And life rolls on

A few days ago I went to a funeral, my dad’s sister. My dad isn’t really close with his family; well my dad isn’t really close, in the traditional sense of talking about feelings and confiding, with much of anyone. Not that he doesn’t care; he does which I saw at the funeral and which I receive in many ways in my own life in less overt and obvious ways.

It’s a strange experience going to a funeral or a wedding and seeing relatives one rarely sees, especially on my dad’s side of the family. I talked with a cousin I haven’t seen in over a decade even though he lives about a mile away from my parents in Hyrum. We had great fun as kids. We started camping by ourselves at age 11 or so in Devil’s Half Acre by Hyrum Dam; we “skied” to the top of Spy’ Hill many times; we killed sucker fish—great fun for young boys. My favorite memories are from the camping. I remember one night there was a teenage party up above us on the hill where there was a road. I think they yelled down at us or maybe threw rocks—it scared me but also made me more confident about facing the world on my own. I remember how we took an old cooler down there and dug it into the hillside and then later a hunter shot a huge hole in it with a shotgun. I remember how we spent hours stringing together bailing twine (small twine that binds up bails of hay) for hammocks. We were going to sleep in them. Unfortunately the twine slipped, opening up uncomfortable holes. I remember (and almost all of these ideas were his) how we built an Indian sweat lodge: we’d heat up rocks red hot in the fire, then take them into our lodge (made of tarps and logs) pouring water and sweating it up till late at night. Jeff often made outlandish pronouncements: “I’m going to strip down and sweat it out all night.” He was always, and still is it seems, a bit of a braggart, a storyteller, but in a nice way, not in your face. I don’t remember Jeff ever getting in a fight; he didn’t want trouble and could control his anger and use humor to diffuse a situation.

But now I only know scattered details about the last 20 years of his life, mostly the gossipy kind, details picked up along the way. I know he had to get married; I know his wife embezzled some money and went to jail; I know they had two kids and that they later divorced; I know he remarried; I know he was thinking of majoring in psychology and, then, for whatever reason stopped. That’s all I knew before we talked and I still don’t know much. It’s strange to realize half his life—marriages, divorces, pain, children, different jobs, joy—has gone by without me. I wasn’t part of it. We had a close friendship for years but… Where did it go? Where is it? What does it now mean?

Talking to him, I didn’t feel completely at ease. His face and body seemed so big; he seemed like a different person even though he’s not overweight. I guess he doesn’t match the young cousin I knew and there’s no way to recover that. We could probably spend hours together but it would, of course, never work.

To a lesser degree, I feel this sense of loss about many of the relative there: crazy (in a good way) Aunt June; David (a cousin) who always seemed older than he was; Aunt Carolyn who'd suffered from many ailments her whole life and had now passed on; Sheri who was run over (the side of her head) by her dad's own truck; Aunt Pauline (my dad still hates lima beans because she forced him to eat some as a kid); Lennis, my uncle, and owner of our campground and the bailing twine…

At one point we did get together frequently on this side of the family. My Grandmother Christy (short for Christiansen so the grandkids could pronounce it) held it all together. We’d have Christmas at her house: each year we would drag her fake fireplace mantel down the steep stairs of her 100 year old home, then she’d hang little tree ornament presents for each of us. Did we pretend for her? Probably a bit. When Grandma Christy died we pretty much stopped having any family parties. I know my dad’s sisters stayed in touch but my dad never got together or checked up on them by phone. My mother, though, has stayed in contact with my dad’s sisters. Seems some women, certainly Cache Valley women, feel not only responsible for their own family ties but also for their husbands’.

And, so, life rolls on with or without the friendships or connections of the past; a few years, a decade, a lifetime, births, weddings, accidents, sickness, agony, anger, deaths…