Truth does not wait on us. It comes in its own time, when it is ready, not when we are ready for it. Sometimes it comes with a hard chill. We have just had a season of truths for which we were not ready, as we have lost a number of alumni from Pawhuska High School. This has been difficult for all of us.
In my case, I have been absolutely stunned by some of the deaths that we, as a connected group, have experienced in such a brief time. Long ago, when we were in our classes and divided by years apart, we might have thought of a classmate as only someone in the class of our year and limited it to that. We made the transition from being a single class of sixth graders at Union, Franklin, Lynn, other schools and even Booker T. Washington school to being a larger and mixed class of seventh graders at Pawhuska High School. Still, we were divided by 7-1, 7-2, and 7-3 with our specialties of band, choir, and trades. For the first time, the division was not created by the geographic boundaries of Ninth Street and other boundaries; it was our choice, based upon what we wanted. Still, we thought of a classmate as simply someone in our class.
With the passage of years, the modification of memories, the creation of new memories, and the connections and reconnections that are forged by reunions and chance encounters, our definition of a classmate expands. One day, a classmate is no longer only someone who shared our class year of 1962 but anyone who went to Pawhuska High and with whom we can find a bond.
Each death diminishes me in some way, but some more than others.
Losing Judy Carlile was surprising and very hard. I knew her well considering the spread in class years between us, 1960 and 1962, and I don’t really know why I knew her well, but I did. Once she discovered who I am by something on Classmates.com, and sent me a note to confirm my identity, we were in frequent contact. Often we exchanged fairly long notes, and at times it could be just as though we were in the same room talking, except that we did not have the problem of stepping on each others’ words and cutting each other off as we so often do in real conversation. She wanted to reminisce about her mother’s white 1956 Ford and I was just as eager, so we did. We talked about the Dairy Queen and many small things that were common to us. The small and long ago common things we shared built a connection between us today.
I received news of the death of Eddy Mansholt and I was caught so off guard that I found myself in sudden tears. I did not expect it. Eddy and I had sent enough messages back and forth, and yet he had never said anything of his illness. Stunned is the only word I found for my response as I read the note from Marcy Loy Williams.
Eddy Mansholt was in my class of 1962 and I liked Eddy a lot. I played a clarinet; he played a trombone. That meant that we sat on opposite sides of the band. We never did many of the things that other students and I did, but still, we had a nice friendship at our class level. Eddy was in my driver’s education class with teacher Jim Minor, and Eddy and I were in the car pool when four of us rode together in the practical sessions. Most of us had driven some, and some of us thought we were pretty good. We had learned to drive in cow pastures, empty parking lots, country roads, and an odd assortment of places, but few of us had any real skills on the streets or highways.
At least we knew which direction to go. Jim Minor tended to relax during our practice sessions, and seemed to think that the emergency brake on the passenger side was there as a decoration, rather than a true security device. I think that the car we drove was a green Pontiac, and my vague memory is of a station wagon, but perhaps not. I can’t imagine the system turning us lose in a station wagon.
The car was parked at the swimming pool, and Eddy was chosen to lead out. He eased into the driver’s side, while Mr. Minor read something that he had brought with him. “Take us out, Eddy,” he said, barely looking up, and Eddy looked back over his shoulder, put the car in gear, and roared straight towards the fence surrounding the old pool. He panicked, and Mr. Minor got the brakes on in time, so that all the damage was only to the small hedge guarding the pool.
I had not seen Eddy in forty-one years, when I saw him at the 2002 forty year reunion of the class. The night before that, Charlotte and I had gone to the Tulsa State Fair, and I had a severe episode of the arthritis I have, a form of rheumatoid arthritis. When I experience that, it literally takes me several hours to dress, and sometimes I can not dress without help. Johnny Lawless telephoned and asked if I could rush over for the class photograph, which I could not do. Charlotte did not want to go, so I drove my pick-up truck over, and I stayed only about an hour. I could not bend my legs enough to sit down, especially with the table and chair arrangements that had been made, so I stood the entire time that I was there. I stood at the back together with Roger Dixon who perhaps just had not found a place he wanted to sit.
I had read the letter that Roger sent in along with his fee, and I knew that he was gravely ill, but he smiled and seemed to be enjoying himself greatly. I remembered him, and I am pretty sure that he remembered me. He did not seem to have changed much since the last time I had seen him in 1960.
I was able to walk by a few of the tables and have brief conversations with some of my class, and Eddy was one of them. We shook hands, and I mentioned our wild ride in the driver’s education car. Eddy said that it was the first time he had ever driven a car, and he did not want the other boys to know that he had not driven; so he bluffed his way through, until the truth became impossible to hide. We laughed about it a bit and had a brief conversation. Through our e-mails, we shared much more information over the few years since then.
Charlotte did not want me to go to Pawhuska that day, since I was in so much pain and she was right; I shouldn’t have. After I got outside of the building and to my truck, I opened the door and eased myself in, and got stuck with a stiff leg and cramps. I considered having Charlotte drive over and rescue me, rather than trying to drive home and doing it unsafely. But I struggled and got in, and into a position where I could drive the truck. I could not have driven a car, and I might have had to lie down in the back seat had I been a passenger in one. I wish I could have stayed longer and enjoyed more of it, but I was not able to. I told Charlotte that I really wanted to go, if even for just a little while because, that it might be the last chance I had to see some of the people from my class.
Since then, we have lost Roger Dixon, Eddy Mansholt and Florien McKee. I mention those three, because they were there, and it was, after all, the last time that I saw them.
It seems to me that we have never lost so many in such a short span of time, and all around the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, which still remain the great holidays for us. We do not like them marked with such sad events.
I am comforted by scripture, and mostly by Ecclesiastes, when we are told that “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun. A time to be born and a time to die.”
It is the fact that life has some finite length that most makes it worth living. It is this that makes not only my life of value, but the lives of all the people I have known and loved.
It is sad and heartbreaking to lose someone we love, no matter the depth of our love, or how we expressed it. What if we had never had that person in our life at all? We would have never known the joys, the laughter, the secret things we shared, the fun we had.
We would have never known the frustration, the tears, the secret things they told others, and the pain we had. It is the valleys that make the hills seem so high, and it is from the hills that we can see the beauty that surrounds us.
If I had to choose between having had my son Stephen in my life and losing him, or not ever having him there at all, I would always make the choice of having him.
The pain of losing a child goes right along with the joy of having one. But it isn’t mine to choose; it is simply a gift, and one unearned. As long as I live and can remember, the gift of his life continues to fuel my life. I would rather have had, loved, and lost my son, than to never have had him at all.
If I think of the others in the same way, most of them brought me more joy than anything else and though I do now and will later miss them, my life has been fuller and richer for the gift of their lives into mine.
I wish that they weren’t gone, some more than others, for I cared for each in a different way and I can’t help that. I can not deny the truth that they were here with us for a while and then gone, the season fully complete with a time to be born, a time to die.
When I think of them, I will think of the gift, not of the loss. But I will remember that they have gone.
Stephen Joe Payne
A Purpose under the Sun
Date: 05/10/07
It is the fact that life has some finite length that most makes it worth living.
