Last Respects

by Edwin F. Kindler II

Dedicated to Mr. Timothy Alan Gurnsey of Painted Post, NY

(1961- 2006)

A man dies. His family mourns. That’s how it always happens, right? But life goes on and on, and while you are sorry for the people you see, most of the time you don’t know the person, and can’t feel truly sorry for the family, however much you try. This time however, a man had died, the family grieved, and this time I truly grieved, too.

The man was my baseball coach, and good neighbor. I play with his kids often. My family knew him well enough that we decided that most of us would go to his wake. The wake had friendly enough staff, but the line was so long through the place that it took my family about a half hour just to get up four small stairs, and into a room where the family wanted us to watch a video on his life. From there it took us about twenty minutes to get to the family.

Ah, the family. This was possibly the saddest part of the whole thing. First we expressed our condolences to his sisters, then we walked up to his parents, who were extremely sad, although they were trying not to show it. After that, we went on to his oldest daughter, who is sixteen. She said, “Oh, hi, guys!” And threw herself onto us. And I mean threw. Have you ever tried being a boy (that makes a difference) with a girl throwing herself on you, with her almost-six-feet-tall muscular boy friend standing there and looking at you? Worse, I think he knows where I live. (groan) The mother was next, and she also hugged us. The youngest kids, a boy and a girl, my friends, were last. I just said, "Hi."

We went home, and night passed, and we prepared to go to the funeral.

The funeral was sad, with laughter mixed in; my brother and I served at the Mass, because we wanted to do something special for his family. After Mass, we went to the graveyard in a funeral procession, which was 15 cars long, or so. My mom was worried we would be stopped by the police because our car didn’t have a little flag that said funeral, and we didn’t have our hazard lights on, which was bad, because the procession kept going through red lights.

At the gravesite, we heard another prayer. Everybody went to touch the coffin one last time, and pay their last respects to a man well loved, Mr. Timothy A. Gurnsey.

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