Haunted House, Haunted Me

July 22
Sunday

I awoke anticipating church. I was not disappointed. The people were warm and the message excellent. I'm getting used to the order of worship. I met a couple, Denny and Peg who a friend of mine had suggested I should meet. Nice people. 

The woman at the sound board was an enigma. She was friendly, obviously bright--and confused me completely. She may have been as old as 40 and quite attractive. Her voice was a high pitched. The amazing thing was her mode of dress. She was wearing work clothes, a baseball cap and had what looked like grease under her nails. It seemed to me that she was deliberately dressing down. Why I can't guess.

The pastor, Mike, invited me to lunch Wednesday. I'm looking forward to it. He is about my age, heavy, and clearly loves his work. He does not stand in the pulpit. He paces, carrying his bible and returning now and then to glance at his notes. He has one disconcerting habit. He often gazes down and to one side or another while speaking and breaks eye contact. I wonder if that will carry over into our lunch conversation.

At the end of the service I hurried home to prepare the house for showing. I swept, picked up Duke's toys and bones, did the few dishes that were in the sink and tidied up whatever else I could see. Then I headed to Columbia City to pay my respects at the funeral home.

The line formed 15 minutes before the scheduled time and the doors opened early. I have been to many funerals. Some as mourner, others as officiant. They hold no surprises. But today as I approached the casket I could smell the chemicals used to prepare the body. They seemed overwhelming and I felt sick to my stomach.

I realize that Jim's death bothers me more than I have been willing to admit. I spoke with his wife, Darleen, offered my condolences to the rest of the family and left quickly.

Returning home I took another look around, took Duke's kennel out to the deck, gathered him up and we went for a drive until the showing ended. We left before we had to, but I was itching to get going.

I thought about Jim's life and death. He was 67. I'm 64. So far as I knew him he was one of the most caring and honorable of men. His example always challenged me to be better and made my faults more glaring.

As a child I had no concrete idea of death. It was something that happened in movies or on TV. It wasn't real. When my friends and I played cowboys and Indians we all died several times a day. Then we went home and ate cookies.

Later the death of a family friend made me aware that it did occur in real life, but only at the periphery of my child world. It was a bit more real, but remained vague.

Dad's death made it all too real and I felt real loss for the first time. It became personal. Within seven years of dad's death all four grandparents died.  Somehow the additional deaths eased the pain I felt over dad's. Years went by before death came close once more.

I became used to death. I didn't like it but I didn't fear it either. In time I made my peace with God. One day I would die. But that day was far in the future. It was senseless to worry.

Then contemporaries died. Some in accidents, others from cancer or heart attack. I even had a close call myself. I remember not being concerned at all. I didn't feel frightened or alone.

Now, with Jim's death I felt for the first time how close my own death is. It is as though death walks with me now, watching me as a picker might watch a piece of summer fruit, impatient for it to ripen. I am still not frightened, but I am disappointed--and very aware--that my time on earth will end in the not too distant future.

In the Analects Confucius us recorded as saying:

"At fifteen I set my heart upon learning, At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground.  At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities.  At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven.  At sixty, I heard them with docile ear.  At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right."                                                Analects 2:4

Had he written something like this about death it might have read:

At fifteen I was introduced to death. At thirty I accepted it was real. At forty I saw it come to contemporaries. At fifty I accepted it would one day come to me. At sixty I became aware of its nearness to me. At ______ it became a looked for friend.

The leaf falls;
the runner stumbles--
funeral music

I drove first to a swamp/pond I have passed many times. I find it's starkness compelling. Each time I bemoaned either having no camera or having a camera and no time to stop. Today I stopped to ask permission. An old woman (80?) gave me the  OK, saying, "Others have asked, too. I don't understand. We think it is ugly."










       











I find it beautiful in a desolate, haunting way. When I approached the pond a number of frogs jumped.

Stagant water
silver tree trunks--
A frog jumps!    

We went on to Wolf Lake. I drove past my old church and out into the country. Without thinking about it I ended up at a small cemetery. I had once officiated at an interment service on nasty winter's day.

Something about this particular cemetery strikes me. Perhaps its name, Thorn. It is not large. It is old. It sits on a slight rise adjacent to a country road and bordered by fields on three sides. It feels lonely.

Though side by side
No one speaks--
a line of tombstones.

From Thorn I went back into Columbia City to another place I had wanted to photograph, the old jail.

Vacant now, it is the site of a haunted house on Halloween.

A swamp, a cemetery and a haunted house. I needed to lighten up. I went home and began reading The Long Season, by Jim Brosnan. I had read it 45 years ago. I knew it would be witty and entertaining.