An Unexpected Reunion

Recently my father's extended family gathered in a small town on the Tennessee/Kentucky border for a family reunion and "Cemetery Celebration."  I was at first reluctant to go, but Dr. Matsunaga's frequent talks on honoring our ancestors and departed loved ones motivated me to encourage members of my immediate West Coast family to make the trip.  By the time of the reunion our branch of the family had the largest representation and logged the most miles of travel.  One of my nieces and her family of 5 came from London, England. Altogether there were about 75 people representing fourteen States and several countries.  I believe it was partly my enthusiasm as the oldest of the proximate generation of baby boomers that generated such good attendance.

My father passed away 20 years ago at a relatively young age after a series of illnesses. I had saved a portion of his ashes, so this seemed a good time to return them to his boyhood home.  When I suggested the idea to a cousin who lived near Dad's last surviving sister of 10 brothers and sisters, he responded with a big "yes" from her.  She adored her big brother and bringing him home would add an important part to her plans for the "Cemetery Celebration."

"Cemetery Celebration" was simply a colorful description for my Aunt Sarah's dedication of a large, new memorial headstone for her father, mother and 10 siblings. The 4 oldest male descendants of her ten siblings (by humorous decree of the oldest females) had to make speeches at the cemetery event as well.  As a family we are not known for our laconic natures, so we were limited to three minutes each.  Mine was the most popular because I limited it to a brief two minutes, while my cousins rambled happily for 10 minutes each under the hot, noonday  sun.

Much of the cemetery land had been donated by my grandfather Edward Wallace Bryan, so many other relatives were also buried there.  We identified many unfamiliar family names, found great grandparents and many other unknown relatives.  The younger children quickly adopted the term "Ancestors' Day" and romped freely through the headstones cataloguing names and memories. We sang "Old Kentucky Home" and "Amazing Grace" as Jane Kolb our musical cousin played the Dulcimer in delicate counterpoint.  For me every smile and tear were signs of our "interbeing" and of the infinite connections we all share in this mysterious and wondrous life. 

An older woman in a far corner of the cemetery attracted my attention as she carefully tended three graves with fresh flowers.  I walked across and introduced myself, soon learning that she was a distant relative, who came every week to visit her deceased children and husband.  She felt near them here, and was overjoyed when I told her what we were doing as "a big crowd" on the other side of the large meadow-like cemetery. I invited her to join us, but she declined saying this was "her time" with her own little family.  While talking to her, she volunteered the exact nature of our interfamily connections to Robert Penn Warren, a Poet Laureate of the United States, whose memorial museum is in Guthrie. My Dad had told me that once, and as it turned out the cousin-relationship was noted in the museum.

Guthie is a small town now, diminished by time and urbanization to a friendly arts and craft village not far from Nashville, Tennessee, Hopkinsville, Ky, and Fort Campbell, Ky. Most of my older relatives of my Father's generation had served (or worked) at Fort Campbell during WW2, before shipping overseas. One of my cousins had enough military clearance to offer a tour of the Fort's major centers.  Fort Campbell is well known as the home of the 101st Airborne Division, which has served almost continuously in the Iraq War and Occupation.

My Dad's oldest sister had worked in management at Fort Campbell for the Department of the Army for all her adult life, beginning her career when all her brothers enlisted. She died at age 93 while I was in a Zen Buddhist monastic retreat in New York.  Our Monastery Abbot, held a special memorial for her at my request. I was joined by some twenty visiting monks from Japan along with about 75 current Sesshin attendees. I can never forget their kindness to me in honoring my family matriarch.    

One morning I discovered that all five of the employees at the nearby freeway Starbucks were wives of soldiers in Iraq.  They all wore medals and other reminders, and proudly shared their special bonds of mutual support. Every single customer wished them well, some even offering small prayers and blessings as they received their morning coffee: "God bless your husband." or "May your husband be safe from harm." There is no ignoring the war in this part of the United States. It is part of the daily life of almost everyone in one way or another.  My heart was touched by the mutual support these war wives and their community showed for each other is such small considerate ways. It was not about the war. It was about love and tender concern. 

When my Dad was young in the "20s" and "30s", Guthrie was a thriving railroad center. As a boy, he once rode a train to Chicago and never forgot it.  Later, after WW2, he settled in Sparks, Nevada, because the Nevada railroad town reminded him of his boyhood home.  A wide expanse of about 6 sets of RR tracks still pass through Guthrie, close by the cemetery.  We placed Dad's ashes as close to the tracks as possible to celebrate his boyhood desire to travel on the great rail interconnections Westward across our great country..  To an inland youth those great trains were steaming engines of light to far worlds of adventure, romance, and opportunity. 

Just as we placed the ashes, a gleaming, railroad engine came sailing by, blowing the thrilling music of the great train horn loud and clear. I felt my father's heart in my own for just that brief moment. Goodbye once more... Dad, I love you so much...I will never forget you.. Goodbye Phil..., I felt his kind words answer one more time as our hearts joined together, but we will meet again and again and again if we listen closely though the sound of our remembering hearts.  The sounds of these great trains will always be my reminder.

