Joe

Joel B. Rockstead died early on a Saturday morning in Arlington, Washington, after he had been brought home from the hospital to be with his family. He was my friend.

We met at the first organizational meeting of the Lake Stevens Cub Scouts back in 2002 or so; the boys had been brainwashed by some of the other kids in school and decided to join the Scouts and so, like any father wanting his children to have all the good things in life, I took them to the meeting so we could get the lay of the land and meet all the other young fathers and sons.

The intent of the meeting was to split the boys up into dens and appoint den leaders from among the grim-faced adults in attendance. When they asked for volunteers to lead dens, Joe and Marilyn were among the first to raise their hands. That's the kind of people they were.

In this area of town, they stood out in ways that weren't always comfortable. They didn't wear the fanciest clothes, they didn't drive the latest cars, and their kids weren't the best-behaved. To some, they came across as a little bit backwoods, a bit rough around the edges. Lake Stevens was a bedroom community for many of the folks who worked down at the Boeing plant down in Everett; there were a lot of well-paid engineers and managers and other successful businessmen in town; there were also a lot of blue-collar machinists and other hands-on professionals. Joe and Marilyn weren't part of either of those groups. Joe was definitely blue-collar, but he was more of a jack-of-all trades, doing construction and road work and whatever else he could do to put food on the table. He'd worked at NAPA for awhile and really enjoyed that. But when we all gathered around to organize the Scout dens, he was just a care-worn guy who looked a bit older than the rest.

But he and Marilyn wanted to be a part of their kids' lives, and they were willing to put their money where their mouths were. They volunteered. And since we lived in relative close proximity to them -- they were just down the street a ways -- we were put in their den.

I noticed (but didn't say anything at the time) that the rest of the folks were not so eager to join Joe's den once they got a look at him. It was understandable, I suppose, as most parents want their den leaders to look a certain way, act a certain way. Joe was never one to cater to anyone else's whims. He was who he was.

Over the next couple of years, we had a lot of fun with them. Joe and Marilyn and I would work on putting the meetings together and going through the Scout handbooks to help the boys get their badges and ranks. At the beginning, there were quite a few families in our den. But as time went by, all of the rest of them either dropped Scouts or dropped us. There was at least one family that specifically dropped us because they didn't feel comfortable hanging out with "people like Joe". That really hurt. In the end, it was just Joe and Marilyn and I and the four boys. We kept it going right up to the point where we moved to Michigan.

And even after that, Joe kept in touch. He called just about every week for the next 20 years. Sometimes he was in a bad mood, complaining about something that had gone wrong or some financial stress he was undergoing, especially when either he or Marilyn came down sick. Since she was diabetic and he was epileptic and suffering from Crohn's Disease, that happened quite often. But they never let little things like that (!) get in their way. They continued to enjoy being with family and go on camping trips and help their family any way they could. And call us up often to share their lives with us.

Joe also called up when good things would happen, like when they'd get a new (used) car or move to a new place or when there was a new addition to the family. And most especially when they decided to become Christians after finding a church in the Granite Falls area.

Since they were both living on Social Security, they never had much money; but they managed to create a nice life together. No matter what kind of hardships came their way, they went through it together. And they shared all those things, good and bad, with us.

We were able to visit them a few times on the occasion we'd come out to visit our relatives in Washington. Back when they were living in Marysville, we took the family out for a nice buffet dinner. When they were living in Granite Falls, they hosted us at their place for a wonderful barbecued-chicken dinner. And when they were living out in Eastern Washington near Spokane, we took them out for dinner again. We had fun trading back and forth.

And then just a couple years ago, Marilyn got really sick, so sick that they had to move back to Western Washington to be near family. And so it was that just after Deb's wedding, I flew out to say good-bye to her at their home about four hours before she died.

