Don Lee's Memorial Service
"Love proposes the work of settled households and communities, whose innovation come about in response to immediate needs and conditions." Wendell Berry
After a person dies, we gather.
I rode in the back seat with my dad driving and my step mother in front of me. The parking lot of the Community Presbyterian Church was nearly full. It was a big turnout for Don Lee’s memorial service.
Don and his family lived three blocks from us. In our youth, his son was my best friend. Our families shared dinners together. In the fall, we caravaned our trucks into the forest to cut firewood.
Don was a banker at first, then a Realtor, working in my Grandfather’s brokerage for a time. He loved boats, and bought the marine store by the lake to sell and service watercraft.
He was in Kiwanis for decades, running the annual barbecue.
We filed in. Dad hugged the man handing out the programs. I could not place the face but doubtless knew his name once.
There were flowers and a picture of Don on a table before the dias. I was confirmed in this sanctuary.
We found seats next to our former family doctor. He rose, with the help of a cane, so we could file past.
In the service, a slide show of Don ran. My family briefly appeared, as did a clipping from the local paper calling for his re-election to City Council in the 90s. Boats and water, his place of peace, dominated.
We sang How Great Thou Art, reading the words off the televisions. Karen’s strong voice prompted us from the microphone. There is an extra rest before a particular line in every verse that we all jumped. She emphasized it enough that by the third verse more of us were on than off.
Don’s grandchild, a towering man, rose and told us about their shared love of eating and the conversations at a table.
“It wasn’t about the food. It was never just about eating” he told us.
Don’s younger son thanked us all for coming, thanked Glenn for playing the piano, thanked the folks who brought the flowers, and invited us to the reception.
We receded from the sanctuary, shaking hands, smiling into each other’s eyes. Barry caught us up on his health. “I should be getting rid of this soon,” he said, shaking his cane. My stepmother was engaged in conversation with Candy who she has not seen in ages.
Don was a quiet man, not usually the first to talk. He wore his hair and beard exactly the same way for all the decades I knew him. They became white but stayed in place.
Maybe that is why his presence warmed up memories of running around his house with his sons. Basketball in the driveway. Dancing to Michael Jackson.
As a grown man, returned to where I grew up, I was always glad to see him. It does not sink in quickly; I won’t run into him again.
Don is gone from us, after a long life in community.
In the three years I have been back home, I would see Don every few months at a community event. I would talk in my excitable way and he would listen.
Making my way down the hall, I enjoyed putting my 50 year old face in front of people. “Jerry! Its Joel Barker!” Jerry knew me in this building as a 10 year old. Jerry recognized me and shook my hand. I am no stranger here.
I counted three former mayors. The sons stood and smiled and greeted people coming in to tell them about their father.
I leaned on a counter next to my own father and ate zuchini bread.
There is something missing from the phrase “celebration of life” that has always bothered me, and I couldn’t put my hand on it before.
Maybe it is the same as the reason people turned from the word funeral and then memorial service.
They don’t say “us.”
What is missing in the names for this gathering is all of us left behind. We reach out our memory or our very hand to the space the dead once held.
The harmonic note of the dead is played by those of us still alive.
