Life Is Always Too Short ~ R.I.P. Robert "Shep" Shepherd ~ November 17, 1968 - March 23, 2010

I dreaded going.  I decided not to go several times supporting the decision with valid reasons like "his family doesn't even know me - I don't want to intrude."  Then I thought, despite not seeing him in 12 or 13 years, despite never being fortunate enough to be among his closest friends, he was a wonderful guy, and I owed him my final respects.  He served as a mentor for me in college recruiting me into a teaching assistant program which turned out to be a seminal experience.  He always seemed to have a smile and energy to share.


Upon arriving, I was relieved to see a packed parking lot, and I hoped I could anonymously blend in. Growing up, I had attended a lot of funerals and wakes, but increasingly, my mortality weighs heavily upon me.  In part, I think death becomes more and more real as I age.  If I live to be as old as my father, I'm exactly in the middle of my time alive.  If I live to be as old as Rob, then I have about a year or so left.

Also, as a father, death haunts me in a way that it never before did.  The thought of the vacuum my death would leave in the lives of my boys pains me.  Even with a strong extended family base, even knowing the amazing ability of humans to adapt, survive and thrive, the absence of a parent in a child's life is immense.  And this says nothing of the impact my love for my children has on making the thought of my own death poignantly painful in a way not before possible.

Furthermore, my wandering agnostic path has removed any comfort I may have felt in the past that the hurt in human loss, that the finality in death is mitigated by the soul's journey after life.  Some would argue that this view may make possible a more direct relationship with the present moment, but in this present moment I find myself squirming in my skin to avoid the graphic shock to my psyche of a young father's death.

When I pulled open the front door of the funeral home, I saw two familiar faces and walked toward them.  I had seen one of the men a couple years ago and stayed in touch over the years.  He was my professor, mentor and friend in college.  He was of course Shep's mentor and friend as well.  I hadn't seen the other man in near twenty years.  I was happy to see them, curious to hear about their lives, and relieved that I could inch my way up the viewing line in the company of other living, human beings.  For a brief moment I forgot where I was and why I was there.

It's always odd at a funeral/wake. People seem to laugh a lot, and discuss things seemingly inappropriate for the setting, understandably to distance themselves from death which is tangibly at hand.  And then again, death is natural too, the formality we show death in ceremony and ritual is only more recently sanitized, sterilized and made stiff.  I think of the old fashioned Irish wake in the family's home, with several days of singing, eating, drinking and crying to celebrate living which includes dying.

As we caught up and made our way forward in the queue, we viewed picture boards of Shep.  They started with shots of him in college from the time we knew him, followed by photos of his childhood and adolescence.  The question hit me as I looked at the photos, "what does it mean that this young man is no more?"  We inched our way along the long line making several turns at the back of the room, around rows of folding chairs, smiling at the photos of Rob.

When we made another turn toward the final approach to the casket, I caught my first glimpse of the widow.  I thought of my own wife having to stand in such a line, shaking hands of friends and strangers alike, having to hold it together when likely she wants nothing more than to utterly fall apart.  The photo boards changed too.  I noticed now photos of the deceased getting married and soon thereafter photos of him with his children. One photo in particular penetrated my chest like an arrow.  It was a photo of Shep with his young son.  The young son had a ball cap on, and looked up at his father from a blanket on the grass at a baseball game.  The photo was taken from behind, and I felt like a voyeur looking in on their lives, I felt like a voyeur looking in on this funeral. I often feel like a voyeur looking in on my own life.

In a moment, the pain of imaging my boys at my funeral forced me out of my own skin, out of the room, away from the raw emotions that welled up in my chest, neck, head and eyes. I cheated myself of the expression of grief, swallowing it deeply and painfully into my chest, down into my gut.

I came back to the room intermittently, but never fully.  I got my first sight of the young father in the casket.  I heard empty platitudes in my head, "he looks at peace... at least he didn't suffer."  I stopped myself and thought honestly, "he looks older, he looks dead."  I turned and found myself face to face with is widow.  I told her who I was and how I knew her husband. All I could say was "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.  He was a wonderful man." She hugged me and I made my way to the casket.

I stood there. I saw the face of a young man who I knew, who I always enjoyed, of whom I thought highly.  I tried to contemplate his life, his death, to contemplate death period. Right before moving to exit the room, his two year old son came into view, passing in front of me, climbing onto the kneeler before his dead father.  For the briefest of moments I let the harsh reality of the situation into my chest, but almost as quickly I pushed it away.  I thought this boy will probably not even remember his father other than in stories his mother tells him, other than in videos and photos.  I saw the cycle of life and death, death lying right next to life which fidgeted awkwardly on the narrow, slippery kneeler.  Neither seemed to notice the other.  I realized the beautiful boy was too young to really understand his father was dead.  I wasn't even sure if the boy approached as he recognized his father or if he just went to an open space in the crowded room.

I thought of approaching and offering the boy my hand, but I couldn't separate out what was my own discomfort verse what was the appropriate thing to do.  I stood still with the two other men until the boy's mother approached and lovingly, patiently, without embarrassment or anger picked up her son saying something comforting.

