Please don't bury me, beneath the cold, cold ground

Like many couples, the mate and I had talked about what we liked or really didn't like about funerals and weddings and those talks led to what we would like at our memorial services. I had a firm idea of what he wanted and did not want for a service. I meant to carry out his wishes to the best of my ability.

I also had to deal with the fact that every person has different emotional needs regarding death. Some are personal and others a matter of belief. We have many religions, and the total lack of them in our family and I was stuck with managing a balance between what the mate wanted, what I needed to do for him and the traditions practiced by our many tribes. This made for an interesting time planning his party.

We both would rather see contributions to family or our charity than kill perfectly lovely flowers at fifty bucks a pop. I am a pine box and a deep hole with a tree in it by water spirit and he choose cremation. I am an "always leave 'em laughing" lady and he is an always leave 'em too drunk to find the tent kind of guy. I still have one more memorial service to arrange for the closest friends.

With the best of the last stack of his CD's and favorite tunes on the stereo system the family greeted each other and friends over the "not dead" volumn level, still much lower than prefer by the mate. We had The Blues Brothers, the sound track to "Oh, Brother, where art thou?", Creedence Clearwater, a two disk Beatles Collection, his personal favorites by Bosephus (Hank William's Jr.), and some biker road song collections. Then we put it on random and let him pick.

Then, when it looked like everyone had arrived that was coming, we began the service, presided over by my Eldest Nephew. He opened with a prayer and a bit of verse from the good book. I asked the Veterans providing the mate's honors and the flag ceremony to come forward and offer him the proper rituals.

They presented me the flag, filed out....we waited.....the command was given, the guns were firedl There was total silence as the bugle cried "Taps" for my mate and the sound of sobs and tears when it ended. Mine were among them. I know all the words to that song and had said them under my breathe, clutching the flag to my heart til the last note wavered away.

The men were then free to leave and be with their own families while ours grieved. Nothing can possibly set the tone for a memorial service like taps does.

My very talented brother in law performed a song then, based on Danny Boy, called "My Silent Friend" that I believe he authored. His gutiar work was haunting. It was touchingly beautiful and beautifully done.

Then my cousin, the big K, played his gutiar, the one his dad left him, if I am not mistaken and sang "Your Love Amazes Me". This one hurt my heart because his love did amaze me and I was not familiar with the song.

The nephew then invited us to share our memories of my mate by standing and speaking or coming up front to use the podium. When there was a lag, I cued him to read the wonderful words sent by my eldest girl, the mate's step daughter.

My mother's husband was an extraordinary person. He was my stepfather. He and my mother were married when I was 16.

He loved his dogs and cats with a deep and intense affection that is often deemed unmasculine. When I was a junior in high school, our house burned down and we thought my cat had died in the fire. When they found her two days later, he brought her all the way to my English class at school, despite her frantic attempts to stay out of that huge scary institution.

He loved my mother a whole heck of a lot as well and he never, ever had a problem telling her or anyone else how much he cared about them. He told me once that he was afraid he would go first and leave her behind. He didn't want to do that because he knew it would be so hard for her.

He hated to be inconvenienced for little things, but would drive 60 miles to pick you up and tow your car home too. He could fix anything with a wrench and some duct tape. If it had a motor, he knew how it ran.

We lived in a house down a quarter mile dirt driveway whose entrance was 5 miles from a paved road. It snows a lot in Michigan. One Christmas vacation, we were nearly snowed in and the four of us (the mate, my mom, his daughter and me) played hand after hand of doubledeck pinochle for days and days. We did it all day long, drinking coffee and just playing cards for the entire vacation.

Definitely a man of few words and cranky when emotions ran high. He didn’t deal well with me and my mother fighting because we are women of many, many words although we never raised our voices. He would sigh loudly and stalk out of the room, even when we were trying to be civil in our “discussions.” He could have trademarked that sigh.

I could talk about anything with him. Except sex. Sex was definitely off limits. When I was 17, I was reading Helter Skelter (you know, the one about Charles Manson) and read about how some of the women were forced to perform fellatio. When I went to him and asked him what the word ‘fellatio’ meant, he turned red and spluttered, “Look it up!”

Otherwise, I could talk frankly with him about anything. I could get the real story on what was happening with my mother after her heart attack last year or what was going on in the family when I couldn’t get a real answer anyplace else. He believed in talking straight and saying things like he saw them.

He smoked, wore leather and rode a motorcycle.

Despite having some canalized intolerances that made him occasionally uncomfortable, he tolerated all of the crazy freakies that I brought home as a teenager. All my goth friends, bull dyke lesbians and Pete Burns look-a-like gay friends, you name it.

At the family reunion, when we couldn’t stand any more hanging out with my crazy family, we hopped on his motorcycle and got the heck out of there for a long ride.

