THE FRONT ROW!

The Front Row

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.

Book of Eccleziates

There are at least three generation of ladies named Anna Marie in Doe's family. The current occupant of the name is our niece, Anna Marie Chamberlain. Her sister asked me if I had ever written anything about Bud and Cece Chamberlain, Doe's mom and dad. Unfortunately, I guess I haven't. I will have to work on that. However, I do have a piece on Anna Marie, the great aunt of the current Anna Marie. It is such a pretty name.

When Anna Marie died, I wrote this piece about the passing of the generations.

The Owens family of brothers and sisters all sat quietly in the front row of the sanctuary of the funeral home looking forward to their older sister, who lay in the casket looking very frail and even older than her eighty years would imply. They sat there in solitude with their own special memories of their big sister, Anna Marie. She was preceded in death by her brother Harvey J. As they say in the obituaries.

They rest of the family, sons and daughter, nephews and nieces sat behind them. Who was Anna Marie and what did her life mean to those in the room? Each has their remembrances of who she was. The younger members of the Owen descendants don’t know her at all beyond asking the question as to who was that really old woman at the family gathering. The young seem to only see the old. They never look into their eyes and see that this person was also there age once, and they had all the hopes and dreams that these kids have. The old have lived a full life full of experiences. But youth never asks.

Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland in his book How We Die writes, "The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it. This is a form of hope we can all achieve, and it is the most abiding of all. Hope resides in the meaning of what our lives have been."

Anna Marie’s sister, Jo, put together a scrap book of photographs that depicted some of the life of Anna Marie Owen. It showed a beautiful young girl and woman, yet a woman that never married until she was fifty-seven, and then was widowed just three years later. I saw the real Anna Marie for the first time through that scrap book. The priest in his eulogy talked of Anna Marie as a visionary. She made the best of her choice to be a teacher. In those days woman had basically three options in career beyond that of mother and homemaker, teacher, nurse or clerical. Anna chose teaching, and then followed Harvey J. to Europe to teach military dependents in Germany and Italy for more than seventeen years. She traveled to Europe well before it was as ordinary as it is today. She was a woman of culture. She took beautiful pictures of various scenes and cathedrals all over Europe. One of the cathedrals was visited by her niece, Anna Marie, as part of a school trip. The younger Anna Marie marveled that the older Anna Marie had stood in the same spot as she many years before. It created a special bond for her. It’s too bad they could not have shared that bond while aunt Anna Marie was alive.

Anna Marie was a religious person. The priest gave her the last rights, but even from her near comatose state when the priest gave her permission to go to a greater place she answered she knew and thanked him and she died in the early morning hours the next day.

What we saw in the scrap book was the real Anna Marie. What we see in the casket was a small body ravaged by Alzheimer's and alcoholism. I wonder what demons drew her to alcohol. Was it her lost happiness in widowhood? Everyone has demons and weaknesses in their lives. In her religious beliefs she commented that suicide was a sin, but did she hasten her death through alcohol? Alcohol and Alzheimer's was not what her life was about. It is a detraction to what had been a life of adventure and the rewards of teaching the young.

And so the front row mourns in their way and we mourn in our way from the second row, knowing that some day too soon we will take our places on the front row and mourn as the older generation mourns today. In the back of the room the thought hasn’t even come up yet. The younger generation is too far removed from the first and second row. We know we are about to inherit the role of front row mourners, the older generation. And we will become the generation of the unasked. We can take comfort in the fact that we a merely playing out life’s predestined roles as all before us have done, and the world moves forward and we all move up to the front row.

Have a nice day!

Sam