This past week I flew home to Florida to attend the memorial services held for my grandfather, William Mansfield Hendrickson. I felt very privileged to be there with family as we all struggled together to make something from a shared sense of loss. We shared stories of Poppy Bill, which is what his grandkids called him. The rest of the family called him Slim. It’s incredible the role a single individual plays in the unfolding of history, and to do him justice I’d have to write a memoir or book of poems. Instead, I’ll focus for the time being on the services themselves: the viewing and memorial service.
The viewing wasn’t just a viewing, although I did spend a lot of time staring at my grandfather as he lay in his casket. I hadn’t intended to look. The whole idea of a viewing was morbid, I thought. But when I saw my grandfather lying there in the tuxedo he’s worn to his children’s weddings—black jacket with intricate gold embroidery, ruffled peach shirt and black bow tie—I couldn’t help but smile. No one would ever guess that you’d find a man so unassuming and modest wearing a tuxedo as flamboyant as that. It was as if my grandfather was wearing his soul on the outside. Only weeks before Poppy passed away, he’d mentioned that suit, saying he had lost so much weight he might be able to fit into it again. He was right. He looked damn handsome in it.
But like I said, the viewing wasn’t just a viewing but a Freemason memorial service. Poppy was an active Freemason up to his death, and members turned up from all across the state for the service, replete with all the Freemason jargon about “the Great Architect” of all things good. The speaker harped again and again on the Freemason belief in eternal life, which really gets under my skin. But it all ended beautifully when each member in turn laid an evergreen sprig on my grandfather’s chest, and said, “Alas, brother.”
I don’t know how religious Poppy was, but I do remember him correcting my dad and me for arguing over dinner by reminding us that there are two things you don’t talk about at the dinner table: politics and religion. That was his way. He kept his opinions mostly to himself, except for the slight glimmer of a wry grin. My dad said he had wanted a Viking funeral. Instead, the night after the viewing and Freemason memorial, he received a traditional Christian service followed by a military salute. The latter was beautiful in its solemnity. Again, the dogma of the former really pissed me off.
In a way, I welcomed the anger. After listening to my father, aunt, family friend and uncle speak from their hearts about my grandfather, I was a mess. My uncle’s really got me. He talked about how he and his father never said, I love you. It was a problem in my dad’s family. My brother and I say it. My mom and I say it. My wife and I say it. My dad tells me, Take care, and I say, Take care. I know he loves me, and he knows I love him. But I don’t want to be in my uncle’s place, wishing we had actually said it more often.
Then the preacher, who did not know my grandfather and had only spoken to the family a half hour before the service, got up to do his stock piece. He was a pro. He knew how to plug in jokes in just the right places, had his stock list of virtues that would fit any family member a family didn’t hate, and had stored up enough anecdotes to be able to reference my grandfather’s more touching idiosyncrasies in a way that made them seem rather trite. All this I could bear and even appreciate, as the man was just doing his job. Besides, it was all rather impressive. He’d only had a few minutes to prepare. From a completely detached perspective, it was quite the rhetorical feat.
Then he moved into proselytizing, and the tears dried up as my face began to burn. I could barely sit still. How dare this stranger monopolize the occasion of my grandfather’s death to sling his wears! I could have slugged the sonofabitch. Maybe Poppy did believe in God. Maybe he was a devout Christian. Maybe, as he waded through the waves and onto the shores of Japan during the US invasion, he did turn heavenward and ask for guidance and blessing. But he didn’t proselytize. He didn’t even go to church. On the Hendrickson side of my family, religion was a private business between a man and his god. Period.
I leaned over to my mom and told her that if anything ever happened to me, don’t dare let a preacher anywhere near my dead body.
After the service, I needed to get some air. Walking by the director of the funeral home and the preacher, I heard the former say to the latter with a smirk on his face, “This one died a couple of weeks ago,” I assume bragging about his embalming job. If I had been drunk, I’d have knocked his teeth out.
Somewhere beneath all of this is a question about the purpose of a memorial service. Who is it for? What exigence does it address? After the dinner following the service, the family floated over to the hotel bar and raised a glass to my grandfather, William Mansfield Hendrickson, Poppy Bill, Slim. After a while, there was only a few of us Hendricksons in a small circle, cracking jokes, telling stories. I missed our family reunions. It had been too long. I had forgotten how interesting all of my relatives are, such fantastic story tellers every one, and I resolved not to take my family for granted.
On the drive home, I complained to my dad about the preacher. He didn’t share my indignation, but that was okay. Mostly, we talked about visiting the old Hendrickson home in Cutchogue, Long Island, NY. We talked about carrying on the tradition of the family reunion. When I got out of the car, he got out too. We hugged. “I love you, Dad,” I said. And my dad replied, “I love you too, Son.”
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