OCTOBER 14, 2023 – I was strolling through Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, waiting for a return flight to the U.S. when I received the call from the hospice nurse at CareOne. UB had “landed” at approximately 5:00 a.m. New Jersey time. Close behind the call I got Queequeg’s text: “Uncle Bruce died peacefully, dreaming of old times.” I was never able to follow up with Queequeg about what he’d meant by “old times.” Had unsentimental UB actually been mumbling about “old times” while he was in the delirium of his final approach? And given that UB was less than two months from his 95th birthday, what exactly were the “old times”? The 20s, the 30s, the 40s, the 60s . . . 1980? I felt safe in assuming that “old times” pre-dated UB’s infatuation with the Serbian drug addict living in London.
Despite all the stress UB had caused me, I was kind to him in my journal entry for that day, June 24, 2017: “As unsurprising as UB’s demise was, it did affect me. Gone is a character who had a profound impact on my life—he was responsible for my love of skiing, my choice of colleges, my love for travel.”
Two days later my journal reflected the tongue-in-cheek approach I took to drafting an obituary:
I’m beginning to think that my sisters Elsa and Kristina do not share my sense of humor. Aboard the flight home I’d scratched out a draft obituary, then yesterday, typed it up and emailed it to Nina, Elsa, and Jenny. Elsa and Nina both took issue with inclusion of “a man of resolute alternative opinions” in a long line of descriptors, including “cat lover, voracious reader, life-long learner, consummate gardener, European traveler, exhibitor of rug-cleaning equipment at the 1960 World’s Fair in Brussels, and “the man who invented skiing” (which Elsa didn’t begin to understand). Both [Nina and Elsa] also took issue with the sentence, “His wiley ways will be missed.”
Jenny did not respond to the email, but later in the day [. . .] when I’d mentioned the above-referenced somewhat humorous elements of the obituary, she laughed—no surprise there.
When I called Cliff and read my draft obituary to him, he laughed heartily. Of course he would, given the role of Wile E. Coyote he’d shared with me for so many years.
There would be no funeral service for UB. He was a non-believer and had no church affiliation whatsoever. However, both Cliff and I wanted to stage some kind of memorial service in which we could celebrate his life. I took the lead and assembled a PowerPoint “show” for a small gathering in the “chapel” of the local funeral home. The show was patterned after the numerous “Fiddler under the Roof” winter house concerts I’d produced over the years in conspiracy with a couple of musical lawyer friends. In his obituary/memorial service notice, I said the show would be “captivating.”
Nina suggested that some of us play our violins at the service. This surprised me. Though she’d played Meditation from Thaïs at Dad’s funeral (and done a beautiful job of it), there had been no groundswell among us four to perform at Mother’s funeral. Yet now Nina would have us play in memory of UB, who apart from attending Nina’s Boston Pops concerts when the Pops visited Newark, never expressed any interest whatsoever in our musical careers. I suggested instead that we commission Cliff to hire some crooner to sing the show tunes that UB used to whistle incessantly when we were kids.
We ultimately dispensed with music altogether. Despite Cliff’s extensive connections, the memorial service entertainment was confined to an honor guard appearing at the appointed time to play taps and fold the flag in honor of a member of the Greatest Generation[1]. At the very last minute I learned that by law, the family of a veteran can request (which request “shall be granted”) an honor guard at the veteran’s funeral. Given the care with which UB had assembled a scrapbook of his army days during World War II, I figured the presence of the honor guard at his memorial service would be respectful and otherwise appropriate.
But I wondered if the stiff-lipped soldiers who presented me with the smartly-folded flag[2] would raise an eyebrow if they were told about UB’s most heroic act during the war: house-and-dog sitting for the commandant of Fort Benning, when said commandant was off in Washington on official business. Or would the honor guard feel dishonored by the revelation that UB had been rejected from ROTC because—according to his rejection notice—he “Lacks personal force,” possessed a “Colorless personality,” and had an “Unmilitary appearance.”[3] Or, I thought, were those deficiencies just code for “no gays need apply”?
The service, or rather, my hour-long PowerPoint show and story-telling about the life of UB, was well attended. Representing our family were Elsa and her daughter Linnea, Jenny, and my son Byron. (Nina hadn’t been to Rutherford in years and was uncomfortable navigating there on her own.) Cliff, of course, attended, along with his wife Jeanette, Queequeg, and Angelo. Our family attorney, Tom Sullivan, was also on hand along with Jimmy Rizzo, and a newspaper man who was also the Rutherford historian, members of UB’s exercise class, and strangers to me who said they’d been acquainted with UB. The funeral directors were present too, mostly for the entertainment value, which they said they’d not witnessed before in such a manner in their funeral “chapel.”
As a kind of inside joke for Cliff, my PowerPoint show included a slide featuring the old United Van Lines marketing term, “Sanitized.”[4] When the slide appeared early in my presentation, I winked at Cliff and said, “This will be a somewhat sanitized version of history.”
In my journal I described the main tenor of the presentation:
The “presentation” was a kind of grand send-off for “Uncle Bruce,” who lived just shy of 95 years and was as feisty as could be nearly to the end. As a fixture in our lives, and at many junctures, a critical one, Uncle Bruce’s overall influence cannot be overstated. The last 20 years of his life were chaotic and colorful, often with negative consequences, but the “presentation” which took into account the full range of his life, allowed people to appreciate the more complete picture of his fascinating life, times, and character. I like to think that on some level or at least at some time in his life, he would have approved the display that I produced in his memory.
Following the service Cliff and Jeanette joined us family members at Hillside to observe the burial of some of UB’s ashes at the Holman gravesite. Just as the ceremony ended, a towering thunderhead rising from the oppressive heat and humidity moved into position and unleashed its brief fury over us.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[2] The flag now rests on the mantel inside the cove house at Hamburg.
[3] I found the notice in UB’s army scrapbook. I was puzzled as to why he’d include such a humiliating scorecard.
