Homegoing

“We’re here today to celebrate a life well lived,” the minister was saying. And to think 24 hours ago I hadn’t even known that this person from our past had died, and now we were sitting at his memorial service.

“Listen to this funeral announcement,” my husband had said over the phone calling from the store where he works. He read a familiar name from the obituary column and said, “We’re going to that tomorrow. Call the funeral home in Blackwell and find out the time of the service.”

Even though we hadn’t seen Don in maybe 15 years, and then briefly, and not for 40 years before that, our memories of him were as fresh as ever. I was just a teenager when he had come home from the Air Force with my brother. He seemed comfortable with our family and just stayed, even though he was raised elsewhere. Before we knew it, he was ingrained in our family life, attending church and dating one of my girlfriends. My boyfriend and future husband and I, along with my brother and his girl, often ran around with them on “triple dates”. They were married when she was still in high school.

With their new lives, I didn’t see them as much, and before long, I had graduated and married a year later with a life of my own. Our lives took different paths, and I didn’t see my girlfriend until a couple of years ago, after we had moved back into the area and began attending the same Bible study. The couple had been divorced by then, each having new families. I saw pictures of their children together, though, and their six strapping grandsons, now with families of their own.

Those same grandsons sat in front of us at the services today, and the familiar set of their heads marked them as part of Don’s family. Then I saw his son, and it was like looking at a young Don. Many memories were shared at the service, and I got a glimpse into the solid citizen our friend had become in his adopted home town. His witty personality was referenced, and I could just hear him again in the amusing anecdotes from his family.

He had enjoyed hunting, and bought each grandson a shotgun when they turned 10. He was an avid reader, a member of civic organizations, a loving father and stepfather who bought his stepdaughter her first banana split and gave her a kitten (though he didn’t like pets) and a bike. Described as generous and a mentor to the young, I could see all that in the person we used to know.

Especially gratifying were the remarks pertaining to his love of Scripture. He had read the Bible through twice and took much comfort in reflecting on pertinent passages in his last illness. He said he was ready to go. And he did, this time to his real “home town”.