A man like that needs more than one memorial service, see; this was his third, after one in Florida where he retired and a second in Tennessee where he had his career. This one was for the benefit of my grandmother, who can no longer travel, and the Maine family who couldn’t make one of the others.
A bit of background, if I may. Back in the 1940s, as I’ve mentioned here before, my grandmother went one way and my Uncle Lew went another, theologically speaking. My grandmother and Uncle Lew loved each other deeply, but the two branches of the family have always regarded each other with some suspicion.
Uncle Lew’s side exists in good-humored trepidation of the morally superior and judgmental Baptists, while my grandmother’s line compresses its collective lips in grim disapproval of the worldliness and wickedness of the faithless. This mutual wariness was visited upon the second generation and most of the third, and it accompanied my grandmother, Aunt Gerry, and a couple of dozen uncles, aunts and cousins from around the country into the Thomaston Baptist Church for the memorial service.
The eulogy was interesting because the minister didn’t actually know my Uncle Lew; but knowing my grandmother, naturally he made assumptions about Lew, and thus expelled bushels of warm air about St. Lew living his life for the glory of God and similar twaddle. I’m sure it gave my grandmother great comfort but the rest of us had to stifle the urge to laugh out loud and/or bean the ordained one with a well-flung hymnal.
The afterparty, however, was at MY house, which is a twaddle-free zone. We drank, we swore, we laughed, we played Frisbee (aging uncles and younger cousins together), we grumbled about politicians, we ate too much and drank some more. The Baptists declined the Frisbee game and the wine, endured the rest because they were outnumbered, and tried not to show they were having a pretty darn good time.
The afterparty, however, was at MY house, which is a twaddle-free zone. We drank, we swore, we laughed, we played Frisbee (aging uncles and younger cousins together), we grumbled about politicians, we ate too much and drank some more. The Baptists declined the Frisbee game and the wine, endured the rest because they were outnumbered, and tried not to show they were having a pretty darn good time.
(And since my grandmother went home to rest after the service, there was no need to conceal the wine.)
Uncle Lew would have loved it.
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