I have always been a fan of the obituaries, and I try to
read them every day. When you have lived
in a town for thirty years, you almost always know someone in there. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking, especially when
it’s a child or grandchild of an old friend. But it’s still good to know and a way to
reunite old friends during times of need. The death notices of older folks are an
entirely different thing. I almost
always find one that is particularly inspiring or interesting. Folks dying in
their 80s and 90s did things we don’t do much these days - like conduct
railroads or work in clothing factories, and many embodied a history that’s
fading fast. William Weaver who died on St. Patrick’s Day served under George
Patton, then became a librarian; James Collin’s dental school career was
interrupted by WWII, but he went on to become a dentist and a private pilot;
John Hart fought in three 20th century wars before becoming a
mailman.
The obituary that caught my eye today was Carolyn’s Tyner’s,
the wife of a UF professor who taught a friend of mine. I remember him - the crotchety engineering
professor, beloved by his students, whom we thought was ancient back then (in
his fifties…). Later, after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he would
cheerfully greet people with, “Hello, I’m Mac Tyner. Have I met you today?”
According to
Carolyn’s obituary, she was quite the character as well – born in Gainesville,
she was the “first girl to wear pants to school,” owned a rifle at 16, kept
bees as a teenager and graduated with honors from Gainesville High in 1939. She
had degrees in music and studied at Juilliard, and married a fellow member of
the Florida Symphony – clarinet-playing Mac. In her forties, her family wrote, she took
care of her parents, in her fifties, “championed woman’s rights, whales,
wildlife, the environment and population control, in a one woman campaign to
save our planet.” She moved on in future
decades to spend summers in Hawaii, spoil her grandchildren and finally
downsize to assisted-living with Mac, down the street at “The Village. “
These obituaries remind me that it’s still Lent - and that I’ve hardly done a thing about it.
Feeling a little sorry for myself at the beginning of the season, I decided that the whole of last Fall was too
Lenten for me to carry the theme into the Spring. But this part of Lent – the recognition that
“we are dust, and to dust we will return” and the focus that realization calls
us to – resonates.
How will the decades of our life be characterized? What will
we be remembered for on that day somewhere out there? Now’s the time to make that story happen, to
decide what story you want to be a part
of. Mrs. Tyner, thank you for reminding me.
