Funeral for a Friend

Funeral for a Friend

When "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" was released I missed it.  I was steeped in classical music.  But I do remember listening to the Album when I was driving along Route 17 in the Catskills.  It was the fall of 1974.  The Album opens with "Funeral for a Friend" and includes "Candle in the Wind."  It was less than a year since my best friend had been killed in a car crash.  Both of these songs tore at my heart and I listened to them over and over.

John Franklin Delelys and I were friends in high school went to The State University of New York at Geneseo together. We graduated together (Rod Serling was our commencement speaker) and started teaching elementary school in 1973 at different schools in the Rush-Henrietta School District... from which we had graduated in 1969.

We were unlikely friends.  John was handsome, popular and talented.  I was a social misfit, a gay kid in high school 40 years before Glee. We shared a love of theater, but I still am at a loss to know what John saw in me or how we became friends.  I know I admired him.  He was an idol for me. As we become friends, it stunned me to find out that he was really more shy and insecure than I could ever imagine being.

When John died it was the second great loss in my life.  My father had died in January of my senior year.

This Saturday I turned 60 and today John would have been 61.  I was feeling a huge sense of loss as I approached this decade.  The time that I had been given to live that was denied John was weighing heavily on me. More personal was the realization that my already faulty memory was becoming worse.  I really couldn't conjure up much about John.

He and I went camping on Middle Saranac Lake the summer of 1969.  I remember the place where we camped.  It was so serene. I remember that John was incredibly patient with me when we climbed Mount Ampersand.  John ran track, I was a couch potato.  But he saw me to the stony top and that incredible view.  To this day, given a choice of a sunny beach or a mountain, I will choose the latter.  That's just one of the things that I now realize that John gave me.

I took a picture of John there and turned it into a oil painting.  This summer I saw John's sister Johanna for the fist time in many. many years.  She still has that very primitive work in her house.  I connected with John's younger brother on Facebook this summer as well.
 
But the memories were so dim.

Enter Sharon Manna (then Sharon Davey).  Sharon dated John at Geneseo and we both sang with Geneseo Chamber Singers.  I have kept in touch with Sharon very occasionally.  Our lives went in very different directions and the only common denominator in our lives was our love for John.

Two days before my birthday an email arrived.  Sharon sent me some wonderful pictures but more importantly Sharon sent me memories.  She reminded me of a Mickey Mouse watch that I gave John.  (Last year at Disney World I bought one for myself, without a conscious memory of the gift.)  Sharon reminded me that he was much fonder of my mother than I was... and much more.

Sharon reminded me of things I had forgotten and told me of things that I still can't remember.

This year I got and iPad and wonderful dinner, a chance to see Billy Elliot on stage... all wonderful gifts.

But the best gift was the reminder of how wonderful my friendship, cut tragically short, was.  The reminders of how lucky I was to have known John Franklin Delelys.  Thanks, Sharon.  You gave me a gift beyond value.

And thank you, John.  God gave me the gift of your friendship. God gave me your example of innocent, unconditional love.

I miss you.

 

A picture I took of Sharon and John at Geneseo

Sharon Took this of John at Panther Mountain.  It reminded me of Ampersand.

Sharon's picture of John rowing.  I remember that too.

The Death of Osama and War

I feel no angst about celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden. I will not judge the reactions of others. He was an evil man. He killed thousands. And twisted the word of God to justify it. What I feel great sorrow about is that so many lives have been lost trying to avenge 9/11. And I honor and respect those who have lost or risked their lives for what the believe is right.

.. Last night we watched Restrepo for the second time and just before a key point, a push notification from MSNBC came through. "President to announce, Osama Bin Laden is dead."

This operation was well planned, carried out quickly, and the Muslim tradition of burial honored. The evil has been removed... and only Osama and God know if he is in the paradise that he believed in.

War is not to be entered into without "good cause." It because of that the I celebrate the removal of Osama from this world. I was his action and that of his follower that precipitated the deaths of thousands of civilians, Muslims with whom he did not agree and then the thousands of troops that fought and are fighting wars that may or may not have had anything to do with al-Qaeda. Clearly there was a great deal of combat which had nothing to do with 9/11 that the American people have been led to believe was somehow connected. If only this kind of operation had been carried out years ago. We can only speculate to no avail why.

Now it has been done. This is the type of response that any country should be proud of when its soveriegn territories are attacked, its citizens slaughtered. What we need to reflect on is when we my have been guilty of the same.

We must also remember that the ultimate heresy for any of us is to presume to know the mind of God and act in God's name except to "Love one another as I have loved you." John 13:34

Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen
1893-1918

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

--Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.