Preface: It has always been my belief that losses in life need to be
honored if healing is to occur. Time must be devoted and attention given to the
suffering that losses inflict. Taking loss seriously means engaging the grieving with compassion. Such engagement must always begin with oneself if it is to extend to
others.
In my life, loss and grieving have always been marked with ritual - both formal and informal -and by actions designed to transform the darkness of loss into something of value - if
not beauty. For me those actions have taken two main expressions:
gardening and writing.
For the past two years as I have sought a balm for a broken heart in the good Earth of my beloved garden, I have also written entries for my blog
sites detailing my experience of my Father’s decline and eventual death. I have
sought to place those events in the context of a life strongly shaped by the
loving presence of two wonderful parents and in the context of growing up in a Florida which today bears only passing resemblance to the state of my
childhood, a grief I share with many fellow Floridians.
Loss always comes wearing a multitude of disguises.
This final entry in this series comes at the end of two
years of reflection on human finitude, on death and making meaning of life. I am
grateful for you who have indulged me in reading and considering these
reflections. It is my prayer that my insights may provide food for thought and balm
for the places in your own hearts where loss and grief reside.
Hometown Boy Laid to Rest
I went to visit my parents last week. They are now both buried
in the National Cemetery outside of Bushnell. The headstone that formerly bore
only my Mother’s information – marking the spot where she lay in her grave
awaiting my Father - has been rotated 180 degrees and now bears my Father’s
information as well.
His ashes now rest just above our Mother’s heart, just as
he instructed.
Their final resting place is a fitting tribute to them both. The memorial is attractive, unassuming and comfortably at home among the rows of white granite stones marking the final resting places of American veterans and their spouses, the kinds of people both of them served in their lifetimes of public service.
It is a tranquil island of repose among a sea of live oaks
and palmettoes in this river basin region of Sumter County.
My Father is buried just a few miles down the road from the
place where he was born. His family had migrated to Florida from Oklahoma
during the 1920s land boom which went bust shortly after their arrival. Daddy
was the only child born in Florida.
His house – which his engineer father built - no longer
stands. But a living memory of that birth survives in the scrub that has taken
over the property where it once was located. The day my Dad was born, his
Father planted a bamboo tree in the yard. Amidst the water oaks, palmettoes and
wild grape vines strangling everything they can wrap their tendrils around, the
bamboo still thrives these 90 years later.
This overgrown lot is a reminder of a bygone era, a small
parcel of undeveloped countryside no doubt awaiting a developer’s bulldozer
like much of the rest of Sumter County.
The 125,000 residents just estimated by the Census Bureau to live in the
county represent a ten-fold increase of the population of this once rural
county of just 50 years ago when my Dad moved our family from Tampa Bay back to
his hometown. Like the wild grape vines strangling everything they touch, an
obsession with “development,” driven by a behemoth retirement “community” in
the county’s northern end, is busy swallowing up what is left of a place where
cows once outnumbered people.
The Cemetery is less than a mile down the road from Sumter
Correctional Institute where my Father once taught US Government for
Lake-Sumter Community College to inmates who knew only too well how the
judicial aspect of that government worked - or didn’t. Eight miles further east
lies the town of Bushnell where his mother once taught school, where he grew to
young adulthood before heading out to serve his country in the Pacific Theatre
of WWII and thereafter obtaining a Masters of Science in Agriculture from the
University of Florida on the GI Bill.
Just north of town in the heart of 11 wooded acres lies the
home he had built for his family and in which he lived the remainder of his
life. The majestic yard bearing hundreds of azaleas is dominated by a venerable
200 year old live oak and marks the site of an early 20th CE
turpentine plantation town named Edenfield.
My Father was born and died at places within three miles of
one another. He lived the majority of his life in this once little town now
struggling with the reality of becoming an exurb of several competing
metropolitan areas. While he tried other things ranging from insurance sales to
real estate, his heart was always in education. And it was that heart-driven
service of the community that was honored at the reception held fittingly at
the high school he had served for so many years of his life.
