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My dad had two fears: the nursing home and a long-winded speaker at his funeral. He avoided the first; the jury still debates the second.

The call from his apartment [...]]]> I post this article today in memory of my dad, a World War II veteran who was proud of his service. He died in December 2005.

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My dad had two fears: the nursing home and a long-winded speaker at his funeral. He avoided the first; the jury still debates the second.

The call from his apartment building came unexpectedly on Thursday morning. “Your dad has passed out and has no blood pressure.” But when I got there minutes later, he had revived. Flat on his back in the floor, he joked with the paramedics hovering over him.

For a 93-year-old, he did well in the hospital, and we had expected to take him home after a brief stay. But all his systems shut down suddenly on Friday evening, “old and worn out” as he often told us.

Looking back, I realize that he had frequently exhibited a peculiar sense of timing at critical points of life, this one being no exception. Four years ago, for example, he decided that he needed to give up a house for a retirement apartment. Afterward, his health improved enough to extricate himself from all his medications.

Then just a month later he concluded that he needed to quit driving. In picking up the truck keys as he had asked, I was also removing his last grip on independence. But it was time.

He called me the Sunday before his death, worrying that the arrangements for his funeral wouldn’t be handled properly. I assured him otherwise but promised that my sister, Sara, and I would get all loose ends tied up that week. That satisfied him.

Then came the hospital trip on Thursday.

Perfectly alert but seemingly a bit tired, he began asking “Where is Sara?” around noon on Friday. Each time–there were probably a dozen–I explained that she was on her way. When he acknowledged her arrival, I went home to rest. Within a couple of hours, though, he was gone.

Sara, Mary, Barrett and I sat with him in the hospital room for two hours awaiting the arrival of the funeral director. We reminisced and laid plans: I would be the dreaded long-winded speaker.

Beyond that, I wrestled with a peculiar revelation. For from my birth 60 years before until that moment, there had always been someone older in my line of ancestry. But the years had gradually, relentlessly taken all except my dad. And in the instant of his death, I moved to the head of the line.

While he was at the head of the line, Daddy frequently apologized for living so long and for being so much trouble. At such times I assured him, “It’s no trouble. You’re doing the very best that you can.” “Thanks for saying that,” he’d invariably reply.

Don’t those at the head of the line want to be loved and accepted, valued and honored by those lined up behind them? Don’t they want their contributions and sacrifices acknowledged and appreciated? Indeed. I see that more clearly today from my new vantage point.

Though he never spoke to us about World War II for a full 55 years, “The War” was on his mind constantly for the last five. As he lay on his bed, the people, places, difficulties, and distresses of that great struggle marched through his mind with greater intensity than today’s news. He recently confessed, “The War just won’t turn me loose.”

The War finally released him on December 9, 2005. But I wonder this: what will have hold of me until I eventually relinquish my unenviable place at the head of the line? A worthy cause, I pray.

THE HEAD OF THE LINE

The line I’m in that’s been so slow
Moved up one step today;
My turn’s not far away.
On to the front I surely go.
Once far — but now so near –
I see the head from here,
Brought closer with each death, I know.

Copyright 2005 James McAlister

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Bulletin Insert

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We stood side-by-side, my son and I, gazing at the small photograph on [...]]]> I am posting this older article today both in memory and in honor of Allen Etheridge and Paul Harrison, two of my high school classmates (Crossett High School Class of 1963) who gave their lives in Vietnam. May God bless their families today.

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We stood side-by-side, my son and I, gazing at the small photograph on a tombstone. My son finally broke our silence: “Dad, he’s so young!” Yes, I thought, the very same age as you. And because of him — and so many of his companions — we had the privilege of even being there together.

He’s ever youthful in that picture, an 18-year-old soldier keeping a mute, timeless vigil over his own grave. Though we were alone that day, I’ve seen a woman there before, his mother perhaps. And the continual presence of flowers tells me that there is someone who can’t forget … and shouldn’t.

His life came and went so quickly. He was barely old enough to drive when he died for his country. For him it’s over, but not for his parents. They’re the ones who will visit his grave and pose the endless questions in their minds.

What would life have held had he lived? Would he have married and had children? How would he have handled joys and tears, success and failure? Would he have achieved prominence or obscurity, wealth or poverty?

And perhaps the most difficult question of all: Why my son?

Certainly he was spared the difficult trials that come so close on the heels of youth: struggling with jobs and families, making mistakes with mates and children, feeling the hurt of rejection from family and friends, seeing health ebb away.

In one sense, he’s forever held captive in the bloom of youth. Standing at attention in uniform, his picture reflects confidence, hope and courage. His is a warrior, strong and fit for battle. And that’s how he’ll be remembered.

The news that a child has been taken by death brings a numbing knot in the pit of the stomach. Can such a loss ever be soothed?

In November 1864, Abraham Lincoln faced that challenge. He wrote to console Mrs. Lydia Bixby, a widow who was believed to have lost five sons in the Civil War. “I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

The young man in the photograph is a hero. When duty compelled him to forsake all for the cause of freedom, he obeyed. In his death, someone else’s son has perhaps spared me of the awful burden of loss that his family still carries. I am indebted, both to him and to them for that immeasurable sacrifice. And I thank God for him in the same breath that I ask God for a successful future for my son.

How ironic that death and life would be entwined in such a way. How tragic that we could ever forget what a great debt we owe for the freedoms we often so lightly esteem.

MIGHT-HAVE-BEENS

Some think that war’s a faceless game
And never feel the awful cost
Of blood that’s spilled in freedom’s name
Which mounts as mothers’ sons are lost.

I’ve seen a grave one mother tends,
Her inner battles not yet won,
Still clinging to the might-have-beens
That were not buried with her son.

Copyright 1999 James McAlister

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