Eulogies are another matter altogether. They are works of art, designed to touch those close to the deceased at the deepest levels - to remind them why they chose to take time out of their lives to show up at a funeral in the first place.
What a eulogy really does is force us to talk not just about what a person did, but about who that person was and what effect he or she had on everyone around them. It's greatest challenge is distilling and defining a person's character.
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| The gentleman himself, celebrating his 97th and final birthday. |
But as obituaries are meant for publications in which space is still a premium, there's no way you could learn the true essence of his character from these few words.
Much of it you might infer from the details - his church memberships and participation might lead you to believe (correctly) that he was a man of faith and surpassing goodness and generosity. However, it's just as easy for someone with lifelong church membership to be an absolute son of a bitch. Believe me - I've known a few.
The real truth of his character, as with anything, lies in the details.
First, let's start with the superficial. He was a handsome man, who throughout his years bore a remarkable resemblance to baseball great Joe DiMaggio, so much that I actually once heard a former employee of his refer to him by that slugger's last name. He was also meticulous in his dress and grooming. Even as he lay dying, one of his final coherent requests as his hair was being combed was to please not forget the part.
Others have described him in ways far more concise and eloquent than I could. One community theater colleague of my father's, after granddad helped us one Sunday afternoon to construct a set for a play my dad was directing, said, "Your dad is the sort of man who irons the pants he paints in, isn't he?" Yep, that pretty much nailed it.
If it was Sunday during his more vigorous years, you could pretty well guarantee he would be in church singing in the choir, spending the rest of the day in his suit and tie (perhaps removing the jacket if he felt like relaxing).
Again and again, both in personal remembrances and in online comments to his obituary, he was recalled with one simple word - gentleman. Depending on the person, this was occasionally amended to include "Southern."
But what is a gentleman, really? How, as a writer, would someone get away with showing rather than telling someones gentlemanly qualities? And this allegedly post-racial age, how do you describe the Southern part to someone who is not intimately familiar with what that really means?
In the case of my grandfather, it was about more than just his immaculate dress and grooming. It was the way he carried and conducted himself. Behind the Sunday tie was a respect for the Sabbath that ran deep, but didn't overflow into zealotry. Behind the focus on appearance was the notion that if you looked good, those around you would be inspired and motivated to do the same.
As for the Southern part of his gentlemanly nature, it's important to note what a Southern gentleman is not. Folks from outside the South might imagine some Hollywood archetype (frequently inaccurate) that includes with it a hint of Foghorn Leghorn bluster, Big Daddy control, Boss Hogg flair, all tinged with a hint of post Civil War white supremacy.
But when someone in the South refers to someone as a Southern gentleman, what they're really referring to is one of the most valued facets of the Southern persona - hospitality. Not hospitality in the sense of "giving a great party," but more in the Bedouin sense, in which one is bound to give aid and comfort to anyone who asks for it - even one's enemies.
The people who can claim this experience with my grandparents are legion - close and extended family and assorted friends from every living generation and in every geographic region in which they've hung their hats. My grandmother never introduced herself as "Mrs. Pruden" to my friends - only as "grandmom." They were the universal grandparents, willing to embrace, feed, ask after and pray for anyone who crossed the threshold of their tidy 1950s rancher.
In my granddad's case, it was also a policy of treating everyone - regardless of their differences or appearance - with a basic level of respect. I can count the number of times a harsh word about another person crossed his lips, and even though he was born and raised during a time when Southerners were not known for their openness to or tolerance for others, he was not inclined to slurs or epithets. He was soft spoken and generally let people be who they were.
For many years during his career at Dupont, he was a supervisor at the company's May Plant in Camden, S.C. I get a feeling that he was both good at what he did and good to the people who worked for him, mainly because several former employees showed up at his viewing. I can count on a few fingers the bosses that I might remotely consider showing up to a funeral for.
That philosophy also extended to me. Where other grandfathers rooted the ethos of doing tangible work (building or making something) might have balked at my decision to go into writing as a profession, he never questioned my career choice. Though he initially might have wondered exactly what it entailed to be a professional writer, he got a taste of it when he and my grandmother became the good-natured subjects of columns I would write for the three-day-a-week local paper that employed me. As I noted in the acknowledgements to my novel Immaculate Deception, they supported me materially, financially and emotionally, even thought the might not have been sure what I was up to most of the time.
I feel fortunate that I was able to spend as much time with him as I did, and that my children shared the same opportunity. However brief for them, they got a glimpse at perhaps the last true Southern gentleman they are likely to see.
