Last Post: My New Stick
Next Post: Read Between the Lines

Last night at bells practice our church pastor walked up to our group a little tentatively. He waited for us to pause to tell us something. When told us that Dave had died it was my first experience of being in a group stunned to silence.
As our mainline congregation has diminished Dave, my junior by perhaps 15 years, and I saw more of each other as more was needed to be done by fewer people.
Unlike Dave, I am not an official church member. I joke that I am a “fixture.” I’ve attended the church since at least a year before my daughter was born, the daughter who asked me to build a snow dinosaur almost 38 years ago. Today she plays bells with our grandson and sings in the church choir with me and sings in the Church band for which Dave was the drummer.
Dave sang in the bass section; he for 25ish years to my 35ish years. Years ago he was surprised to learn I was not an official church member. For a time he tried to find arguments around mine to persuade me to officially join. He good naturedly continued this off and on before resigning himself to my eccentric agnosticism.
In recent years we became a third of our church’s property committee regularly called forth to rake, paint stripes on the parking lot, wash and repair windows, take over janitorial work – you name it. Last year, Arlan, another member of our property committee died when I was away visiting grandchildren in Colorado. This year the same excuse will keep us away from Dave’s funeral.
I am the least mechanical member of our group and, at age 75, now the youngest member of our two person committee. Our ex officio custodian is close to retirement. Life is tough for mainline protestant churches these days. Its our own fault for allowing agreeable and flexible doctrine to weaken our attendance.
I can’t help but think of my father’s passing at about the same age. Unlike Dave’s unexpected death my family had a year and a half’s notice because cancer was eating away at dad. In countless ways our family members all had a chance to accept his fate and make our peace. 62 is too young to die. I regret that my children didn’t get to know their grandfather like they got to know their grandmother whose mind worked well for fifteen years after his decease. If my children had had that time with their grandfather they might have understood their perennial candidate father a little bit better.
“Mortal coil” was Shakespeare’s poetic way of describing the turmoil and hubbub of life. My wife and I just heard it in Hamlet’s soliliquy while watching the emotionnally affecting movie “Hamnet.”
The movie’s conjecture, which apparently is not new, was that the lead character in Shakespear’s Hamlet was Shakespeare’s son recreated as a young man for the stage. Will’s only son Hamnet, (whose name in those days was interchangeable with Hamlet) died at age 11. The conjecture has it that five years later Shakespeare portrayed him as a young man who has outlived his father. The stage version of the son believes the new King has assassinated his father. The famous “To be, or not to be” soliliquy which a teacher once made me memorize happens as his father’s ghost appears to the son before the final “not to be.”
In the movie this staging is the vehical that shows the mother that her often absent husband, the bard, did indeed mourn his son’s death. Still resentful and shocked that her husband has staged a play named after their son she travels to London to see it for herself. First, in uncomprehending fury, she sees the actor but then understands that the play was her husband’s way to cope with his own grief.
Dave’s heart attack was sudden and unexpected. Dave was fit and trim, an avid skier and long time ski patroller. He died in the morning and word of his passing was only just getting out as we gathered in late afternoon. Our bell practice stopped as we took in the news. After bell practice Dave was supposed to arrive to rehearse with the church band. After 15 minutes of muted rĂ©orientation we finished our practice as a guitarist from Dave’s band came in. She was next to be stricken with tears, another ripple in expanding waves of grief. As one of our bell ringers hugged the guitarist in a quiet embrace Dave’s wife called another of his bandmates who herself was fighting off tears. Not long ago Dave’s wife had survived a harrowing bout of cancer which weighed on the family for several years. Now she was calling to ask that the band perform at her husband’s funeral service.
I will not be at that service. Instead, from afar with my own family I will be thinking of Dave’s offer to help me paint our pastor’s office a couple weeks ago. I turned him down assuring him that I could do it quickly by myself. Had I foresight, I would have accepted Dave’s offer and had one last chance to work with him side by side.
A few years back I serrupticiously took a photo of Dave with his granddaughter on his lap. They were sitting in the front of the church a few feet from Dave’s drum set. For years his grandchildren charmed the congregation by picking up spare drumsticks and helping their grandfather bang on the drums during music time. I always meant to share this with Dave.