I turned and exited the room exhaling slowly, breathing out the hurt, the pain and the nearness of death. We live knowing we will die.  We understand this logically, but most of us don't truly accept this.  I don't. We push death away even when at a funeral.  We create elaborate systems of thought, world view constructs, theism, youth preserving, death defying lives to postpone and soften the brutal, albeit natural blow of death.

I've previously drawn comfort from knowing that a time may come when I'm ready to release my grip on life. I saw my father make peace with death.  I've heard of others advanced in age saying they were ready to die, even tired of living.  At the moment, I'm always tired, but not ready to give up this living that I know.  It is after all, all I know.  I'm afraid of dying.  The thought of being without those closest to me pains me seemingly beyond my coping skills and comprehension.

My heart goes out to a young mother, to children who barely had time to know their father.  I try to pull back into my skin now that I'm safely at home.  My boys are playing together, they come to my side from time to time as I type, then I'm alone again with these words that attempt to make sense out of the inexplicable.  I search for the meaning in all of this, wondering seriously if there is meaning behind life.

At the least, I'm reminded that life is always too short.  I try to turn the shock of this event into energy to live more fully.  I try to be with the rawness of this young man's tragic passing, to go forward in living not paralyzed by fear, nor denying death, but living guided by a curiosity and an appetite for all this world has in store for me and I for it.

I'm turning up the stereo, selecting my Pandora quick mix.  I'm going to play with my boys on a pleasant Saturday morning.  Death Cab for Cutie's I Will Follow You into the Dark comes on...

R.I.P. Shep

Mixed feelings within me on March 17

I've tried not to get too uptight over the years, taking offense at green beer, leprechauns and debauchery passing for culture on March 17.  I've also felt the tinge of pride, a sense of belonging, context and also deeper cultural wounds.  I'm glad that the Irish have risen to a position in America where they can openly celebrate their heritage and invite others into the celebration.  I also remember why the Irish marched, I feel it in my blood and in my bones.  And year after year I largely bite my tongue to avoid raining on the parade.  

This year, I raised the green, white & orange and I'll leave it up the flagpole while the weather is tame, while the rain falls gently upon my fields, while the wind be at my back, the season holding me in the palm of her hand.  

And I offer the following family legend as a backdrop to why we march.  I encourage us to march with others who still march in search of their human rights.  My father's cousin was a Catholic priest in Ireland and swore to the veracity of the following.  I did indeed visit the very spot my great uncles fell.  Whether fully true or not, I was moved and I am moved by the human story that continues to play out, encompassing sorrow and celebration.

The blood on the barn wall

refused paint, year after year…

October 18th, 1920 blood dries in the Samhain season wind, shadows on the barn wall of two brave men.

Blood shadows cast behind Francis and Edward

O’Dwyer, two young men who would not be silent, who would not be still while misguided

English attempted to murder and silence forever

all things Irish – music, language, culture, a spirit that did not take well to kissing the arse of a racist king and queen who long ago labeled the Irish barbarians, traitors, terrorists so they could kill their culture and possess their land.

The blood on the barn wall refused paint, defied sun, wind, rain and time to mark the spot where two men were martyred for the cause of basic human rights.

October 21, 1920 the blood on the barn wall reflected the flickering flames of the family house a fire, the Black and Tans had returned looking for Jer, not finding him they kicked Kate from her own home and ate the dinner prepared from the family hearth and laughed like sick dogs in the night before the burning house, before the bloodstains that would outlast each and every bitter, twisted  one of them.

The blood on the barn wall hardened and dried and faded, but never disappeared despite paint and sun, rain and storm, the blood remained a monument to two brothers who had been murdered in the night, they stood up for Ireland for Irishness

and were shot down,  falling on their own land, blood staining the barn behind them, blood saturating the soil of the O’Dwyer farm.

Year after year the blood shadows, the tombstone stains of Frank and Ned remained with the memory of all those that fell so that the Irish would always know who they were and who they are and remember what it is like to be tormented for being different, for being proud, for being true not to a patriotic, empty cause, but to the defense of a people destined to be free.

Kate and Jer rebuilt the house the Brits burned down, and lived for years in the shadow of the Gaelty Mountains, farming the land, training greyhounds, baking pies, going on with a normal life for which the O’Dwyers throughout history had fought, preferring to be left alone to a quiet life in the Irish countryside.

Within the O’Dwyer blood flows the refusal to lie down to tyranny going back before Cromwell’s rape of the Irish countryside and Francis and Edward, Frank and Ned bled and died to fight those who would wage genocide against those wanting to live peacefully on their ancestral lands.

The blood on the barn wall disappeared suddenly one day in 1978, when Sean and Patty Hade, American relations through grandma Jane (O’Dwyer) Cassidy set foot on the family farm to bear witness to the great uncles who were not trying to be great, but merely answering the call of their conscious, the call of their blood line

to stand up against the misguided, to stand up against oppression so that the generations to come might know who they are, from where they come and the genetic imprint within them that calls upon them to stand up to impropriety where ever it raises it’s twisted head.

May we remember all those that suffered so that we might be proud to be Irish.  And let not this pride ever turn to the misguided fervor that seeks to oppress another people.  May our hearts always be open to those being oppressed, let us remember our own suffering and not become the oppressor ourselves.  To do so is a stain upon our heritage, to do so is to tarnish the remembrance of Frank and Ned and all the ordinary, Irish heroes who just wanted to be women and men.