My Sunday Feeling

I attended the visitation for the mother of an old friend the other day.  S's mom was in her eighties when she passed away.  

Reminiscence comes naturally and easily at moments such as these. 

"You know I was thinking about your dad the other day,"S said.  

"Really? How so?" I replied.

"Well, he died so young."

"52"

"Wow. That's younger than I thought."

"Yeah.  Pretty much dropped dead in the backyard."

" Mother lived what some people would describe as a long full life.  But it wasn't.  The last 20 years she had no quality of life at all."

I didn't know his mother.  Or I have no recollection of her.  Southwest Little Rock was a long time ago.

"I didn't know that," I said. "I'm sorry." 

S is a pensive man.  He was pensive at 16.  

"You know," he said after a pause. "There ought to be a happy medium between what happened to your dad and how it ended for Mother.  It's just....well, it's just not right."

"You know? I try not to think about stuff like that," I said. "It does no good and nothing changes anyway.  I just try to remember that every day is a miracle and one that we are not promised.  I have no complaints.  I am upright and mobile.  I have gas in the car, food in the fridge and clothes on my back.  And I don't any of it for granted."

"Isn't that the truth?" he said." Look at us.  We both turned out OK I think. You and me both got to retire.  Your poor dad didn't. We're not wealthy men by any stretch of the imagination but we're OK. We live down the road from each other a million miles from where we came." 

S had crossed over from pensive to downright voluble.  A rare event.

Then again, the death of any loved one but particularly the death of a parent tends to concentrate the mind as my buddy Phil would say.  

By then the line of folks waiting to greet him had grown.  This was neither the time nor the place for a couple of old crackers from 72209 to discuss the Meaning of Life.

I lost Mother in 2009.  I have fresher experience in dealing with this than S does.

"When things settle down, let's get together and compare notes," S said.

"Would love to," I replied. " You call me when you are ready."

And with that I took my leave.  My next stop was a Theology Club meeting at school.  I've really enjoyed watching the boys grapple with challenging concepts like Christology, empiricism, ontology and church history.  And it occurred to me after the visitation that pretty much all we do during T  Club is compare notes with each other there to.

And if you are lucky to live long enough you figure out that this process never ends.  You never really come up with an answer.  But that's OK too.

S and I know we're lucky.  Really lucky.  

Because you know what?  There is no happy medium.  The universe is not configured for our happiness. There is only luck or not luck to paraphrase Yoda.  

But that notion opens the door to considerations of theodicy.  The T Club boys aren't quite ready for that yet.  

Comparing notes among friends is sufficient for the day.  And is the best we can do besides.