A time to dance

One consequence of another’s death is that it prompts you to take quick measure of your own life. 

It’s like God plops this huge mirror in front of you and asks,”Well, whaddya think so far?”

Mike Murphy's book.

It’s not a bad thing.

I’ve had occasion to attend two memorial services in the last few weeks.

Nope … it’s not a sign that I’m getting on in years; both of the departed were much older than I. So I felt somewhat detached – like I was more observer than peer.

But such services offer time to reflect.  As the clergy rep recounts the highlights of the lives of those who have passed, you can’t help but compare your own successes, or lack of them, to those of the deceased.

I won’t share how I measured up.  Let’s just say we all have work to do.

What I will share is the contrast of these two services.

One was Irish Catholic; the other Presbyterian.  Both beliefs have roots in the same continental neighborhood, of course … Ireland and Scotland, greenish islands once part of Britain’s domain.  Now both a bit more independent.

But … different.

I was raised a Presbyterian.  Of that I’m proud.  But goodness, Presbyterians can be a bit  dour and slow to change.  I remember in high school how, as an idealistic young church member, I pushed to get parishioners out of their comfortable pews, which were lined up  front-to-back like index cards. Still are.

Instead I suggested they should remove the pews and bring in folding chairs … mix it up a bit.  Jesus wasn’t about conformity and comfort zones, I argued.  He was a man of action … a rebel!  At the least, I said, parishioners should get off their duffs and jump and sing more, especially to some new tunes.

The problem then, of course, was that the Session would have required the Elders to analyze the proposal via committee or perhaps involve a Deacon subcommittee and then submit a report to the Ministers and hope at some point, Thy Will Be Done.

John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian clergyman, was among the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Ever since, I think, Presbyterian deliberation has been the model for our federal government.

I’m not a regular church-goer. Perhaps things have changed.  But from what I read, I don’t think so.

On the other hand, I have little experience with Irish Catholics.  I was raised in a neighborhood of Catholics … all dear friends.  But besides joining them in egging the nuns' convent on Halloween, we’d hardly venture together into that mysterious realm.

My buddies, though, would share their school stories … of the nuns with wooden rulers who would slap wrists and, if required, rear-ends while admonishing the boys to do more of God’s work and far less spit-balling of cute-girl Lucy.

It was hard to know how much of the nuns’ might was myth vs. reality.  But I remember being plenty scared when I hurled my first egg at the one-story, brick structure that housed the sisters of faith.

The fear was real … not only that lightning would fry my hobo costume, but an army of nuns would swarm from the place like black-garbed ants, thwacking me with wooden rulers now grown to yardsticks. And I would run, my tail tucked – wee! wee! wee! – all the way home to Presbyterian calm.

Looking back, I now think my Catholic friends’ experiences in school were a good thing. Like tempered steel, they were stronger because of it.  Boundaries had been set, sure, but that freed them up to have a lot of fun … to let loose ... as long as they didn’t cross the nuns. 

We Presbyterians, meanwhile, continued to ponder the gray areas of life. 

So I attended Mike Murphy’s memorial service.  I’d known Mike only for a short time.  He was the long-time host of a radio show here in Kansas City.  He did do a short stint at KMOX in St. Louis, my favorite news station growing up, after the death of Jack Carney.  But then he returned to Kansas City, resuming his show at KCMO.

When Mike was long retired, I helped him publish a book about his career. And once we got the project done, I’d have lunch on occasion with him at the Corner Cocktail … I’d get a cheeseburger and fries, he a pitcher of beer.  In terms of friends, I was very low on his list. But I enjoyed the time, listening to his stories.

Mike’s life … well, it changed Kansas City.  He was the father of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, now one of the nation’s largest. 

The story has it that Mike’s first effort at the parade involved a small bunch of adults and a small bunch of second graders, gathered at an intersection downtown. 

The green-clad second graders were asked to lead the way.  The adults followed, proud Irish all.  The parade ventured about a block, and by the time the second graders reached the second block, the adults had gone missing. They’d taken a sharp left into Hoggerty’s Bar.

Mike organized other things as well, like the annual downtown cattle drive. There was the year the cattle stampeded.  It took police hours to steer them out of the parking garages.

One of his last projects was masterful … a plan to collect a ton of hair clippings from area barbershops and salons, charter a plane and dump them all atop Mount Baldy in California.  A new station manager, perhaps hair challenged, didn’t see the humor and ordered the bags of hair accumulating in the studio basement to the dumpster.

Mike was brilliant … a jokester, a thinker, a drinker, everybody’s friend.  So I wasn’t surprised when I walked into Mike’s memorial service at McGilley's Chapel, just minutes from starting, and the place was abuzz in laughter, hearty handshakes, large smiles and twinkling eyes. Irish tunes would soon follow. It could have been Hoggerty’s Bar.

They missed him this year. (Photo courtesy the KC Star.)

Sure, the sober priest eventually had his say, reassuring us that Mike’s antics didn’t disqualify him from Heaven. But after his bit was done, the restless crowd was ready for more Mike stories.

Such a difference from the other memorial service I attended.  It was the kind I was used to … quiet, somber, organ tunes playing while we all shuffled in. We stared at the stained glass, our hands in our laps, biding our time, waiting for the Presby minister to begin.

And when he did, he solemnly quoted Solomon, the likely author of Ecclesiastes, who had erected a Biblical wall between life's opposite emotions: “A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance …”

It was a beautiful service, don’t get me wrong.

I think, though, Mike and his crowd would beg to differ with ol’ Solomon's either-or philosophy.

Aye, perhaps the best time to dance? When we be mournin’.