He would have liked his own funeral if he could have been there I thought yesterday as I drove home. Today my thoughts still linger with that high school classmate whose sudden passing shocked us all. Many friends and relatives attended and mourned his passing. The site of the service was a small Lutheran church standing in the lonely countryide where he made his home. It filled quickly, and the overflow sent to the dining room swelled so that those chairs soon filled leaving only standing room, which itself was elbow to elbow. Someone, a clergyman perhaps, had placed a head of wheat in the breast pocket of his suitcoat. It seemed an appropriate symbol, both of his life as a farmer and of the church’s message of birth, death and resurrection.
Forty-eight years have passed since we graduated. The ceremony was the first event ever conducted in Sheldon’s brand new gymnasium. We had fun in school; studying was never held in high esteem by many of us. Whenever members of the class gather, we share stories of the antics. The memories remain. Now the school district has joined with a larger neighboring district and left our old school building vacant. It has been sold to a private concern with some grandiose plans. I drove past it yesterday. Besides various piles of junk and old buildings that the new owner has seen fit to pile on the grounds, he has also cut a large hole into the end of the gym and has driven trucks onto the floor to pile things on. Our time there has passed. Someday that building will tumble to a pile of rubble much like the old Catholic school building in town that you can still see if you know where to look.
We are faced now with the fact that the friends we made there have started to pass on just like those old times passed on. His father died last winter, but his body had not yet been interred, and the sad fact arose that the father and the son were going to be buried on the same day. Rest in peace, old friend.