For the next couple years, Joe continued to call me diligently, sometimes once a week, sometimes multiple times. He often cried as he told me how much he missed Marilyn -- but he believed that he would be seeing her again. Given the cancers that started ravaging his body, including lungs, liver and brain, he knew it wouldn't be long (but he sure put up a good fight!). And he started calling me every other day, right up to the time when his cancer took away his ability to speak.

He died February 10th. I didn't get a chance to talk to him before he died. And I didn't get a chance to see him at all. But as a good friend reminded me, he knew I was coming. He knew.

And although I am sad that he is no longer with us, I am happy that he is now at peace.

Visitation

The attendance at the little church on the highway was nearly doubled this morning owing to the great number of family and friends who had come to pay their respects to my mother, not only for her life-long faith in God but also for her devotion and loyalty to my father whom she had followed all over the United States as he performed the job for which he felt called.

It was one of those beautiful Texas winter mornings where the sky is blue and the sun is shining and the air is comfortably cool enough to warrant light jackets. As is our custom, Dad and I opened the building and turned on the lights and the heat and greeted folks as they arrived. The regulars came in and shook our hands and extended their condolences and then stood around to meet the friends and family and make them feel at home. Normally there are around 30 regular attendees; today there were well over 70.

Normally I would be leading the singing for both the Bible Class and the Worship service but today as one of the grieving family I was allowed to just sit in the pew with the rest and practice my harmonies. The Hopkins boys took on the song-leading responsibilities, and there was a guest preacher (Charles) so Dad could relax for the morning (although he would have been happy to do the lessons himself).

Charles taught the Bible Class and then did the sermon as well. My brain was far too foggy to remember what was said. I'm sure he understood our preoccupation.

As soon as the service was over, the family headed back to the ranch to eat a quick lunch as we were expected to be over at the funeral home prior to two o'clock for the Visitation. We ate quickly and spent a little while chatting; Dad went over earlier than the rest. Cheryl and I followed soon after.

The funeral home was laid out into four basic rooms: a conference room up front, a large gathering room in the middle, the viewing room with the casket to the left of the gathering room, and a smaller overflow room to the right. Most everyone milled around in the gathering room or walked reverently past Mom's casket, with the right-side room being used mainly by those who had brought small children. The video presentation of Mom's life was playing in the conference room and in the back of the gathering room.

We hung out for nearly the entire two hours, from 2 til 4 pm. There were lots of family and friends we hadn't seen in quite a while. We heard lots of stories about Mom and what a wonderful person she'd been, as friend, sister, cousin, mother, grandmother. It would have been nice to record them all -- but that would've been a bit unwieldy to arrange. It was sufficient to wander around the room and catch stories here and there, little bits of conversation that were passing around the room like loose balloons in the wind.

It was odd seeing Mom in her casket all done up like she was sleeping. Of course she doesn't really look like she's just sleeping; no one ever does. There's always some level of lifelessness to the bodies on display in caskets even if the makeup is perfect. There's a level of unreal stillness to a body that can't be faked by the living; or perhaps it could be said that there's an realism in the subtle motion of a living body that can't be duplicated by a corpse. Her hands in particular looked far too flat and still to be living. That helped to reduce the disquiet of being around the shell of what had once been my mother. It was obvious that she wasn't there anymore. She was gone; whatever soul/spirit had once inhabited that body was long gone. I don't like open casket visitations or funeral services as a rule. I don't need to see the body to know that it is no longer in use. I'd rather remember them as they were in life: vibrant, colorful, exuberant, in motion. I'd rather just look at portraits taken in their prime. Better yet, a sequence of portraits showing them from youth to middle age. We can skip the older, decrepit years. Those are just depressing.

After it was all done and they were ready to usher us out, we went back to the ranch to get some dinner. Dad and Mike Hardaway and I went to Dad's office and worked on the Order of Service for the funeral. I wasn't particularly hungry so took a walk around the property to do some thinking and then went inside to take a nap and try to remove the fuzz from my brain.

It almost worked.