The event planner
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
Years ago, my sister and I started a business in the Napa Valley planning events. We've done everything from birthday parties to Passion plays, conventions to town celebrations. If you had an event coming up, we'd add some zip to the occasion. So much for city life — now we plan events in Ramona!
This event planning evidently runs in the family. Our Grandma Schubert was an event planner (although she didn't branch outside of family events) with her famous Sunday dinners, weddings in the front room, and wakes with the body in attendance.
We noticed a long time ago the biggest events in the country are funerals. Funerals are great social connections for someone in their 80s and 90s. You aren't going to a lot of other events at that age. You can't go to dances because you can't move. You can't go out to eat because your driver's license says no driving after dark. Funerals are YOUR social event because your peer group is dying. My Aunt Frieda drives from Wichita to attend funerals in the country. "It's a chance to see all my relatives," she explains.
My sister often takes our friend Tony to social occasions — a college reunion, a family wedding; but at his age (94), given his social circle, the biggest events are funerals.
"Funerals and weddings, I get them all mixed up with punch and cake," Jess says with a laugh.
It was exciting for Tony to walk in the door at a recent funeral service and have the relatives of the person who died come up and say "You're Tony, aren't you?" That recognition was worth the whole trip, even if you couldn't hear the eulogy.
"There was a 30-year-old escorting his 90-year-old grandfather sitting at our table afterwards," said Jessica. "To see this younger guy, a darling man who handled his grandfather with such respect, telling our table of his travels — what joy he brought to the occasion. Usually, I'm the one who brings that kind of energy to the table, and here I was now — an older generation myself, basking in the warmth of his conversation. It was lovely."
On the way home, Tony was quiet. When you attend a friend's funeral, you mourn their death as well as your own. "Well, time's marching on!" he muttered, as he does after every funeral, "Nothing you can do about it."
The most recent event Tony attended was a concert at McPherson College. Once he got seated he looked around at the audience and said, "I don't see anyone I know," his booming voice echoing through the quiet concert hall, "I guess if someone knows me, they'll have to come and present themselves." Within a minute or two his friends, the Diepenbrocks from McPherson were at his chair. It made his day!
Exiting after the concert, someone else approached, "You were a senior when I was a freshman here," the octogenarian announced. "I remember you had a really impressive car!" Tony beamed!
"You do know that when you are old you become invisible," someone said the other day. That comment haunted me because of the truth in the statement. As you age, you can't see as well, you can't remember as well, you can't hear as well. Conversations, connections become labored — almost impossible — and you are cut off from the faster pace of normal interactions. Being cut off like that, by life's circumstances, could be one of the biggest sorrows of aging.
But, so long as people are able to stay in a community, they still are touched by the nuance of life — the touch of a hand, the laughter of a child, the ability to go and come at will.
Such simple pleasures — even the pleasure of going to a funeral — that we take for granted, until we can no longer do them, on another day in the country!