He totally understood me and my anti-social ways because he was the same. Give him some football, a book, his dog and some iced tea or coffee, and he was happy as a clam. Or give him the bike and the open road and that was good too.

100% blue collar, Army regular guy, he did his time during Vietnam and a stint posted in Germany before leaving the army and taking up work doing specialist type stuff in a factory. He had only a high school education (actually plus two years of college and a factory trained Yamaha Mechanic) but he read everything he could get his hands on and was the one who helped me read all the way through and understand The Silmarillion. He was a David Lynch fan before I was. We liked the many of the same books and I introduced him to Firefly as well.

Our last conversation a couple of weeks ago consisted of me asking if he’d FINALLY seen Serenity. And he had, so I was finally able to burst out with, “I can’t believe they killed Wash!” We talked about that for a little while and about what we had been reading lately and that was it.

Today my mom called me to tell me he’d taken a freak fall and died this morning. He wasn’t even 55. I’m really going to miss him.

I can not possibly recall all the wonderful things our friends and family shared that day. I do wish I had the sense to record it, but I suppose a video would have been tacky. I can't even remember who went first. But I do know that some of us, not sure we could speak well enough to be understood, wrote out our tributes. I believe my eldest son, the mate's step son, who was 13 when we married, walked up to the podium next to share his feelings.

My mother's husband was a son to a few of you, a brother many, and an uncle to several more. Later he became a father, and later still, a grandfather. And to all of us he was always a friend.

But for me he was something more. He was someone to admire. Someone to look up to. From my earliest days I never had frequent contact with what you might call a ‘positive male roll model’. My own father never taught me anything worth recollecting. He never taught me to ride a bike. He never taught me a work ethic. He never taught me how to appreciate those with me.

The Mate didn’t teach me how to ride a bike either. Because he never considered taking small steps. He taught me how to ride a 125 Honda. He was attentive. Helpful. And strong enough to lift the motorcycle up when I couldn’t. And he had a quality that I recognized later as fatherly. Having rarely seen it before, I didn’t know I was seeing it then.

Though he may not have known I was watching, (though I suspect he did) he taught me how to relate to the world. Doing what I could, when I could, and not loosing sleep over the things I could do nothing about. If he had a creed, it was "No Worries".

He taught me how to maintain a strong presence without ever having to say a word.

He taught me when to speak, and when to just shut up.When to hold’em, and when to fold’em….so to speak.

He may not have meant to teach me a work ethic either, however imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And though I may have been a little slow to put it into practice, I now do what can, and what I ‘must’ to support myself and my own growing family.

Now that he’s gone, I have to wonder what I’m going to do. He was a presence in my life. He was a father, and he was a friend. And now I have to find out what its like to loose that. And it sucks.

I know I’m supposed to cling to the good times and the memories. But it's hard, and maybe I’m being greedy, but damn it, I want more of them.

And I wanted my daughter to get to know her grandpa. I want someone reliable to go to when I break things. I want someone with similar taste in movies so I don’t have to pay for them myself. I want someone whose mere presence in the same house is a comfort to me.

Just remembering all those good times and qualities isn't sufficient. Now, I need to be these things.

I can’t take his place, and would never try. But I can attempt to be everything he was…which is to say, exactly what he wanted to be, I would like to be too.

None of these tributes was read in the dry way they are presented here and you don't know these kids, (now adults) their lives or their hearts. They were burned young and often by the the people who should have been there for them and have gone on to trust rarely and respect only those truely deserving of it. They were heartfelt words of grief at the loss of a man who was the closest man to a father they would ever have. I am so sorry he is not still here for them.

The mate's own girl's were too stricken to speak but when we had been going through all the things he saved over the years we found this from his youngest girl.

Daddy...

We've had some good times
and also some bad,
We've been happy together and
we've been sad.
Mile after mile we've rode
Just me and you,
Times we've watched movies
Just us two.
When you bought me my
very own bike
And taught me how to ride,
When I was so sick
and you sat by my side.
We've watched the Lions together
time and time again,
Even though it's not often
that we get to see them win.
These times are the times
I'm fondest of
And I think of them
with lots of love
Cause Daddy you are a special person,
Who means a lot to me.
That's why I wrote you
this poem,
And I did it lovingly!

Happy Father's Day,
Love Always,
Your Daughter

What can you add to a tribute like that? I had to get up and go to the girls where they sat with their Mom and family to hold them while we all cried harder.

The cousin and her husband that had been here the last weekend we had with the mate had come back to help me through the next one. She was younger than him but they were very close. She sat at my machine and tried to write. and tried...

Ever since I got the call that Bill was gone and that memories were the order of
the day, I've sifted through mine to come up with the one that would show, not
only how much he meant to me, but what a hole his death would cause to the world
at large.

