... and a hank of hair

A Rag and a Bone and a Hank of Hair

or 

Cremains is a Four-Letter Word

“A rag and a bone and a hank of hair” is how I once heard Pete, Linda’s father, refer to himself. Pete died December 1970, at age 65, in Phoenix, Arizona, and is buried in a cemetery there. Linda’s mother died three decades later, August 2001, 90 years old, in Tallahassee. We four, Linda, Kristen, Paint and I, were there housesitting while Tass and Jeremy were in England. Soon after, Linda and I took her ashes (don’t cremains me) to Phoenix and buried her urn in the plot with Pete. It was late 2001, just after 9/11 when we rode out on AmTrak, our favorite way to travel. Entrain (!) at Tallahassee or Chipley, Sunset Limited to New Orleans, layover a few hours, back on at suppertime and overnight to Tucson, pick up a Hertz car, a Lincoln Towncar with 75 miles on it, and north to Phoenix. A cherished memory.

We made it a week or ten day vacation with much reminiscing around Scottsdale, Cave Creek, Carefree and the surrounding area, where Linda’s parents had moved in 1965 while we were stationed in Japan. We first visited there upon returning from Japan in 1966, and many times after that, especially when we were stationed in San Diego 1969-1971. Arizona memories are part of what we are. Memorable and permanent. Permanent?

Which is what’s on mind this morning: what we are. A rag and a bone and a hank of hair. But this isn’t me, isn’t really me, it’s not who I am! What will be of me after my death? Not what will become of me?, what will be of me? What am I? Not some catechetical rubbish: what am I really? 

I’m Visible and Invisible. Visible is the bone and hank of hair sans rag that will be reduced to ashes (not cremains, a ghastly, funereal obscenity masquerading in a black suit and dark glasses as undertakers’ euphemispeak) a day or so after my death, and scattered here and there in accord with my wishes. BTW, if my wishes are not accorded honor, the same horrifying anathemas apply that doom anyone who uses the Rite Two burial office at my funeral. Losing the Visible may be something of a relief, because, among other nonevents, it will no longer be "don't eat that" or stepping on a scale to hear “tch tch tch” from some medical presence keeping records. The hair and bone are not really part of me. As in virtual reality. But what will there be to enjoy the relief?

Invisible is the part of me that is real. More unique than DNA, unique as my fingerprints or a snowflake. Unique memories, dreams and hopes, loves, knowledge, belief, skepticism, certainties (μὴ γένοιτο), thoughts and longings that only I can have and hold and feel, and only I can know. Seeing it’s Lent, I’ll also confess: there are regrets and repentances, mostly without penance -- my priest would shudder at the grunge he whisks away every time he waves the sign of the cross over me in absolution. General Confession and Absolution is great theology because of what washes privately, quietly and anonymously down the drain, cleansing the Invisible.

Every time I officiate a funeral I wonder what was lost. Does brilliance evaporate? Bill's brilliance, is it just gone? And all his knowledge and goodness and generosity: lost like an erased hard drive? In my lifetime I’ve known a few people with so-called photographic memory. One was Warren, with whom I grew up, 1st grade at Cove School through graduation from Bay High. Warren was the smartest and always did the hardest and most challenging and best thing. When we were required to memorize a poem at Cove School, he stood up and recited “If” by Rudyard Kipling: 

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;

If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:.

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son! 

If, by Rudyard Kipling

Warren died the night of our first Cove School Class of 1949 reunion years ago. I know about the Visible, but the Invisible, where is that, whatever became of the real Warren? 

The other was George, my closest friend and confidant through our Apalachicola years. A Sewanee graduate, he never forgot one thing he had read, studied, seen, or been told. A couple years after I retired from parish ministry, we returned to Trinity, Apalachicola and I assisted Fr. Joe with George’s funeral. Fr. Joe talked about an onion, peeling back layer after layer after layer of Being, and likening that to George’s immense and astonishing intellect and knowledge. I will never stop missing George, what a crater he left behind. Whatever happened to all that he knew and remembered and was? Is all that gone, just gone, even the body of knowledge that was uniquely him? 

And me! My memories and knowledge and all this stored up being: any less a dream than Jay's future with Daisy? If not, perhaps I am not afterall. Whatever will become of my memory of the Jamestown Ferry crossing Narragansett Bay on a cool Saturday morning late in September 1957? My image of a tiny girl toddling proudly toward me on her first birthday, moments after my ship returned from sea, it's as clear as the images on the computer screen in front of me, where will that be stored and enjoyed and relished in ages to come? What will happen to all this pent up Bible knowledge that I seem so eager to share?

And what ...

TW+ 

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.

The Vampire

1897

A FOOL there was and he made his prayer

(Even as you and I!)

To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair

(We called her the woman who did not care)

But the fool he called her his lady fair—

(Even as you and I!)

Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste

And the work of our head and hand

Belong to the woman who did not know

(And now we know that she never could know)

And did not understand!

A fool there was and his goods he spent

(Even as you and I!)

Honour and faith and a sure intent

(And it wasn’t the least what the lady meant)

But a fool must follow his natural bent

(Even as you and I!)

Oh, the toil we lost and the spoil we lost

And the excellent things we planned

Belong to the woman who didn’t know why

(And now we know that she never knew why)

And did not understand!

The fool was stripped to his foolish hide

(Even as you and I!)

Which she might have seen when she threw him aside—

(But it isn’t on record the lady tried)

So some of him lived but the most of him died—

(Even as you and I!)

“And it isn’t the shame and it isn’t the blame

That stings like a white hot brand—

It’s coming to know that she never knew why

(Seeing, at last, she could never know why)

And never could understand!”