Teaching is in Our
Genes
I am the fourth generation of teachers in my family and the
third generation of college instructors. My Father’s grandparents were named
Reed and Wright. They were teachers. His Mother had been a teacher in the
school he attended in Bushnell. My Father was my teacher for Florida history,
Civics and Driver’s Education.
At the reception, wave after wave of people came by to pay
their respects to my Dad. A few of them were his colleagues, teachers who held
the local high school together through two rounds of tumultuous change. The
first was the consolidation of two rural schools into one high school in 1959,
the second the closing of the local black high school and the integration of
their students and staff into the now desegregated white high school in 1966. Many
who came had been my teachers. It was good to see them after so many years.
But most of the 100 people on site were his former
students. Their stories recalled his quirky pedagogy: a judicious use of the
passenger side brake followed by the question “What did you forget?;” a calm statement
that the student driver’s failure to check the oncoming traffic while entering
the local interstate on-ramp just resulted in them being run over “by a big
rock truck.” In all cases, there was praise for his patience, his nerves of
steel in shepherding teenage drivers fearful of this new responsibility into
becoming safe, competent drivers.
The lessons my Father taught were not relegated to the
classroom, the Ag fields or the Driver’s Ed car. My Dad’s life taught lessons
in how to treat other human beings with respect and dignity. He readily saw the
potential of every student he taught and sought to develop it to its maximum. He
often was assigned students that no other teacher wanted to deal with. Not all
of them were success stories. But in every case, he never lost sight of their
humanity, with all its frailties and nobility.
So many of his friends and former students remembered those
qualities at the reception. They spoke of his compassionate caring for them when
their lives were in turmoil. They spoke of his generosity of his time, life
wisdom and material goods when they were in need. They remembered his
boisterous singing as a substitute school bus driver, the smile that lit up his
face when he encountered them and his unwillingness to give up on many who were
more than ready to give up on themselves.
At some level, I think he might have been a bit embarrassed
by the outpouring of loving admiration and appreciation at the reception. Truth be told, my Father wanted none of this. He had made me promise
there would be no funeral for him. He even put it in writing. But even as I
promised him I would not hold a
funeral for him, I told him that my sister, Carole, would probably insist on
holding some kind of event. He said, “I know she probably will, Son, but don’t
tell me about it.”
So I didn’t.
Knowing that the VA would provide a brief opportunity for a graveside commemoration (at the end of
your allotted 30 minutes the staff politely but firmly reminds you that you
have to leave so the next service can begin) Daddy instructed me to conduct the
same commitment rite from the Book of Common Prayer that we used for our Mother
10 years earlier. Ten days after he died, we held that service.
The Navy chaplain gave a generic Christian sermon, a
serviceman played Taps and a flag was unfolded, displayed, refolded and
presented to my Sister. When the sailors had concluded their ritual, they
marched away.
The commitment rite from the service booklets I had
prepared followed. I had dressed in clericals with my Dad’s sweater pulled over
my bare arms on this chilly morning, a white stole around my neck. My nephew,
Joe, held the bowl of consecrated water as we blessed the four directions at
the site, the urn itself and then said the final prayers of the commitment rite.
Prior to attending seminary at
midlife, I would never have predicted that I would end up conducting the final
rites for both of my parents. Who could
imagine such a thing? It was an unexpected but cherished gift. And despite the
fact it was deeply painful, I will always be grateful for having had those
opportunities.
A Rich Life, A Peaceful Passing
Consummate [adjective
kuh n-suhm-it, kon-suh-mit] Adjective –
complete or perfect; supremely skilled;
superb
My Father was the consummate teacher, something I took for
granted for most of my 63 years with him. Indeed, both of my parents were
wonderful teachers and we children who were the beneficiaries of their wisdom
all of our lives had no idea how lucky we were.
As a rather naive child, I didn’t know that all parents didn’t expose
their children to all types of music, sing with them and encourage them to
learn to play musical instruments. I didn’t know that all parents didn’t travel,
setting the example of learning about other peoples and cultures, and inviting
people of a wide range of ethnicities and social classes into their home. I
didn’t know that all parents didn’t take time to teach their children the
native flora and fauna, how to garden and fish, and take them to the museums
and monuments to learn the history of their state and nation.
