Housatonic — It would be simple now, for any thinking person to look around at the disconnect of thought and lack of humanity and decency, to write angry.
But on this clearing but gusty Saturday I’d instead find what I could in the northwest wind.
Completely unexpected, the image blown through me was how similar this day was to the day I buried my father, the remembrance, not only of the simple, grave-side service, but also of this same wind’s seeping my wool overcoat and whipping my white hair.
Cheeseburgers had hinted at his dying. He’d lost some weight and looked drawn and tired of the whole thing, but he’d seemed so for awhile.
On my last visit to the convalescent clinic, he’d asked me to sneak him two MacDonald’s double cheeseburgers, his most forbidden fruit.
Though I was ready for some cloak-and-dagger stuff, I checked in, greasy bag and all, without being challenged. When I saw how sick he was, I doubted the staff would have given me any trouble. I sat with him as he reminisced, mostly about his military service and his hero General Patton.
Standing to hug him one last time, I saw he had nibbled around the edges of one burger; the other was untouched. Then I realized how really sick he really was. If he’d been on death row, no irony intended, he would have ordered double cheeseburgers for his last meal.
I don’t remember when he died, only that it was in November.
There was no hearse nor limousines in a sad procession. Most of his friends had died after he’d moved to Florida. The mourners were his nieces and my friends. He took his last ride on my Subaru’s passenger seat.
Two of his VFW contemporaries had come for the service. Together, they struggled to push a small American flag into the ground.
He’d always wanted a military funeral. My friend, a reserve colonel, turned up a lieutenant and a bugler from Westover Air Base to perform military honors. After the minister’s few brief prayers, the bugler, who’d move a few graves to the south played Taps; he and the officer carefully folded the flag.
The lieutenant turned to present the flag to whoever should receive it. Though I’d shaken everyone’s hand before the service, he didn’t know I was my father’s son.
Standing alone north of the grave, I’d thought I’d be the obvious choice, but he tried to give the flag to three of my friends before they nodded and whispered “him” as the deceased son.
I took no offense at his confusion. I was grateful, and told him so; he and his bugler had helped lay my father down as he had wished.
I quietly acknowledged the hurrying wind for carrying this remembrance to me.
