Funerals bring people together

It seems funerals can be just as effective reuniting you with old acquaintances as class reunions, if not in quantity then in the quality of the bonding.
It's a shame that something as sad as someone's passing is needed to get old acquaintances together.
The funeral is also a chance for many to see their old hometowns, in which they may now feel like strangers. They might even look a little dazed as their frame of reference switches constantly from how things looked in yesteryear compared to the present.
Last week's funeral for Ken Cruze in Morris brought many old Morrissites together. The Cruzes are a family-oriented clan to the maximum. Their roots are in the Catholic faith, and Ken's last rites were held at Morris' Assumption Catholic Church. It's the largest church in the community and has a somewhat primitive tunnel connecting it to the adjoining St. Mary's School.
St. Mary's was once a complete school taking kids all the way through grade 12, but today it's K-6. It hasn't had a senior high for a very long time. People of my age remember it solely as an elementary school. If you grew up here and attended the public school, you'll remember that the St. Mary's kids joined you in grade 7, adding a new dimension to your social lives if you weren't already acquainted with these kids.
The Cruze kids were part of that "alien" group when I embarked on the seventh grade here.
My phone rang in the middle of the day Tuesday, the day after the annual MLK Holiday, and it was Art Cruze, with whom I graduated with the Morris High School Class of 1973. He suggested we have a get-together at the Morris Dairy Queen. He noted with excitement that he had "taken the tunnel" to St. Mary's, a la old times, as part of being at the funeral. He had a quip prepared as he shared all this with me: "It's interesting how they've moved the urinals in the lavatory lower than they were (in those school days)."
St. Mary's is a sturdy, not architecturally significant building - not comely in its appearance. But boy, if those walls could talk!
The public school youth of the 1960s here were divided into two schools. The Longfellow School in west Morris was for grades 1-3. Kindergarteners and the fourth through sixth graders went to East Elementary, part of the "erector set" of buildings put together over several years on the east side, finally abandoned and now sitting as somewhat of an eyesore in central Morris. Those old buildings are ditto in terms of "if walls could talk."
Will those walls finally come down to a wrecking ball? It's up to the city. The City of Morris suckered (in my opinion) to an offer from School District #769 and acquired the vacated property at the time the new (and I feel overbuilt) new school complex opened. The old complex looms like a haunted hulk.
We gathered at the Dairy Queen Tuesday - Art, his brother Greg , their mother Leona and yours truly - and the mood was light and fun. The sadness of the funeral had been tucked away, compartmentalized as it were, and we were now living in the present again. We talked with nostalgia about the way things used to be in Morris. Such talk often suggests that those "old days" were better, but if forced to reflect further we'd be more measured.
I recall reading about "the old oaken bucket principle," which asserts that we tend to remember the good things about the past while filtering out the bad. Hence the nostalgia that makes us smile so wistfully.
On Tuesday the Cruze boys had typical tech tools on their persons - cellphones, I-phones etc. - tools which in our youth were the stuff of "Star Trek" fantasy scenes. I remember visiting Art in our high school years and how we'd play a game called "NFL Strategy" in the basement of their South Street home. It was a tabletop sports simulation game. You flicked a little plastic ball that bounced between springs to determine the outcome of a play. The players shuffled through cards and made offensive and defensive selections, sliding these cards into a slot prior to the "flicking."
Today, computers have taken over such recreation. The old "NFL Strategy" and comparable games would seem to be for cavemen. But we reminisce as if those sessions were unparalleled for producing childhood memories. And they really were.
Funerals remind us of different chapters in our lives. We are surrounded by people who joined us for those chapters. Not long ago my childhood pastor, The Reverend Cliff Grindland, met his maker after a prolonged illness. I associate Cliff with those years when I took confirmation classes at First Lutheran Church. And went through the pains of finding one's appropriate niche relative to your peers. . .
I sometimes wondered whether I was a true Lutheran because I never mixed as effectively with those kids as with the Cruzes and their more earthy brethren.
My (strongly suggested) compulsory stay at Luther Crest Bible Camp one summer was the typical adolescent nightmare. What? A camp full of junior high-age kids all behaving like they're on a sugar high - not totally fun and exhilarating? No. But I can take credit for sticking it out the whole way. Years later I learned that one of my childhood acquaintances actually "hit the wall" at Luther Crest, called his parents and had them come and get him.
I don't blame him, but I earned my "badge of courage" as it were, putting up with the silliness, teasing and unbridled rambunctiousness.
Pastor Grindland's funeral was at Calvary Lutheran Church in Alexandria. I paused to reflect on how Cliff's generation, dubbed by Tom Brokaw "The Greatest Generation," is viewed with such unflinching reverence now by their boomer offspring. In the prime of their lives they were taken for granted by us, or at worst dismissed as insensitive on many fronts such as with social issues and the big issue of my generation when young: the Viet Nam War.
If Pastor Grindland's generation, or an individual like Billy Graham with his bully pulpit, had only risen up, put aside their blinders and said "the emperor has no clothes. . ." If only they had said "enough of this war" the way Ronald Reagan would later trumpet "Mr. Gorbachev, take down this wall!"
