The Last Baron

I never really talked about my second friend that passed away recently. That's because it was somewhat of a national event. He was in the army and died while serving in Afghanistan. In all honesty I saw very little of him the past few years and fell out of touch with him. My history with him is his mom and my mom have been great friends for close to 40 years, so I more or less grew up with him. We had the same birthday, albeit I'm a year older, and we had the same middle name. They had a farm and I helped out and visited them quite a bit with my family when I was younger. I know and still see his parents fairly frequently to this day, they`re like extended family.

Like I've said before I have had very little experience with death, and especially so when it came to one so public. It definitely was different seeing his picture in the paper at work. A few days after I found out I was at work, in a good mood, laughing with the guys all day, then during last break there was his picture in an article in the paper where I sat down. So I read it. I never read an article about him until then. I don't know why but I never wanted to. I didn't want to read misinformation about him I suppose. But this time I read it. Now I`m never in a bad mood at work, I don`t always go around smiling and laughing everywhere, but if someone talks to me or makes a joke I`ll play around. The last thing I ever want to do is bring someone down (yes I understand that all my blog can do is bring other people down, but I swear in real life I make people happy. I need to balance it out so I can feel better). But after reading that article my tolerance for pleasing others disappeared. People would talk to me and all I would do is nod my head. I didn`t want to talk, but as is often the case this can make things worse. People have never seen me like that so they started making comments about it, saying they`ve never seen me so sad looking before and try to tell me stories to cheer me up. One guy even went on to tell me a war story and how some website put up some confidential videos about the american military and how they clearly shot some innocent people from a helicopter. Of course no one really knew why I was sad. I didn`t want to talk and share it. More then enough people knew and had opinions on it already.

Now with this friends visitation and funeral I had the opposite reactions as with my first friend that passed away. With my first friend I didn`t really feel much during visitation and cried like I hadn`t for years at his funeral. With this friend it was much harder to go through visitation. I went with my family and we showed up 45 minutes before the family was ready to receive visitors. My mom was with his family all week helping with anything they needed help with, and knew what the family wanted out of visitation, which was a quick visit and then move on. So we tried to be near the front of the line to set the tempo for everyone else. I was all well and good at this time, but when I got close to the family and saw my family and his family break down at the same time it was hard to stay under control. It wasn`t until I was next up to see his mom that I started breaking down. God it`s so hard to see someone going through so much pain, how can you not feel for the person. I had a good hug with his mother and I even managed to sneak a hug out of his father, even though I don`t think I`ve ever seen him hug anybody. They`re a great family. If there`s one thing I`ve gotten out of these recent visitations it`s that having a good family is probably the best thing you can get out of life. It`d be nice if I could start one with someone.

Anyways, the funeral was a rather large event. I had to show up at the church an hour early and even then it was packed. I only got a seat because my sister saved me one. I was curious as to how people were going to fit in our church since our town is only 2000 people or so and we don`t have big churches. What happened was in the gymnasium was set up a hundred seats or so for family, close friends, and whatever official military personnel, mounties, firefighters (he was a volunteer), and I forget who else. I was in this section. It was set up with a group of seats on the left, a group of seats in the middle, a group of seats on the right, and a row along the back wall with a gap between the groups and the back row. I was sitting in the very right seat along the back wall. There was also a room just behind the gymnasium full of seats, and a group of seats set up in the basement, for either locales or former veterans or anyone else that wanted to come show their support. There were also speakers set up outside in the parking lot for the people to listen to that couldn`t fit in the church. And there were a surprising amount of people outside to listen. Next what happened was there was a walking procession from the funeral home to the church, which my parents took part in, and when they got to the church they came in from the ride side entrance of the gymnasium, walked along the right wall towards the back row of seats, right where I was sitting, then walk over to the middle aisle and walk back towards the front. It was incredibly sad having everyone walk right in front of me, and again it just hit right home the fact that he`s gone and this is a last goodbye. Now I hate to say it, and I`m by no means an expert, but there seemed to be something missing in the funeral. It lacked that personal touch. It was a bit too formal. It was hard for me not to think of my other friend that passed away during the funeral and how I would hear these stories and he talked with the reverend many times to come to terms with his cancer, and how everything just had this feeling of he may be gone but he lived damnit! There were touching speeches and a few flubs that you could tell he would`ve enjoyed. It had this warm feeling despite being a funeral. This recent funeral seemed very by the books. A few passages, a song here and there. It was really hard to think about the guy himself. About who he was and how he lived and affected people and tried to make the world a better place. I suppose there`s a better place for that though. I`m sure the family wanted to get it over with so they can stop being hounded by the press.

I think what really touched me most about this whole thing was the support. After visitation my mom was telling stories about her trip to Trenton, where the body was brought back. She went down with his family and some friends, and she was saying how people everywhere would show their support. There were veterans everywhere, hundreds or maybe even thousands of people who didn`t even know him or his family but wanted to show their support showed up. My mom was in a shop while staying in toronto one day that week and somehow was talking with someone about why she was there. When that person found out about my friend, he went to buy a cross and gave it to my mom and told her that he would like her to give it to his parents. When I was driving into town there were yellow ribbons on every single telephone pole, mail box, bridge, whatever was on the side of the road, for miles and miles. Sometimes you forget how one death can affect so many, and this was a sad reminder of how things can sometimes happen unexpectedly.


RIP TT