Everything In-Between

I was so proud of my dad’s behavior at his funeral!

That mortician who fixed him up did an absolutely fantastic job! Honestly, Dad looked better than he had in years. His bushy eyebrows were trimmed up a bit, something he would never permit in life because he knew they aggravated the heck out of Mother. His flaky face was scraped clean and smooth above his beard and there was a subtle life-like glow to his face. He looked like he was just taking a little power nap, expecting to wake up when his friends arrived for the party. In fact, as people gathered around and the stories began to flow, I was surprised that Dad didn’t bolt up and start correcting the people who were retelling his stories! Never before had he held his tongue so well!

But the moment I will never forget was when a former aviation student of his showed up, still dressed in his Fed-X flight suit, walked over to the casket, removed his wings and pinned them on Dad’s lapel. I expected Dad to reach out and embrace him at that moment. Enough said.

Few if any of us remember our births, although I do have a couple of pre-birth snippets. The rest of the memories start sliding in around age 2 for me.

In life, we note the dates of Birth and Death in the family Bible or in the Census records. There are a few other dates that might be historically or legally recorded like graduations, weddings, and divorces, but it is actually everything that happens in-between birth and death that holds the real MEANING and PURPOSE of a life. The important celebrations are usually the small, personal ones that happen when there is no professional photographer around to record them, although with today’s cell phones and social media, some people seem to believe that we should all celebrate whatever they cook for dinner or how cutely that new puppy snores.

To be honest, those things, at least momentarily, are important to those who record and share them. But years ago, when I studied photography at a serious level, I determined that a life experienced constantly through a camera lens taking “snapshots” is a life unlived. The lens represents tunnel vision and life must be experienced in full periphery both visibly and audibly. Without benefit of camera, our minds record our moments and stories, and in times of loneliness or quiet contemplation, it can replay all kinds of images and sounds along with the sensations of touch, smell, and reactivated emotion.

In high school, I’d hoped to become a veterinarian but saw only seven more years of school ahead. I’d be too old by then! (Too old for what?) So short-sighted was I that I abandoned that dream and failed to replace it with another. I just HAD to get on with experiencing LIFE, whatever THAT meant! Too bad I never had a proper mentor and too bad the school “Guidance Counselor” was such an extraordinary misnomer. There was no guidance and no counseling to be found there!

With or without a plan, life moves on. Special dates are recorded, and there are a couple of photo albums with a few dozen photos bouncing around to prove it. Graduation, marriage, childbirth x 3, divorce, autonomy, jobs and lay-offs, scrambling to start anew, a second marriage, start repeating the cycles (in part) with the children and their children. And throughout life, there are sprinklings of death; grandparents, untimely loss of friends, aunts, uncles, parents, then a mounting body count of classmates, and widowhood. We know we are mortal, but not everyone properly prepares for that.

Not to dwell on death, because it is life I am talking about here, but funerals are not always morbid affairs, at least not when the deceased has lived a reasonably long and fulfilling life. They often become reunions full of happy or strange memories and laughter.

My sweet husband had insisted that he didn’t want a funeral, although he didn’t imagine needing one any time soon. We agreed that no amount of prayer or religious ceremony can shoehorn a dead person into Heaven. That is a private contract between one’s soul and God. I had argued that memorials are for the living. I had the last word, sending him off in style with a great public party at the gallery. It was catered by a huge collection of caring friends and neighbors with a final blessing given by the Episcopal priest who had married us almost 16 years earlier. Cloyde presided from a small box adorned with his famous mustache and favorite hat.

For me, the undercurrent was Mother’s insistence on a closed casket because she said if someone wanted to SEE her, he/she should have come to visit while she was still alive. How true!

Like you, I am still part of the “everything in-between,” and still charged with being fully alive until I am fully dead and all the challenges and joys included therein.

Life is a constant adjustment, redefining ourselves and priorities each time our life status changes. We find ourselves reaching out to see which old friends are left standing in the in-between and how they are making out. (Hopefully, they are making out with their teeth in!) Who still has hair and what color is it, now? Who still has a waistline and all the original body parts? Who has fallen victim to the whims of his doctor(s) and who is adamantly flipping off Big Pharma?

And when an old flame from high school reconnects with you on the phone, how do you handle that? The voice is familiar. The attitude is basically the same, but with 5+ decades of added stories to tell. Although you can hear each other and you know the appearance must have changed, in essence two 17-year-olds are reaching out and fearing sharing that first updated photograph. The blush is off the rose and the six-pack looks more like a bag of potato chips. Let’s not even imagine the roadmaps on the faces, especially when he says, “It’s not the years; it’s the mileage.”

Old relationships, new ones, old memories and dreams, new or reimagined ones, we are still in the Everything In-Between, until we are not. This phase could end today or last another three or more decades. It’s essential to use that time wisely, not just rehashing bygone times and opportunities and worrying about outliving our money.

Something that has weighed heavily on me for the past nearly 40 years is that at just the time when my children were old enough to START to question and understand the lessons in Church and Sunday school, an arbitrary decision by a judge, who was in a hurry to get out of town for his planned weekend fishing trip, determined that those precious children should be shuttled between father and mother each Sunday at noon. Already at parental odds as to the flavor and depth of faith, this completely obliterated their spiritual education. And that lack of instruction is now translating into the next generation, in a time of such upside-down cultural misdirection. If I feel tasked with correcting this, do I even have the ability or permission to mount it?

While I deal with that very personal question, I can at least offer this advice for all of us in-betweeners; get out of your chair, stretch, put on those cross-trainers and trade in those old racquetball or tennis skills for Pickleball! At least, take a walk!