Yesterday I went to the funeral of my friend Tim Walmann. He was just 42. He died of a heart attack last Thursday morning.
It was very sad to see his family gathering at the back of the church before proceeding, at the start of the service, down the center aisle. His wife was first and she carried the urn holding Tim's remains. Then his brother, his kids, the young children of his kids, and, looking frail and defeated, his parents. The officiating minister, a woman, did her best, but I have to say that the consolations of the Christian religion seem to me quite threadbare and only added to my desolation. Does anyone really believe it? To make extra money, Tim vended at professional sports events, and the minister envisioned him "selling beer to all the saints in heaven." Sure.
I have an anthology of American literature that reprints the following poem by Philip Pain, a Puritan boy lost at sea in 1668 when he was perhaps 16:
Scarce do I pass a day, but that I hear
Some one or other's dead; and to my ear
Me thinks it is no news; but oh, did I
Think deeply on it, what it is to die,
My pulses all would beat, I should not be
Drown'd in this deluge of security.
"What do we do," asks the editor in a brief headnote, "about a writer who wrote one memorable poem?" I'm glad he printed it, for the figure of a teenager bracing himself fortifies me.
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