Ides of March

#515

If we have anything to celebrate here at the Ides of March, it is that “Spring is in the air” and just perhaps, we are about to escape the worst winter in my memory. Shakespeare, perhaps the worlds greatest poet, made the Ides of March famous in his wonderful play, “Julius Caesar”. “Beware of the Ides of March”. The fictional character “Seer” or prophet referred to in the play, warned Caesar of the Ides of March. On his way to the senate, Caesar said to the Seer “It is the Ides of March and nothing has happened”. The Seer replied, “it is not over yet”. Caesar was later assassinated by men whom he trusted. Caesar, known for his many military exploits, know for the Gallic wars, had a most memorable funeral. The funeral oration of Mark Antony, I memorized as a student and so has students all over the world:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
Funerals of world leaders have always been interesting, particularly in England. As I have told many British subjects in traveling around the world, “you folks really know how to put on a funeral”. Do you remember the procession involving Lord Louis Mountbatten at St. Paul's? Hundreds of British sailors pulling the gun carriage on which the casket rested? The funerals of Queen Elizabeth's mother and father at Westminster? Do you remember the funeral of President Kennedy at St. Matthew's Cathedral? Short Haile Selassie and tall Charles de Gaulle? Do you remember the funeral of Lyndon Johnson at the First Christian Church in Washington? And metropolitan opera star Leontyne Price singing “Precious Lord Take My Hand” and “Onward Christian Soldiers”? I could describe the funerals of most world leaders.

Funerals have always bothered me, this is a very personal thing. But the thoughts of families getting together, gorging themselves with food, and then going to a memorial service is downright pagan. This past week, a second cousin killed himself...young age...depressed about losing his eye sight...leaving behind a family including a 4 year old child. Beyond all understanding, his family deciding to have him cremated, first had him stretched on a table with a quilt covering the lower part of his body, so his family could take one last look before his ashes were interred in an urn. How pagan can you get!!! All privacy gone, people starring at a dead body. Please God, deliver me from such heathenism.

Once, I was in Burma, a Buddhist Monk had died. My driver just happen to take me by the site of the “festivities”, “drums and drama”, “bells and smells”, “family and others dancing around the bloated corpse”. I said to him, “please get me away from this satanism”. Once in Singapore, walking down a busy street with my guide, he said, “this looks like a busy store, let's see what is going on here”. When we got in he said, “oh my god, we are in the midst of a funeral”.

The great late blind editor of the news Argus, Goldsboro NC, often wrote about being in a restaurant with his “seeing eye wife” and people being so curious watching a blind man eat. For many years, I have felt the “stares” of sited people as I have tried to live a somewhat normal life knowing they were watching my every move, particularly in a restaurant. I feel this is the reason so many disabled become reclusive. Certainly, in a coffin, or laying on a table with a quilt, (as was this cousin, a suicide victim), I do not want people staring at me. I have had my fill of this type degrading, uncivilized behavior.

One mortician, told me, I give the dead just as much privacy as I give the living. I always keep them covered with a sheet. I even resented the cadavers, in the laboratory laying naked while being dissected by students. I feel babies and children, should learn early in life the decency, the privacy, of being covered.

Please, please, don't invite me to a funeral where I am expected to gorge myself with food celebrating someones demise. I have one aunt and uncle who never missed the chance of a free meal at a dead persons house. They always know that food will be brought in and that if they get there in time, they will be invited to eat. There is no such thing as grief anymore, death is almost an embarrassment. I am told some families never look at the deceased. The coffin is kept closed with a church pall or flowers over it. Prayer and fasting for the deceased or a proper memorial service are rare. Why is it that family members feel they must speak at the funeral? The Preacher out west, who was killed by someone in his church, was eulogized at his funeral by his wife! Don't tell me you are Christian if you participate in these unholy, unnecessary, exercises. There is nothing here that is “Christ-like”. Whose end [is] destruction, whose God [is their] belly, and [whose] glory [is] in their shame, who mind earthly things.) (Phl 3:19) .

My next door neighbor died, Bill, one of the most distinguished men I have ever known, graduate of Williams College, successful in every endeavor, wealthy. He was barely at the funeral home, surely not embalmed, when I heard from my house such clammering over “things”. Relatives running out the door carrying his things, yelling back insults at one another. “He wanted me to have this”! Another neighbor, Margaret, former clerk at the Federal Court drove me to his funeral. Three of us were there. Margaret and I, and the young man who cleaned and cooked for him...not one relative.

“If you want to see what your friends and family think of you, die broke, and see who comes to your funeral” (Gregory Nunn).