Thanksgiving And A Funeral

Nov 30, 2010 by winjaw

Last week, amidst all the turkey and being thankful times, we buried Doc.

The Sons of Thunder called him Papa. The Little Black Dress called him dad. I called him Dad 2.

Doc was almost 80 when he died. The nurses at the care facility found him in a kneeling position. I’d say he died praying, which is the way I hope to go. He was ready.

Doc suffered from extreme short-term memory loss. He knew who you were, could hold a conversation, but wouldn’t remember that conversation 10 minutes after you left.

But we are thankful he’s in heaven. Too many people in his condition just live on, wasting away and losing more and more of their memories.

We held a small graveside service, just family and a couple of close friends.  We all put roses on his casket as it was lowered in the ground. The memorial service later that day included more people, but being the day before Thanksgiving, there weren’t a lot.

I don’t think that would bother Doc, he was never much into a lot of fanfare and hoopla. His family was there, that’s all he needed.

I put together a slide show of his life. Talk about emotionally draining – trying to put together someone’s life to flash up on a screen for four minutes. No pressure.

But there were photos of him and Eddi, his wife of nearly 50 years who passed away last year. And there were lots of photos of his five grandkids. There were lots of photos of good times and funny times. I forgot how funny Doc could be sometimes. The last photo was of him winking back at you, and that pretty well showed it all.
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During that slide show, we played the live version of Allison Krauss’s “The Lucky One.”

“You look at the world with a smiling eye, and laugh at the Devil as his train goes by” was my favorite line and summed up Doc’s life. The song ends with loud applause, and we timed it so that’s how the slides ended. I think he’d get a kick out of that.

We took the Sons of Thunder to Doc’s favorite hot dog place for lunch. The youngest Son ate five hot dogs in his honor. I think they weighed more than he did.

That night, we all gathered at Sushi Train for dinner, a place whose name is about as descriptive as you can get. Doc wasn’t much into sushi, but he would have gone along.  The chefs are in the center, with people sitting around in a big circle. And along comes a long toy train with the sushi on plates on each car.

The train goes around in a big circle and you pull off the plates as it goes by.

I watched that train make the circle and was reminded that the circle is complete. Doc’s with Eddi in heaven. The Little Black Dress has lost both her parents.

As The Dress and I have said to each other a lot over the last couple of years, “we will get through this.”

The train goes on.