I’ve been thinking a lot about camouflage and John Prine’s
Paradise lately. Specifically, I’ve been
thinking about Tommy’s funeral, as well as his life. What is it about death and all that it
involves that permeates us with feelings and images so strong as to be
virtually impossible to remove from our minds?
The decision to bury Tommy in camouflage was a no
brainer! Symbolic of his number one
favorite activity in life, duck hunting, there was really no reasonable
alternative. And so his final, geared-up
self was decked out in:
Polypropylene long johns (it’s cold down there),
Camo-look shirt with retrievers embedded therein,
Camo jacket, camo waders, camo hat,
Duck call around his neck,
All topped off with a pack of Camels inside his jacket, and
Programs from a number of hunting tests at his feet!
Could have been some camo element I’m forgetting, as well.
I did dissuade our son from including a bottle of Evan
Williams in the mix, which of course has nothing to do with hunting, but did
define a too-long period of his life, making bad choices while struggling with
insomnia.
So there he was in his hunting clothes, lying in a
camo-lined, beautifully crafted, made-in-Tennessee, poplar casket. Poplar, the wood that grows profusely in
Middle Tennessee, the wood that we chose for light/dark beams and cabinets in
our Estill Springs home.
And while Tommy lay there, freed from his ailments and
addictions, John Prine’s Paradise accompanied images of Tommy alive, as father,
husband, hunter, dog trainer, hunt-test/field-trial judge, and son. Daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenburg
County?
Won’t you take me back to a time when Tommy had a
choice: to smoke or not to smoke? Not to smoke would have been the choice that
would have delayed this time to a more “reasonable” end.
Won’t you take me back to any time with choices that could
have meant a better life for you, Tommy?
Take me back to a time when Tommy and Cabot attended a
hunting test in Muhlenburg County and almost wore out John Prine’s Paradise CD?
Cabot’s eulogy rightly concluded that his dad was a doer,
not a watcher, not a leave-well-enough-aloner.
If he wanted something he made it happen; that was for sure. I always thought much of this attitude came
from his having been diagnosed as a “juvenile” diabetic when he was a
teenager. I believe he always felt he
would die young and I think he probably felt near the end that he had been on
borrowed time for some time. If only, that
part of Tommy that could will things into existence could have willed a desire
for a healthier lifestyle.
These images haunt me, sting my eyes, while John Prine’s
music goes round and round in my head.
It was once Paradise here in the time before the Fall. It is now Paradise for Tommy and I pray that
for him heaven is filled with dogs, hunting test fields, duck blinds, and ducks
that get shot out of the sky, but never die.
As I have done many times before, I thought of my dad when I
passed by the yellow roses that greeted me as I entered the grocery store. They were his favorite flower. They were the flowers that draped over his
casket soon to be 43 years ago. Now I
have lived more years without my dad than with him, as he was only 42 when he
died. Though he died of incurable
sadness, the yellow roses always make me smile, as I think of how he loved to
laugh in happier times, as well as how he loved people. I remember his helping us write poems for
homework assignments. Here is one in his
memory:
