Epsicopalians depart this mortal coil in understated style.
I just returned from A Service for The Burial of the Dead for the father of a life-long friend and classmate. Dr. E. was my Sunday School teacher, my fan and fellow and a sort of father-figure. It is a celebratory day and the gathering of friends was happy and joyous, with laughter and stories - no tears nor sadness, no booze, no long, maudlin eulogies - just the simple, brief words from the 1979 BCP; Rite Two, and three hymns from the 1962.
I recall this here because I had posted earlier about my parents' summer cocktail party in St. Louis one Friday night, and then the next night in Michigan, and there was some back and forth about men in suits with highballs and cigs in their hands and ladies in dresses. Dr. E. and Mrs. E. and my friend H.C.E. attended both of them. Dr. E. quit the highballs a few years later. People would ask if he had a problem with drinking and he'd always reply with a smile, "Only when I drink," or "Not today." What a guy!
If there was one blue suit this afternoon there were 75 - and dark dresses with a shawl or jacket, or slacks and a blouse and flats, not heels. The only difference between these and the ones we attended way back (our parents' parents' services) is that we're now the middle generation - we're all 60; they're our parents' services now. It was shocking to sit in my boyhood church as a full-on adult. My brain still thinks I'm 20 or 30 or 40, but I'm not.
Oh, departing in style. The Altar Guild still serves those
maple-brown-sugar-bacon wrapped crackers in the Undercroft for the Reception afterward.
It is comforting to know something is as it was.