Howard's End

A memorial service is not an appealing way to spend a sunny afternoon. However, one of my yoga classmates passed away very suddenly last week. He was 73, and was seemingly in enviable good health. I knew him casually only through yoga classes, but I was drawn to pay my respects because he had been a good guy, bringing a welcome and humor to every class.

This was an informal gathering of friends and relatives with no set service. I'd never been to his home before, or met his children or grandchildren. And I'd never seen family photos of him as a young dad. Going to share the afternoon with some other yoga buddies and Howard's family and friends made me aware of Howard in a much broader dimension. In classes, we only get to know a certain side of someone's life. And, if we meet them when they're old, there is so much about their earlier years we never learn.

In all the classes I've taken, and all the classmates I've had since my college years, only a very few of them became long term friends whose lives I entered in more than a one-dimensional way. Most have been friendly faces to say "hi" and possibly a little more to. But not really friends.

As I looked over Howard's home, wife, children, grandchildren, friends, and photos, I thought of what I knew about Howard and pondered how much I didn't know about his life, his thoughts, what had been important to him. I casually wondered what such a gathering would be like for me -- what people would share about their relationships with me, what they would think of my home, and old family photos. They might wonder why I had more friends than relatives, what had been important to me, and who I had been under the wrinkles of the years.

I've had so many deaths to deal with in the last dozen years of my life, I've become more resigned to accepting its inevitability, my own mortality, and am more curious about what I didn't know about the people who have passed through my life.