how to do it. We replaced main bearings, rings, inserts, clutch, pressure plate, and throw out bearings on the lower end, and pulled the head and had it and the valves refinished on the top end, over 3 weekends while he and dad sat there drinking tea and laughing. We got it together with him giving us torque readings and timing settings from memory. Started on the second crank and ran like a top.
He had lost a leg in WWII on Omaha Beach. That is all he would ever say about it, but he was never self conscious or bitter about it that I saw. I remember when I was a kid, he would fascinate me by sticking a knife into his fake leg, My sisters would bring friends to the lake and he scared them to death that he had stabbed himself.
He was so good natured that he laughed at the time my dad and I snuck into his tent and stole his leg and hid it from him. He recognized it as a joke, laughed right along with us, and in time, planned his own joke, and got us back, but thats a whole other story. (Note: To this day, I ALWAYS check my sleeping bag for garter snakes.) And we laughed about these things right up until the last time I saw him, just a couple of months before his death.
I thought about how I never remember seeing him without a King Edward Cigar in his mouth. Even though for the last 15 or so years he never smoked them, he still chewed his way through about 2 or 3 a day. He was not a wealthy man and I always assumed he chose King Edward because they are cheap, but once I brought him home some real honest to goodness. Well lets just say some cigars that you cant pick up around here.. from a business trip to Europe and I had never seen him so excited about a cigar. He didnt open them then, though. He just put the box in the kitchen where he kept his cigars and thanked me profusely. My cousin told me at the funeral that he never opened them. He still had the unopened box at home. He had said that it would be a waste to chew up that good of a cigar, and he was not going to smoke anymore, so he just kept them.
I sat there at the funeral for the approximately 10 or 15minutes that this preacher was talking, and thought of a thousand memories like this, and paid my respects to a man who I respected, liked, loved, and will miss desperately. I sat there, and went through my own highlight reel of my Uncles 87 year dash.
Afterward, I stopped by and thanked the preacher for the service, and for the kind words about my uncle. Although I had heard very little of what he had said due to my own recollections and nostalgia for the man, he had done his job and brought at least one person into reflection upon the life of the man he was there to eulogize.
On the trip home, I thought about it, though and I realized that the analogy the preacher used was not appropriate at all. While that dash might represent the entire life of the man who lived it, the life itself was far from a dash. No, the trip from the starting line to the finish line for a man like that was not a dash, at all. I suppose that if an analogy to a racehad to be made, it would be much more like a marathon than a dash.
But to me, it was neither a dash nor a marathon. It was a journey.
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Beautiful article Captain. I have to agree. Life is not a dash, or a marathon but a journey, and with most trips, they are what you make of them.
Four years ago, I lost one of my two favorite Uncles. I often wondered if it was right to have favorites, but we are just as human as they are... and I do and did. He sounded very much like your uncle. One of those men that everyone loved. Good natured, easy going.... happy with a modest life.
He got Lou Gehrig's disease which took his life very quickly. And although Mitch Albom made it sound like one of those lifeaffirmingmoments in "Tuesdays with Morrie", it wasn't. It was awful. But I made sure to spend a lot of time with him, including taking him back and forward to the doctor on Mondays.
On one of those trips, the conversation drifted to god. Now I am one of those who isn't too sure about hisexistence, and this happening to my Uncle, made me feel even more distant, if not angry. If there was one, where the hell was he then? So you can't imagine how shocked I was to hear my uncles say that he believed in god. When I inquired how he could, because god let this happen to him, he replied with a smile, "Perrie, if you look up into the night sky, you can see that the universe is beyond our imagination. God is just too busy to worry about Herman Berlin, because he has so many more important things to do.
My uncle might have not been Morrie, but I guess he had some neat ideas of his own.
Thank you Captain; very touching and reminds me of my own childhood
It was not a pleasant ending for my Uncle, but with the circumstances, it could have been worse. He was diagnosed about 18 months ago with Alzheimer's and he sank down pretty quickly. He went from a hale, hearty 240 lb. farmer to a frail 130 lb old man in about a year.
I was extremely fortunate that the last time I saw him, mentioned in the article, he was completely lucid and aware. It was just like the hundreds of other times I had spent with him, drinking coffee and swapping stories, jokes, and tall tales. We sat in his living room and laughed until he was so tired that I felt compelled to leave so that he could get some rest, but I hated to waste even one minute of the time he was "there".
The time before that, just a couple weeks earlier, he had not been able to recognize me, and was completely uncommunicative. Most unpleasant and heart rending to see a man like that in that condition.
My uncle was just a farmer/mechanic who had struggled through life, probably like millions of others, but he was larger than that to me, and he and the other men mentioned above (especially my father)all left incredibly deep holes in my life.
I pretty sure that leaving a whole in your life is the definition of another person's life well lived.
Larry,
You got me all choked up. My uncle and I used to go just fishin'.
What a beautiful song.
Thanks, Larry.
These are the types of things that I normally write.
Sometimes funny, sometimes not.
I never really know what's going to come out until I sit down at the keyboard, and I usually don't know how it's going to come out until I'm pretty close to finished with it.
Most of my stuff don't really fit into any of the Group Descriptions, or any of the Forum/Discussion Descriptions (News, Entertainment, etc....) so I struggle with deciding where to put it, or how to categorize it. I guess I'll stick with "Other" for now, but am contemplating starting a group for this type of "Essay" writing.
Anyway, thanks for the complement, thanks for reading the words, and thanks for stopping by.
I can make extracategories. Just let me know what you would like it to be called and I can add that to the topics in the forum.
Also something that I pointed out to Mac.
Not everybody comments on article, although I wish that they would, since we all thrive on feedback. But if you want to know how many people are reading your article or essay, just looked at the views number under your article. It's nice to know how you are getting out.
I don't count the quantity of comments.
The quality of the comments???? I look at that.
Who comments???? I look at that.
The views I notice because I assume they at least read it.
I notice the "Likes" but know that most people don't use that function, either, though I do just to let the person know I appreciate the effort.
A Category called something like just "Life" or maybe "Thinking" or "Scattershooting" or "Ramblings" would be welcome. Just something to put all those little things that don't fit into a neat little box.
"Other" is just something that, in my opinion, does not attract a lot of attention or interest from the general public, and that writers (I at least) am somewhat hesitant to classify my work.
Well ask and it's yours. This article just had a change incategory. Check out the name!
I agree and I wish that people remembered to do that!
Wow.
Thanks so much.
It's just really hard to categorize most of my stuff, and I don't want to put something somewhere that it will either be mistaken for something that it was not meant to be, missed by someone who might like it, or offend someone by how it is presented.
Thanks again, Perrie.
Hey no problem Capt.Kidd
This just dropped off the board, so I am making sure that it gets seen. Also this shows you how to get an item back on the board.