I lost two friends I went to high school with this week. One died as a result of a tragic accident, the other from an illness. Both were classmates and the same age as I am which got me to thinking. I’ll not be able to attend either funeral, but I wonder what family and friends will say as a eulogy? That led me to start thinking about what people will say about me at mine. I know what some of them would like to say, but I would hope that they will keep quiet. I may actually have some family and friends in attendance who don’t know about some of the things I’ve been involved in.
My youngest daughter once brought up the subject and asked what I though should be said. I mentioned what a great father and husband I had been, how I was always nice to small children, liked puppies, cooked a mean pancake and could flip it in the air and catch it in the frying pan as it came down.
She laughed and said, “Not on your life.” Which I thought rather inappropriate under the circumstances, but I digress. She said, “I’m going to talk about the 4thof July picnic!”
I knew exactly what she meant. Several years ago, I was the Liaison between the White House and the Dept of Veteran’s Affairs to put on the National Veteran’s Day Ceremony at Arlington Cemetery. As such, I became friends with the Director of the Cemetery and he invited me to his 4thof July picnic. At Arlington. At Robert E. Lee’s homeplace. To watch the fireworks over Washington. THE prime location to see them. Sit on the grass. On a hill. You get the picture.
My wife could not join me in DC, so I had a small apartment not far from the entrance to the cemetery. My daughter was spending the summer with me, so she and I planned to go. The morning of the 4throlled around. It was a hot, muggy day so I decided to wear shorts. And a tee shirt. With a penguin on the front. It was a picnic. Be comfortable. And tennis shoes.
Since it was a picnic and I’m from the South I thought I needed to bring something. What better than a bucket of Popeyes? Bucket in hand, we walked to the entrance where I told the guard where we were going and showed him our ENGRAVED invitation. Was that a smirk on his face as he waved us in?
We got to General Lee’s house and saw a bunch of men in black pants, white shirts and
cut-away jackets moving through the crowd with silver trays. I was asked for my invitation by a man in a tuxedo. I asked him to hold my bucket of Popeye’s while I dug it out of my pocket. By that time, my daughter was ready to defect to the Russians. We were in the midst of a very formal, like with waiters, a wine bar, those little sandwiches on the silver trays and a very large pig roasting over an open pit 4thof July picnic.
I found a place beneath one of the catering trucks to stash my bucket. We got in line, penguin shirt and all and had massive amounts of food. We watched the fireworks and when it was sufficiently dark, I retrieved my bucket of chicken and we walked home.
It took her almost a year to speak to me again, but we had chicken for a week.
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