But it was not until the very end of my Dad’s life that I
realized how lucky I had been to be the beneficiary of some of the deepest
wisdom he had to share.
In one of my last conversations with my Dad in his hospital
room at UF Shands Teaching Hospital in Gainesville, we talked about the many
things that we each had been able to experience in our lives. Neither of us
have ever been particularly concerned about amassing money and concerns for power
and status always seemed pretty superficial to both of us. In many ways, I am
my Father’s– and my Mother’s - son.
But we each engaged the educational process repeatedly to
develop sound bodies of knowledge that have served us well in our roles as
educators. We each have traveled the world, eagerly encountering new and
different cultures, always with a genuine desire to understand the Other we encounter. And
that openness extended to the people of our daily lives, the wide range of
people my Dad and I have always invited to become members of our families of
choice.
In one of our last conversations, I remarked to my Dad that
while neither of us had much money to show for our life work, we had, indeed,
been privileged to live very rich lives. I spoke of how grateful I am for that
gift. He readily agreed. But more importantly, he consistently modeled it.
My Father’s final lesson to us was perhaps his greatest. He
was never particularly religious. He did attend church with us when we were small
children and would come for special occasions when his children were in
Christmas plays and Vacation Bible School productions. But he didn’t have much use for
doctrine or ritual and had no patience at all for self-righteous zealots even
as his own life exhibited a spiritual depth that many may have missed.
In his last days of life, my Father repeatedly came back to
two topics. One was his concern that everything was in place for me as the
executor of his estate. Daddy didn’t have a big estate to leave. But he wanted
to make sure that all of his children and grandchildren got something from what
he did have. And as a lawyer who has written and probated a number of estates, I
can report that he did well, indeed.
“Son, I think I’ve taken care of everything I need to do
before I go,” he said. And he had.
The other focus of his attention in his last days was his
burning desire to be reunited with our Mother, his beloved life partner of 53
years who predeceased him by 10 years and, he said, awaited his return to her
loving embrace at the National Cemetery. In our last couple of conversations,
that was all he talked about.
In the days before her death my Mother had told me that she
was dreaming of her Father virtually every night. “He’s waiting for me,” she
said. And no doubt he was. As Daddy’s time to reunite with her drew near, he
said he had begun to dream of her. And I have no doubt that she was waiting for
him as well.
What was so striking about his departure was how much peace
marked his dying moments. There was absolutely no fear of death. When the time
came, he simply slipped away in peace.
My Dad evidenced no concern about getting the right religious
formula to assure him he would walk down mansion lined streets of gold with
Jesus rather than burn in the flames of hell. Such concerns are for those of us
who spend years of our lives in theological study and debates.
But they are also the concerns of opportunistic preachers
who pimp the fears of vulnerable, grieving survivors at funerals seeking
converts. It was such behavior of one of the clergy at my Mother’s funeral that
became one of the primary reasons my Dad had insisted on there being no funeral
for him. He wanted none of that kind of manipulative behavior engaged in his
name.
With his affairs in order, my Father died peacefully,
confidently, trusting whatever happened next - if anything - would be OK. One
of his hands rested in the hand of his beloved daughter, the other in the hand
of his beloved grandson, his sons enroute from Orlando to be by his side.
Not surprisingly, even in dying, my Father was the
consummate teacher. I have no idea what my Dad’s concept of the Divine might
have been though I suspect it would have been at best generalized and abstract.
What I do know is that he trusted whatever he understood with his very
existence and let go of his life in peace to pass into whatever might follow.
Such existential trust is truly a gift and a model worth
emulating.
In all honesty, I cannot imagine a better death. I hope my
own will be similar. And I believe all of us who knew my Dad are in the debt of
this consummate teacher for this masterful final lesson.
Well done, good and faithful servant. May you rest in peace. And may the gifts you offered our world be remembered with gratitude and honored by passing them on to others.
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth
living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is
not worth holding.
Most things worth considering do
not come in sound bites.
For what does G-d require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)
© Harry Coverston 2017
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