I rarely attend funerals but I stopped in at the last rites for Allen Anderson recently. Allen and I were members of the Morris High School Class of 1973. I noticed only one other class member at the August 6 funeral, Craig Murphy. It's always good therapy to socialize a little with Craig. He'll have you laughing and thinking at the same time.
Our society makes accommodations for the young, and begins withdrawing such accommodations for people as they get older. The late Allen did not age gracefully. Toward the end he had become limited in his movements. He was not without blame. Those who imposed restrictions did so with justification.
Nevertheless, observing someone like Allen in his final struggles gives us pause, makes us wonder if we'll stay free of such travail through the rest of our life's road.
So many of us who share the vintage of Craig, Allen and I can tell stories of parents' struggles as they climb the ladder of age. They lose their independence in many cases. They can become angry about that. Their health issues can become staggering. So we tell stories and share. Then we turn to our spirituality as we try to find answers.
So, a church was Allen's final destination for his mortal life. Marginalized as Allen had become, many people thought it proper to attend his services. Such a gesture is always nice when a soul leaves this world. We would all be happy to know such a turnout would surface for our rites. But in many cases, I would guess the turnout would be less.
Not that a funeral turnout is any sort of barometer.
Maybe the turnout for Allen was a gesture of consolation for his soul. Maybe it was a special gesture by this congregation. Allen I'm sure was not the most routine parishioner to accommodate. Churches of all institutions strive to have an open door. Heaven help us if this ceases.
Some people have hardships that require pastoral visits as a means of keeping the bond. Allen might have been a candidate for that. My impression is that he was striving to be a public person as much as possible until the end. Unfortunately, part of that was to ignore or overlook problems that did create an issue.
Allen was one of the "Donnelly kids" who joined us in school for the seventh grade. Oh, what a transition, because the St. Mary's kids, the Catholic kids, joined us at that time too. Or we joined them. I was familiar with Allen and the other Donnelly kids prior to that, as Donnelly had its own elementary basketball team. We just said "basketball" then, and not "boys basketball."
We assigned girls to home ec. That's just the way it was, not to justify. Boys were boys, girls were girls, and boys were taught to be the pursuers in relationships with "the fairer sex." Ugh. Society is having some trouble reconciling now, between the notion of male assertiveness in relationships, and the mantra of "totally equal." In principle it seems we've all shifted over to the latter. It's not that simple though. A great many of us stick to the notion that the man pursues the woman.
Consider Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo talks now about how our standards have shifted. He really is right about that. And now Bob Dylan is in the news?
As enlightened as we now pride ourselves in being, we must acknowledge the blunt truth: no "science" has developed for the orderly development of special relationships between boys and girls, men and women. We're still prompted to just smile about such things. My reference is to the heterosexual world. I have scant knowledge of how a gay person's mind works.
Gays are totally deserving of equal rights. Allen's funeral was at a church with a reputation of not being accommodating toward gay rights. Society has appeared to move on from this. Gays prevailed in the cultural battle because in the "long game," liberal ideas rise to the surface. Chris Matthews adamantly expressed this when he hosted his MSNBC show. I recall him saying with a twinkle in eye: "liberals always win in the end."
Matthews had been a staffer for Tip O'Neill. Oh and BTW he was once a capitol police officer. Amazing how capitol police officers fail to get even basic respect from Republican office holders now. The police had to try to stop the Trump riot of January 6. They did yeoman's work but for a time, it looked somewhat like trying to defend the Alamo.
Fortunately there were some security personnel inside who were "fail safe," or so it appeared. We never got the scene of Mike Pence or his wife being beheaded and having their heads displayed for video cameras. Are Republicans really gnashing their teeth over the failure of the Trump revolt, or over the eventual success of the security forces for good? I suspect that everyone at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church of Morris voted for Trump.
Had Karen Pence lost her head, would Mike still be speaking in a deferential way about Trump? Seems an absurd question. But of late, how many Republicans have shown the courage to second-guess their dangerous and stupid cult leader?
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| Allen Anderson RIP |
What is accomplished with all this strictness? Well, they all vote Republican of course. Unless of course some really bad things start happening in our world that can be laid at the doorstep of the GOP. Seems impossible to predict a Democratic Party resurgence now, n'est-ce pas? But you'd be surprised. "Liberals always win in the end."
So just watch: the Democratic Party idea of having Medicare expand to cover dental and vision is probably developing momentum. Oh, it's "socialism." "Auntie Em, Auntie Em, it's a twister!" OK now I'm quoting from the "Airplane" movie.
Well, do you appreciate Social Security and Medicare, two great bastions of "socialism?" You'd probably like to see Medicare expand its reach, just for the most self-centered of reasons.
Current events and memories
I'm thinking of Allen Anderson today because the Class of '73 ended its high school road at a time when we could all vividly see the debacle of Vietnam. We had spent years following current events when Vietnam was so predominant. We were required to pay attention to the "world events" posters in the elementary grades. They were full or Vietnam news or propaganda.
The whole mess wasn't completely over when we graduated on that fine early-summer evening of 1973. The mess was devolving rapidly. Still we had class speakers who splendidly sought to strike a positive tone about becoming an adult in the great old U.S.A. Edie Martin was the most compelling speaker.
And so in the end we saw the miserable "fall of Saigon." There it is on videotape for us to watch still today, people clinging to helicopters etc. Flash forward: we are seeing the exact same thing with Afghanistan. And it is a 100 percent parallel.
So what have we learned? The military industrial complex got built up after World War II. What if the U.S. had never had to build up its forces for WWII? One of the greatest "what if?" questions, eh?
May God rest Allen Anderson's soul. We are all headed to where he is. I knew him all my life. He attended both my parents' funerals as I recall. Whatever liabilities or challenges he had - and he most definitely had them - there was definitely a current of goodness within him. I saw it, I felt it.
I wrote a blog post in 2012 about Edie Martin's MHS commencement address. She tapped "Caspar Milquetoast" as a source of inspiration. In other words, "don't be a milquetoast!"
Leave it to the Class of '73. Here is the permalink to that post. I invite you to read:
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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