The Good Men Project

Explaining Death to My Son

A couple of weeks ago, I flew to Chicago with my 11-year-old to attend the funeral of one of my uncles. He was in his 70s and had been increasingly ill for several years, and in these circumstances death is not something to be held at bay, but something to be expected, the end of a life. For my Uncle Andy, life was well-lived, with a large happy family of children and grandchildren and a profession–no, really a calling–about which he was passionate. He was a professor at a local university and had pioneered the study of the city and how it functions, using the city where he’d lived practically his whole life as his sandbox. The tributes in the Tribune and the Sun-Times were nice to see; he was warmly remembered by his former students. We flew in to honor his life and to show support for his family, as they had done for me when my father died 16 years ago.

There is something about the tradition of parting. When we ring off the phone, we say goodbye. When we leave a party, we find the hosts one final time and give our thanks. When you don’t do those things, it feels too abrupt, like there’s something that’s missing. Perhaps we have those traditions to help us manage our transition from one state to another, from being on the phone to being off the phone, from being among friends at a party to being outside on the sidewalk, walking down the block to the car. With a funeral, by participating you acknowledge a life has ended, and you acknowledge its existence and the influence it had on you, but you are also helping to manage the transition from one state to another, not just for the deceased but for those who are still living.

I brought my son to the funeral so that he could see his relatives again and so I could commit the memories to him that I had of growing up with Uncle Andy and my cousins, so that I could give them shape and put them in context. When I was young, our family visited Illinois nearly every summer to see our relatives, or they came out to Colorado to visit with us. Every year we’d see how we’d all grown, what music we were listening to, what we did for fun. Amidst the bustle of all the children and dogs and friends and parents, Andy was a calm but enthusiastic presence, approaching our daily vacation life with wit, humor, and a twinkle in his eye, which I had a feeling he carried throughout his life. He had a can-do spirit and always had a plan–and helped enlist you to get it done. I enjoyed our time together immensely and as I got older always sought him out to ask him questions about how the world worked or find out what he thought. He wasn’t a cynic, but he was from the big city, so he always had something immensely practical to tell his nephew, who perhaps purposely remained a tad naive.

For my son, this was his first funeral. He’d never met my father, his grandfather, and this was, I think, a chance for him to have that experience, or at least the nearest he could do. When we arrived we met his grandmother, all his great aunts and uncles and second cousins, and then the second day in Chicago, we mostly spent at the visitation, the service, and then the reception. It was a long time for an 11-year-old to be present, and he did a masterful job, mingling with all his relatives amidst the crowd that now filled the narthex and an adjoining lobby, paying their respects to Andy and the family, and viewing the pictures and mementos of that well-lived life. He did the best he could to avoid the open casket, and before the service, as the immediate family was saying goodbye to their husband, father and grandfather before the lid was lowered, he squirreled in to the nave and sat on the aisle with his grandmother.

I was one of six pallbearers and our task was straight-forward. We were to take the casket down the aisle at the beginning of the service and, at the end, bring it back away from the congregants. Caskets are on a platform with wheels, called a church truck, which makes for easy movement. The only time we’d have to lift it was to take it down the steps out front and place it in the hearse. Inside the church, we pallbearers simply put a hand on top of the casket, and helped glide it into position. After we brought the casket up, we turned to sit in the pews and I joined my son.

It had been a day of emotions. As I sat in the pew and listened to the hymns, the readings, and the sermon, I thought back to Andy and then on to my father and to his father and mother, and to the people who had gone before us. The casket moved so easily on those wheels–it was very smooth, not as I expected the jerking of six persons maneuvering an awkward cargo, but like the movement of a row boat across a glassy pond or one of the punters on the River Cam.

The service was ending and the senior minister gave his final injunction to those faithful in memory and respect. The congregation now sat reverently, and the six of us returned in position and began to float the casket down the aisle. All eyes were upon us and I looked at my son, who was alert and open to the moment, understanding we were saying goodbye now, not later, but now. Then I felt it, that I was gliding my uncle away from the land of the living, away from his last time amongst us, leading him gently on to whatever is next. We moved down the aisle smoothly, taking him away, and the congregation, all in their thoughts, respectfully continued to look forward. The feeling was a strong one: I was as the ferryman, Charon, pushing, helping transport my uncle across the River Styx, taking him from the banks of one world on to the next.

The moment was over and after we closed the door to the hearse, we all went back in to the adjoining reception hall where a feast was lain out. But my son was tired and eventually we left, driving through a late Chicago night. The next day we lay flowers on the casket, then left the graveyard for a nearby lunch of traditional fare, an afternoon of coffee and chatting at the eldest son’s, and our flight home. But my feeling of pushing off across that river and having one foot on the banks of the next world would stay. At the airport parking lot, my son and I walked down the rows to the car.