Pomp for Circumstance
Beginnings and endings are rolling around like the hands of a clock these days, each intermittently bopping me on the top of the head as it clunks. Friends to my right and left are exiting lifetime careers, leaving the lane that’s almost conformed to them to the care of others. I clap for them at farewell parties, then run home to write a letter of recommendation for another, freshly credentialed, who is vigorously venturing out. As graduates stand awash in pomp, their audience exuberantly twists and shouts while young parents deal with the circumstance of filling out pre-school pre-enrollment cards in the prickly privacy of their kitchens with a lump the size of Texas in their throats.
There’s taking off and landing. A baby comes, a parent goes. I have funeral outfits and wedding get-ups with interchangeable parts.
Occasions of commemoration dot the days of the weeks of my months, and I wonder, “What gives the ones that take up the most space in me their girth?”
Recently, at a friend’s retirement party, the hostess gave a welcome while telling a story about the honoree who had spent forty years impacting college students’ lives. The party had it all—lively music spawned through personalized walk-up songs, a festive food buffet, fun décor touching on the celebrated one’s favorite things, an integrating activity that gave those in attendance a chance to briefly speak. All bases were tastefully covered. But when the hostess rose to address us while wearing a time-stamped backpack, that’s when my heart got hooked.
She talked freely and spontaneously about coming to college as a freshman-- the wariness, the hopefulness, the awkwardness, the fear. She recounted how Dr. Barker, the honoree, had helped her traverse the bridge between what was and what could be. She remembered sitting in the educator’s office, early freshman year-- backpack on from start to finish-- as if to say, “I’m willing but I’m clearly non-committal.” There was so much of which she could not be sure.
She told the story with poignant phrasing and self-deprecating humor, but the backpack strapped across her shoulders sealed the deal. Every heart in the room could feel what the lifetime educator had done with forty years of days.
I’ll never forget it. The party was exactly who Becky Barker is.
It’s easy to get so hung up on the practice of marking momentous occasions that sometimes the one we’re recognizing gets lost along the way. The best parties—and weddings and baby showers and funerals—are not the ones that are perfect. They’re the ones that are perfectly reflective of the person or people we gather to celebrate.
This is one of the reasons corporate birthday cards aren’t worth the time it takes the CEO (or the assistant or AI) to sign the monthly stack. It’s why cookie-cutter institutional recognitions are poorly attended and gone from our minds by the time we get to the car. The job of a celebration is to capture who it’s for.
It’s the carefully thought through this-is-who-you-are particulars that sear an occasion to your rib cage. To celebrate without that is to sort of miss the point.
There’s a funeral scene in the iconic movie, “Love Actually.” In it, Daniel, the widower moves to the mic to say a few things about the late love of his life, Joanna. He includes in his brief remarks her request that he bring Claudia Schiffer as his date. (A request he felt quite sure, was meant for him to ignore.) He then recounts a brief exchange the two had regarding her clear wishes for the day as it neared. Daniel had said, “Over my dead body.” To which his wife had responded, “No, Daniel, over mine.” And so it was that her final farewell came in her way. Through the music of the Bay City Rollers. “Bye Bye Baby” blared over the sanctuary speakers as they carried her body away in a box.
I know her even though we never met.
We recently had a wedding. The service began with a choir moving through the aisles singing “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine . . . .” As the robust singers step-clapped their way through the crowd in rhythmic unison, much of the audience joined in. When the choir finished with a resounding “Oh Yeahhhhh” the place erupted. One of my friends told me later, “Whatever happened after that didn’t really matter. You had me.” That was the moment that lassoed her heart.
Events built with intention do that. They stay with you once they’re over. But they don’t stick because they’re perfect, or expensive, or according to the book. They stick because, like Julia Roberts’ smile, they’re truly one-of-a-kind.
P.S. Bye Bye Baby