But they either equated war with the triumphalist destiny of the West - after all we had won "the good war," WWII (although we should heed "the old oaken bucket" with that too) - or they were muted by the Red Scare of the 1950s.
The Viet Nam War lingered - festered. And then inflation scarred the U.S. economy. And then "Tricky Dick" Nixon lingered on the national stage too long. And pretty soon us boomers were out of high school, the Cruzes and I, into a new world and forging new paths. Finally the war abated along with some other lingering headaches of the times.
Whether it's "old oaken bucket" or not, we're putting aside the unpleasantness of earlier years now, and talking with total reverence of our elders as they slowly leave us (hopefully heading to a better place). And this is the way it should be.
The Cruzes can envision better times for the "young crop" in their clan, because man is inherently optimistic.
The funeral for Terry Manney several years ago spotlighted the work chapter of my life. This is delicate because work relationships cannot be said necessarily to have the same kind of affinity and sincerity as your ties with family/friends. We put on airs of friendship and affinity but upon leaving a particular job, we realize those bonds were merely transitory. I confess this is painting with a broad brush.
I attended Terry's funeral at Federated Church. It was nice celebrating her life but I questioned the necessity of having a special section in the sanctuary for work colleagues. IMHO the deceased's work life should be but one small part of how the person is remembered. How many of us want to be defined by our work? Oh, we talk about loving our jobs - that is, if we aren't victims of the recession - but isn't that so much B.S. for a lot of us? It's learned behavior.
In blunt terms, work is for many of us a sober obligation. I remember Terry as an exuberant person who I suspect could have taken a little better care of her health. I'm thankful for our work having brought us together. She was charming when teasing me about being the father of one of her kids and how I'd better get out my checkbook to pull my weight with them.
Because her profession was newspaper ad sales, I have to wonder how she would be dealing with the tsunami overtaking that industry now. The communications tech revolution has totally changed the landscape.
I wish I had been a more pragmatic co-worker with her, not so influenced by the tumult of "The Wonder Years" - remember the TV show with Fred Savage? - marked by Watergate and how it made newspaper writers heroes for rattling cages.
"Afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted" were bywords of the times.
Today you'd better try to comfort everyone. Rattling cages today can be a straight route to oblivion. The citizenry is not so dependent on the so-called traditional or mainstream media. The watchdogs of the Fourth Estate have been declawed to a degree. People can empower themselves, as this site demonstrates.
Terry would have had to adjust with the times and maybe find a new niche in selling. But she didn't have to deal with that, as she's now in a better place.
Obituaries today should be more properly read online than in "dead tree" newspapers. the paper in Morris, where Terry and I were once fixtures, is only a weekly now which means that many published obits are "old news," appearing after the funeral.
Visiting the terrific Pedersen Funeral Home website of Morris, I scan the well-written obits there and realize what an "equalizer of men" these pieces are. Whether rich or poor, powerful or sans power, people at the time of death have in their backgrounds common ingredients of personal wealth: children, education and careers of all stripes.
Ken Cruze's family gathered with both sadness and exuberance to celebrate his life. Nowadays it's typical for funerals to promote an upbeat, "celebration" type of air, perhaps due to the political correctness wave? I don't know, but it's innocuous and certainly well-intentioned. But it wasn't always that way.
In the first half of the 20th Century, funerals were profoundly sad. Nobody pretended it could be an upbeat time. This contrast is presented by Maurice Faust in his terrific Minnesota memoir: "Remember - No Electricity." I bought this book as a Christmas gift for my mother once. Every museum in Minnesota would benefit having a copy of this.
"When I was a child, funerals were quite different from those of today," Faust wrote. "Wake services were held in the home where the casket with the loved one was displayed in reverence and respect. Family, neighbors and friends came to the home to pay their respects. Almost all who came for the final visit stayed for at least one praying of the Rosary that was repeated hourly.
"Close friends and family lingered late into the evening. When the bulk of those paying their respects departed, the coffee pot was put on the stove, and the core group of mourners were given a little Minnesota type lunch.
"The wake service was a two-day affair and totally taxed the energy of the family involved. Even talking in the home of the wake was a strain because the voice had to be kept low and hushed in respect.
"The church service, unlike today, was also very different. Rather than being bright and pleasant, it was dark and somber.
"The final commendation at the grave site continued to stress death rather than new life and resurrection as today."
Marvelous perspective, Mr. Faust (who grew up in the Pierz area of central Minnesota). Different times nurture different habits and perspectives. But funerals cause all of us to press the "pause" button in our frenetic day-to-day lives and think deeply about how a particular life has touched us.
The sad and devastated feelings are always there, whether on the surface or suppressed. But ultimately we must muster new enthusiasm for embracing the future, taking the inspiring lessons of Ken Cruze's life, along with Cliff Grindland's, Terry Manney's or anyone else lodged fondly in our memory.
And will those St. Mary's urinals be lowered any further? Rimshot.
-Brian Williams - Morris Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com - morris mn