The trip had endless surprises of love and reunion.  All our beloved, departed ancestors joined us through recollection and reminder. We talked about our great grandparents, our grandmother and grandfather, all our mothers and fathers, others who departed so early in life as little children, of brave warriors, and solid farmers, and pioneering women carrying both babies for love and Kentucky Long Rifles for food and protection in frontier settlements.  My ancestors on both sides were among the first settlers of the new Western Frontier, before and shortly after the American Revolution. I learned at the reunion that many were influenced by alliances and friendships with the Shawnees, Choctaws, and Cherokees of the regions nearer to the Western Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, adopting the Indians' natural ways into their own resilient religious views. They formed sympathetic bonds and friendships with Native Tribes that have become family folklore, some even claiming undocumented blood relationships.

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My mother and her ancestors are buried about 80 miles away from Guthrie in a much larger community, so my daughter Kim and I decided to visit that cemetery before leaving for the West Coast.  When we got to the cemetery, the office was closed for Memorial Day.  We searched for several hours but could not find the gravesites. We were out of time and had to drive to Nashville for our flight. I said I would walk back along the one road we had not searched in the sprawling cemetery grounds as Kim drove along the other roads for a last look.  I had no expectations. This was more my childhood home, so my Mom's spirit of home was everywhere around me anyway......

I have only four actual "blood" siblings, all sisters.  But I did have an extremely close friend.  We were closer than brothers in most ways. Our families both had some difficulties. We came to rely on each other for deeper bonds of understanding and sympathy during troubled times. We often stayed for a time at each other's houses.  Our parents and grandparents supported our deep friendship, wisely recognizing that we helped to make up for each other's loss of a parent at a young age, his mother and my father (who had moved away).  We did everything together, including saving each other's life on multiple occasions from river drowning or falling off quarry cliffs or misguided cave exploration.

When we were 11 at "Indian Camp," we slashed our palms with scout knives, joining hands Shawnee style to become blood brothers for life. We fell in love with the same girls more than once, and sometimes had brotherly "fights" over those girls (one later became my wife, another became his). We got our first real job together. We studied together and competed for school honors in math and science.  We were fast runners, long swimmers, and high divers ... both lifeguards on the deep, wide river together. Kit was always leaner, faster and stronger. We played "golf in the kingdom" almost every summer day as boys. For years we shared one set of clubs, often retrieving the "driver" from the river where it sometimes followed high slicing golf balls into the muddy waters of river's edge. We supplied whatever money the other needed without hesitation if we had it. We loved without question and trusted without reservation.

Our friendship remained the same until our early twenties, when our young marriages and the early days of the Vietnam War finally split us up. "Kit" went to Vietnam and I stayed in college while tending to my beautiful wife and young daughters.  We stayed in contact intermittently. He was wounded several times, decorated for bravery, and eventually after three tours of duty, returned home to become a CPA. The last time we talked was in the mid-nineties, but I have never had a single day in my life that I have not thought of my 'brother' Kit...

Kit died of Esophageal Cancer over a year ago in his home of Atlanta, Georgia.  He told no one about it and only shared his suffering with his wife, children and those who needed to know for medical reasons. There was no known funeral, and I assumed he had been buried in Atlanta by his wife.  When I first heard the news of his death, some youthful part of me seemed to die as well.  As long as Kit was alive, my boyhood was alive. There was no part of my youthful memories that didn't have more of Kit than of me. How could we have let our brotherhood just fade away? How could I have let it die so long ago?

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...........Ahead of me on the walk out of the cemetery, I saw a large concrete structure with Carson on it.  I thought...that must be Kit's grandfather, a locally famous physician. I'll just take a look.  Yes, it was Dr. James O. Carson or "Kit" as all the Carson men were called.  Then another smaller monument, Kit's father William, another Dr. "Kit," and there was his mother, and his grandmother and his Aunt Louise, my grandmother's best friend. Suddenly I felt...could Kit be here too? Is it possible? But he died in Atlanta, so far away.  I turned slowly around looking carefully, then feeling drawn to a shady, secluded spot down a narrow incline. I saw a small stone marker almost hidden under a low willow. 

I fell to my knees on Kit''s simply marked grave, bowing in grief as I saw a single yellow veteran's memorial rose on his stone. "Kit, Kit, Kit ...I am so sorry...I am so sorry...I am so sorry." "I miss you so much."  Somehow then, in my deepest Buddha Heart I heard a sweet song rising and reminding me:  Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu...Infninite Life, Infinite Light, Infinite Compassion, Infinite Love, Infinite Being... nothing is lost and life is found, Namu Amida Butsu...always light, always love, always brothers, always in my heart, once and once again　young Shawnee Brothers in Amida's embrace. Namu Amida Butsu, my brother, Namu Amida Bu.