Then I realized that speaking that way now was really
preaching to the choir. Each person here had shared a piece of his life and will
feel the impact of his passing.

So instead I will try to share the
memories that made me love him the way that I do.

I remember "winning" wrestling matches with him when I was about four years old.

I remember the compassion and tenderness that he showed to a broken-hearted little girl when he went away to the service.

I remember when he and Uncle Ken came up to the campground and gave me my first motorcycle ride.

I remember finding him waiting for me outside the funeral home after Dena died just so he could hug me, tell me he loved me and let me know that he was there for me.

I remember the midnight rides, our motorcycle trip to Kentucky and the
bike cleaning lessons that you obviously thought we needed.

I could go on and on in this way and I would still feel frustrated that these few words
cannot convey the depth of the love that Bill showed to those in his life.

I will miss his smile, his laugh and his big bear hugs. Most of all, I
think I will miss hearing him say "I love you, xxxxxx".

It was first mentioned here, his hugs. My man could put his arms around a woman or a child or a pup and they would settle right down and enjoy it. The man was a rock of safety in the sea of life and it was communicated in his hugs. It became such a theme that about the tenth time I said, just loud enough to be heard, "Enough with the hugs, already!" and we all laughed.

My youngest nephew stood and started to try and explain what his Uncle had meant to him. He had taught him to ride a motorcycle, too. The nephew and his wife had ridden to the U.P. with us two years in a row and camped out with us. He broke down.

I got up and gave him a hug and while I held him I told people he had more to say if they could just give him a moment. This fine young man made a mighty effort to get his voice back and said a few more things about my man and then added, "I sure will miss following those tail lights." When he said that my heart snapped. I hadn't thought that far ahead. I always rode behind and to the right of the mate when we traveled. Those were MY tail lights.

When the nephew joined us riding he was told to stay right behind the mate and I dropped back and over to the left a position. The mate even drove off the rode once and we all went with him....it saved our lives as a car got too close in the fog. They were that kind of tail lights. The neice and her husband joined us last year and made it a real family ride. It was always going to be missing a leader in the future.

This is from a friend we made playing cards on line. When I sent the mate off for a vacation on his bike "all by himself" one year he had never ridden alone and mentioned he might enjoy not feeling like he had to keep an eye on all the riders with him for a change. We set it up for him to stay with her and another family, one state over, that also played cards with us. He had a great time.

I believe Bill would be thinking this way because he is never going away........ in our hearts.....

Do not stand by my grave and weep; for "I" am not there, "I" do not sleep.
When you are awakened in the morning hush, I will be the gentle uplifting rush.
I will be the bright stars and moon, that guide you through the night.
I will be the falling rain, that washes away your sorrow and pain.
I will be the breeze, softly caressing your cheeks.
I am the bright shimmer of freshly fallen snow.
I am the warm light that kisses the morning dew.
Rejoice in my passing for I am now in a better place, where I am able to protect, care and watch over you, while you are among that rat race.
Please do not stand at my grave and cry, for "I" did not die.

Bill... it was wonderful knowing and meeting you! I will never forget your visit to New Hampshire.. our cribbage games at the kitchen table, chatting and drinking Jack!!! I will miss you!!!!! Love, Cardlady

People told of kindnesses, humor, hugs, respect, appreciation, sadness and loss. His love of others and his hugs came up again and again. There are more that belong here but I must have already set the record for longest blogger post ever. I will add the one from the eldest nephew when he sends it but must wind up for tonight.

With more than 216 people (and that was missing many friends) we had gone an hour and a half and more and were just getting loosened up. But life goes on. I knew people needed a smoke, a bath room break, to take the kid and change it, were getting hungry....

I stepped up to the podium and made sure I had the mike on so they could hear me in the back and read them my last note to the mate. You can read it here. It was a mighty struggle to keep my voice clear and cry at the same time but I got through it.

I took time to mention the mate was not a saint, but had his bad points, too. That we were ignoring them today but I didn't want anyone to think he didn't make mistakes in his life. Then I thanked them all for coming, for showing the respect to my mate and the family by joining us as we said good bye. My heart was full and the mate would be amazed at the people who's lives he had touched.

Then I asked the bro in law to take the piano for one classic hymn from our child hood. We all sang to sheets I had passed out.

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.
Through the storm
Through the night
Lead me on
to the light
Take my hand, Precious Lord,
Lead me home

I stood and was hugged, cried on, held, had things slipped to me, said to me and said over me as his friends and family went back to living, to meet us at the dinner, to their own lives.

I have been told over and over that it was the most beautiful and meaningful memorial that many of our people had ever seen...that pleases me because it was one of the last things I could do for my friend.

I did the best I could for you mate.