Denny's Funeral

I’m sorry to subject my readers to two full blogs about this. I know I need to sit down and finish writing about my Memphis trip, but my mind keeps going back to my family members in their time of sorrow.

We gathered yesterday to mourn the passing of my cousin Denny Reaves. We were to meet at 11 at a park in Topeka and a more reasonable man would have left Thursday night. But Thursday was Moonshot’s birthday and I didn’t want to shortchange her special day. So, I set the alarm for 4:20 and hit the highway by 5AM. It turned out to be a bit earlier than necessary, but I didn’t want to get stuck in Kansas City rush hour traffic, so I left plenty of time. I arrived around 9:30 and was able to sneak in about an hour nap in my Mini while I waited for the rest of the family to roll in.

The service was informal, but nicely personalized. We spread his ashes on the banks of a small lake in a park he liked while listening to Steve Miller sing “of the pompatous of love.” And because he was an avid Frisbee golfer, we all wrote a message on a disc and one of his buddies launched it into the center of the lake. It was fitting.

The major thought that kept coming to me during the service was that I wish I had known him better. Oh, we saw each other at family get-togethers and enjoyed each other’s company, but it was, in the end, a very surface level relationship. I suppose it’s a fairly typical funeral thought to wish you had spent more time with the departed, but I came away from Topeka with the realization that I had missed out on really knowing an amazing person. His friends and close family got up and spoke about him, and even by the standards of funeral flattery, what they had to say about him was poignant and I found myself wishing I had a story or two to add…but no significant moment came to mind.

Many of my thoughts during the ceremony went to his family. His two daughters Skyler (5) and Meadow (3?) were lucky enough to be born to a great dad, but will probably never have strong memories of him. His mom, Bev, seemed lost as she tried to make sense of a loss that no one should have to suffer. And even his ex-wife, Rebecca wept openly.

Back at the meeting hall, I spent a few free moments talking with his older sister, Shannon. I hadn’t thought about it until I sat down with her, but I was one of the few people in the room with a similar experience in my past. I think having a kindred spirit to talk to seemed to give her hope since I do know what she is going through. I could tell her from experience that while the healing process will be tough and will never really be over, it does get better. It does get easier. And there will be a time when happy memories of him overpower the grief. I told her she was welcome to call me any time she felt she needed to, but I doubt she will. We just don’t know each other as well as either of us would like. My relationship with her is unfortunately much like my relationship with Denny…friendly, but not especially close. Technically she is my third cousin and I guess I should feel lucky that I’m as close to a third cousin as I am. But in times like this, when you want to reach out and help someone you care about, but realize that the necessary emotional bridges just aren’t in place, it’s hard not to kick yourself for squandered opportunities. I’ll probably send her an email in the next few days to reiterate my offer, just so she knows I was serious and not just making comforting funeral small talk.

The shame of the situation is that the loss seems so random. These are the details as best as we can reconstruct them. He had returned from a night of drinking around 1:30 in the morning. As was his custom at such times, he went to the kitchen to cook a snack. But this time, he passed out in his living room before the cooking was done and over the next few hours his apartment slowly filled with smoke. Due to lack of maintenance, no smoke alarm sounded. Around 3:30, the upstairs neighbor called the property manager to let him know she smelled smoke and was planning to call the fire department. The property manager told her not to call the fire department and promptly went back to bed. At 5:30 the neighbor continued to smell smoke and called the fire department despite the property manager’s ridiculous recommendation. Around 6:30 the firemen showed up and put out the fire. Denny was discovered in the closet by the front door having died from smoke inhalation. A chair had been overturned in front of the main door. This lead the local fire inspector to originally announce that the fire had not been accidental since the door had been “barricaded”. Upon later reflection that a tipped-over chair does not constitute a barricade, it was determined that Denny had simply been so disoriented by smoke inhalation by the time he woke that he could not find the front door past the chair he most likely overturned in his panic.

Such unlikely tragedies are always the hardest to internalize. So many fluke occurrences had to line up to make this situation lethal. Had Denny not been drunk, had Denny not tried to cook a snack, had Denny not passed out, had Denny maintained his smoke detectors, had Denny woke up before he inhaled so much smoke, had the upstairs neighbor called the fire department instead of the property manager, had the now un-employed property manager not talked the neighbor out of calling the firemen, had the firemen’s response time been better…Denny would still be with us.

In the end, we go on. It’s what we do as mortal beings, I suppose. It’s the price we pay for loving our fellow mortals. But we keep loving, even though we know that everyone in our life will eventually die. And since many of them will die in our lifetime, we know that grief will be a nearly constant partner in our life. However, no one in that room yesterday would measure their grief greater than the joy they had received from having Denny in their lives. So, while we mourn his sudden absence, we remember that the only reason the loss hurts so much is that we were so incredibly fortunate in the first place.

So, while Denny might not have been as big a part of my life as I would have liked, and while I’m sad today at his loss, primarily I’m just grateful for what I got.

In short…thanks, Denny, for a life well lived.