The Age of Final Goodbyes

This week we buried my dear friend Charlie Schneider. His death was expected. Given the cocktail of ailments that plagued his final months, it was one of those passings that truly was a blessing.

Charlie’s funeral was the third that I learned of from a friend or colleague in as many days. The burial itself brought home the fact that I was saying my final goodbye to my friend of forty-five years. It occurred to me that when I entered my seventh decade, I also entered the age of final goodbyes. Charlie was the third one of my Colgate MIS colleagues who died within the past year.

That number three again. One often hears that death comes in threes, but of course it comes in much larger numbers, depending on the time span covered. Some consider three to be a mystical or sacred number—The Holy Trinity, for instance. Or a lucky one—three coffee beans in a glass of Sambuca Romana after dinner. Not one, not two; always three, if you want good luck. Third time’s the charm and all that. My mind fixated less on the number than on the finality of the parting.

For me the process of saying goodbye to Charlie included going through old photo albums. I was looking for pictures that I could post in the guestbook for his obituary on legacy.com. So sad to see his smile again, and to remember where the photos were taken. At my parents’ fiftieth anniversary party, for instance. My father and mother have been gone for 32 and 20 years respectively.

A photo of Charlie and me with my mother between us, taken one summer at the home where I grew up in Green Pond, was especially painful. Charlie had his summer tan and we were all smiling and happy. We sold the house after my mother died and it has since been remodeled. Green Pond has changed. Some of my summer friends still gather for lunch now and then, but not at the lake. Not anymore. The intersection of all that loss increased my grief geometrically.

I was forced to look at the faces in those pictures for quite awhile. They needed to be scanned into my computer, shading and resolution adjusted in Photoshop. I decided to crop myself out to focus on Charlie. Then they had to be put on a thumb drive and transferred to the computer with an Internet connection. Then uploaded to legacy.com. It sounds mechanical and robotic, but when I looked at the faces, it was anything but. Many tissues, red nose and puffy eyes later, I was finished.

At the luncheon after Charlie’s funeral, that final goodbye behind us, it was time to share memories of what made Charlie special. Some of those memories were similar, even though they came from different pockets in his life. We all knew about his love for trains, for example, reflected in his extensive model train collection. And most knew that he grew to love trains by watching them on the track behind his grandmother’s house. She took care of him while his mother was at work.

I thought about that on our drive home. A seldom-used freight track runs through the wooded area on the opposite side of the fairway behind our condominium. A train makes one trip some weekday mornings, going in and coming out. The engine rumbles so deeply that I hear it well before it comes into view. I call out: “Here comes the train!” and run to our porch to watch it go by.

My joyful routine makes my husband laugh. Even before Charlie died, I would say to Jagdish: “Now I understand why Charlie loves trains so much.” And so, despite the final goodbye having been said, I will remember my dear friend fondly whenever I hear a train roll by. I will smile and perhaps wipe away a tear. Then I’ll get back to whatever it is those of left behind do with the days we have left.

Can Trump “Fix It In the Post”?

Creative types will be familiar with the phrase “fix it in the post.” It usually means that problems in the shooting of a video or a film will be corrected in the post-production (or edit) phase of the project. Without getting too deep in the weeds, here’s an example. The lead actor has a long stretch of dialogue and keeps messing up one piece of it. After many takes, the director may say his final “cut” and decide to “fix it in the post.”

The actor will record just the problem line in isolation in a studio booth. The director will be sure to have a cut-away in the can of a close-up of someone listening to the actor’s dialogue. He’ll also have some ambient sound recorded on the set that will be married with the line done in the booth so it meshes with the rest of the speech. The fixed line will be edited into the footage under the cut away shot of the listener.

Many Christians also subscribe to a concept of fixing things in the post. They call it purgatory. That’s where souls go to atone for sins so they are purged clean enough to pass through the pearly gates. Their souls are, in effect, “fixed” post their death.

Now that I have your eyes glazed over, let’s bring this around to the current Presidential election. Some people, even non-supporters, believe that Donald Trump’s antics and vulgarity throughout the primary are simply part of his campaign persona. Trump himself claims that he can be “more presidential” than anyone. Thus far he’s shown little capacity and even less inclination to moderate his extremism. He continues to fuel divisiveness with angry rhetoric.

There’s anger and the potential for violence on both ends of the political spectrum. At one recent rally a 78-year-old Trump supporter cold-cocked a protester who had been subdued and was being escorted out by several security guards. At another event, a left-wing protester stormed the podium and was grabbed by Trump’s Secret Service agents.

Irrational speech and behavior is not new. Nor is concern about the potential consequences. When Obama was elected President, some of his supporters worried that he would be assassinated before his term was up. Fortunately, that worry has proved unfounded despite the constant vitriol that surrounds him.

If Trump is elected President, he’ll have a chance to self-edit and fix his rhetoric and his behavior in the post (election). If he doesn’t do this, someone in the lunatic fringe on the left might be provoked to fix it for him. Here’s another Christian concept to consider (King James version): whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.