July 10, 2006

BLOG ONLY THIS WEEK

I’m sorry I’m not writing a book review this week, but I’m scrambling to catch up on my work. This has been one of the most hectic summers I can ever remember, and my deadline passed me without even giving me a nod. While my editor is very understanding, my work ethic is giving me hell about being late with a promised Sookie . . . or any other book, for that matter. I’ve never liked being late for anything, and middle age hasn’t changed that at all.

I warn you, in this blog I wax all solemn and portentous, because I’m in that kind of mood.

Last week was a cycle-of-life week. I went to a funeral, that of a very good friend of my parents’, and I went to wedding, the son of neighbors. Each ritual went according to plan and without any big visible glitches. My parents’ friend, Mr. Bailey, was buried as modestly as he would have wished, because he was a modest man who believed in service to God and his fellow man. He lived a wonderful life to the great age of 87, and for the most part was hale and hearty to the end. I am sure his only regret would have been leaving his wife of sixty-three years.

The wedding was equally modest, a rather small country-style wedding in a Baptist church here in town. The bride and groom were ridiculously young and hopeful, very much in love. Even the parents seemed far too youthful to have children that were getting married. There was the usual southern celebration -- punch and cake in the fellowship hall adjoining the church. I was glad to be there, to see the affection and optimism surrounding the young couple, still in their teens.

If my life had had a soundtrack this past week, it would have been the song “The Circle of Life,” from The Lion King. But my reflections were not about the inevitability of love and death, but about the importance of the ritual with which we observe these milestones. There’s no telling how many weddings and funerals I’ll attend in the next twenty years, say. And I might be tempted to think, “What’s one more?” I pretty much know how the ceremony will go, with minor variations for denomination and circumstances. Why turn up?

We should turn up because that’s what lends the event some of its significance, the fact that the community comes to observe it. Taking vows in front of witnesses, bidding loved ones goodbye and consigning them to God, these are public rituals that mark a beginning and an end. For a wedding, it’s the end of two separate lives and the beginning of a life together. At a funeral, it’s the end of life here on earth and the beginning of the life of the survivors without the deceased. (Of course, lots of us believe that it marks the beginning of the dead person’s life after death.)

The next time you’re tempted to stay home from a wedding or a funeral, pull on your church clothes and show up for the ceremony. It’s a part of your life, and on some level, you’ll be the richer for it.

Charlaine Harris