I Went to a Funeral

Last Tuesday, I went to a funeral for a man I’d never met. It seemed appropriate.

The Sunday edition of the Waco paper usually includes a half-page spread highlighting a local veteran. Several weeks ago, I noticed that the article covered a World War II vet, and those folks are few and far between these days. I read the first line, which said that this man grew up in Hillsboro, Texas, a town north of Waco, where my mother and her four older sisters grew up. I read on and saw that, when this man was in the service, he’d had the opportunity to run into his older brothers, also in the service. I didn’t know the man in the article, but I did recognize the name of one of his older brothers.

One of my mother’s older sisters was widowed when I was six. A couple of years later, she remarried, to one of those older brothers. That man was the nicest guy. I remember him as kind and gracious, and, he had this cabin on a lake. And he invited us to come. My family and another aunt’s family and possibly more of us. It was such great fun. The older cousins water skied, and we younger cousins played on the shore, wading at the lake’s edge and finding mussels and other rich, exciting items.

A couple of years after that, my aunt developed breast cancer and passed away. She was buried in the family plot of that kind man.

In a Christmas card, I sent that veteran’s article to my cousin who had been the kind man’s step-daughter for a few years. She phoned to thank me for it, and gave me some more information about the veteran in the article. My cousin’s older sister died a few years back. She had not wanted any funeral or any sort of to-do. She’d been divorced for many years, and there hadn’t been any thoughts or plans for a “final resting place.” This veteran, who was just as kind as his brother, insisted that my cousin’s sister be interred in his family’s plot. “She should be with her mother,” he said. And that is what they did.

That’s why I went to the funeral. I’d hoped to be able to chat with family members, but I was delayed leaving Waco, and there was pouring rain all the way from Waco to Hillsboro. When I did arrive, I found the parking lot packed with cars and the Marshal and Marshal funeral home packed with people. I was overwhelmed and reluctant to walk around asking, “Who are you? Are you a family member? What’s your name?” So, I went to the restroom. Then, I walked around the edges of the crowd and turned a corner and ran into a couple that had been members of my church a few years ago. We were all startled at this unexpected meeting.

Turns out, they grew up in Hillsboro, also. (If I had known that before, I’d forgotten it.) She said that she’d been best friends with the veteran’s daughter, spending more time at that house than her own. “And,” she said, “what’s your connection?” And I explained about the kind man and about the veteran’s insistence on providing a resting place for my cousin.

I said, “This is why I so strongly believe in the concept of Six Degrees of Separation. There are connections all over that we don’t realize. If every time I walked into a store or park or event, it would automatically generate little illuminated dotted lines to all the people I had a connection to, I could go introduce myself, and we could figure out how we’re connected.”

 Ask God to bless everyone who mistreats you. Ask him to bless them and not to curse them. When others are happy, be happy with them, and when they are sad, be sad. Be friendly with everyone. Don’t be proud and feel that you are smarter than others. Make friends with ordinary people.

Romans 12:14-16 (Contemporary English Version)

Based on the man that I knew and the stories and information I heard at the funeral, this sounds like the men in that Hillsboro family.

Now, I do understand that it was Hillsboro, the town were all my mother’s family grew up. So I might have expected to find someone with whom I might have had a connection  But here’s another example:

I have a son and daughter-in-law who live in Brooklyn. Sarah phoned me one Sunday afternoon with this story:

She was going to a friend’s shower and riding on a subway train that she didn’t usually travel on. When the doors opened, she stepped into the train and saw that there was only one empty seat. It was next to a man who looked very much like the actor Tony Hale. She sat down next to this man, took a deep, brave breath, and said to him, “You look a lot like Tony Hale.” And he said, “I am Tony Hale.”

Sarah and Tony Hale on the L train

Now that might seem pretty brash and maybe even invasive, but, there’s more. (Often, there’s more.) When Sarah first moved to New York, fresh out of TCU, she attended worship services at “The Haven,” a place for New Yorkers in the arts communities. A place that was started by . . . yes . . . Tony Hale. She walked into the subway car already having a connection with the actor. They had a nice chat about The Haven and people they knew, and, at one point, he said to her, “Nice bag,” referring to a large, quilted tote that she was carrying. She said, “My mother-in-law made it for me.” Tony Hale liked my bag! She asked if she could take a photo, and he said “yes.”

A year or so earlier, a local songwriter and singer made a movie based on his life and struggles, and how things turned out. Tony Hale was one of the actors in that movie, Sironia. That singer/songwriter and his family were members of my church, at the time. I’d had a couple of his kids in my Sunday School class. The Sunday after Sarah told me about sitting next to Tony Hale on the train, I ran into that songwriter’s wife. I told her about Sarah’s encounter. And she said, with great astonishment, “Tony Hale was riding the subway?!?!?”

But the most interesting thing is that I have two pathways, of only one person each, between me and Tony Hale. It’s like we’re BFFs.