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The tragic era has passed.  Brothers Curt and Dave Utter, best friends and sometimes roommates, were taken much too young.  In their early twenties and within a year of each other, cancer and an aneurysm took two bright lives from family and friends who still grieve for futures lost.  The intervening decades saw no more contemporaries pass on, so the funerals were grandparents and senior colleagues, and then aunts, uncles and parents.  They are never easy.  They are not supposed to be.  I hate them.

But you must go, so you do. 

Rand Wonio was laid to rest today.  A good man and friend these past few years, I thought I’d be prepared for the funeral.  I authored a little something on Monday (here) and thought that would serve.  But when his son stepped up to share a few words, three things happened in quick succession.

First, it came to me that this is the first funeral of a contemporary I’ve been to since Curt’s, decades ago.  Rand was a decade or so older than me, but we were close enough in age that it didn’t really register.  Just after that realization, the compression of time hit me like fate with a mallet.  Just a little less than three years ago, I was the son eulogizing my father.  Now, I’m watching a son do the same to someone who was not older in any tangible way than me.  Every day is a blessing.  They do run out, so treat them as such.

Then, his son told a story of how he asked Rand about what he was most proud of as the cancer was doing the evil cancer does.  Rand’s answer put it all in perspective.  He had much to be proud of.  A laudable career.  A beautiful family.  Many friends.  But he told his son he tries not to be proud, he tries to be grateful. 

Try to not be proud.  Try to be grateful.  The tragic era has passed, but the learning era continues.  Thank you, Rand.

The funeral procession headed east on 29th Street.  They would go to the burial site, and return to St. Paul’s for lunch afterward.  It was a long procession, as it should be, and I was already heading back west as the procession passed by.  The sacred place I wrote of on Monday beckoned, so I had lunch there, alone.

I sat on the bleachers looking over Rand Wonio Field and ate, alone in quiet contemplation.  But I wasn't alone.  Someone had tied streamers to the fence and left a note thanking Rand. 

Be not proud.  Be grateful.  Use each day well.