"One dyin’ and a buryin’, one dyin’ and a buryin’
Some cryin’, six carryin’ me, I wanta to be free."
Roger Miller
I just returned from my brother's funeral in Naples, FL. His wife, children, me, my sister, a few other relatives and a bunch of people on very loud motorcycles were there. My brother wasn't there. He was cremated and the ashes had not been delivered before things got started. But that was fitting. He was a man who was often someplace else when important things were going on.
John was the middle son, my younger brother, and from the first he was not like the rest of us. We were a quiet and orderly family, me, my sister, my parents, until John came along. John was noisy. He was stubborn. He was a rambunctious, spoiled little boy who grew into a man who had problems and who caused more than his share of problems for other people. John required a great deal of help to get through life and when he died in a motorcycle accident on Oct. 24 -- despite the fact that he stuck with his final marriage and became a good father to his youngest son during those years in Florida -- he was in many ways a 57-year-old oversized version of the rambunctious and spoiled child who dropped out of high school and wandered off into the world when he was far too young. He lived a risky life. He did dangerous things. He didn't always pay much attention to taking care of the business of day-to-day life. In some ways it feels like it took him 57 years to die instantly.
But John was charming, loving, generous and clearly beloved by his wife and son, friends, relatives and all of those people on motorcycles. The minister who oversaw John's funeral was a motorcyclist my brother's age who lived near the spot where John died on Collier Blvd. He didn't know my brother personally, but after the service he told me he "got the idea that John lived a thorny life" as he gathered information about him from his children and others. But he said the "joy" of John's funeral was that we could ignore the thorns for a while and embrace what was good about my brother's life among people who saw the good in him. "That is what a day like this is for," he said.
And there were good things. And we did celebrate them. Then we sang "Amazing Grace." And after that there were all those rumbling motorcycles.
It made me remember that the same psalmist who encourages us in Psalms 98 to "make a joyful noise," says one line later that we should "make a loud noise." And if ever there was a loud noise we heard it on Saturday. It was a joyful roar. And it seemed a fitting sound to embrace the end of a noisy life, the life of my younger brother who was not like the rest of us from the beginning, a biker in a family of people who were always more comfortable in Chevrolets.
John: Backyard football (with laundry)
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