There are some giants living in my bean patch this summer.
One of them’s about 9 feet tall and still growing, with 13
brown faces, all haloed in bright yellow petals. The others are shorter but doing their best
to catch up: I don’t think any of them will have so many faces, but they will
be stouter and have bigger faces. It will take an axe to hew them down, once
the birds and life renders them material for the compost pile, where they’ll
muddle about and eventually re-enter the garden, next time with a nourishing purpose.
Gazing out my window and ruminating about these giants has
left me wondering about the exceptional beings who inhabit our world. About the
time I realized exactly how big the
giant sunflower is, I got the news that one of my t’ai chi students had died.
Some of you knew him: Frank Irvine was a Concord local, a minister and peace
activist and many other things, and it doesn’t really matter whether you knew
him or not because if you didn’t, you probably know someone like him. There are
giants of many kinds living among us.
Frank was a giant – not imposingly tall, but solid like a
bear, and he had a bald head that shone brightly, just as my sunflowers glow in
the sun. When the t’ai chi class was large, I never had trouble locating him, I
just needed to look for the shiny pate. When the t’ai chi class was small, I could
find him by locating the center of laughter or story-telling.
Big things clung to Frank: big plans, big passions, big
opinions, large numbers of things that interested him and caused his heart and
mind to dance - including a giant poodle. Even the koi fish in his wife Fran’s
pond grew big. Big stuff happened to him: a big bone break suffered a long way
from home, a bug bite that caused his hand to swell up so big, his wedding ring
had to be cut off; a big heart attack that finally hewed him down. After t’ai
chi classes, he and I would often talk about big ideas, or things long
distances away, or things with big history to them. I always left class smiling at or fascinated
by something he’d told about. I know
Frank has left, for his many, many friends and relatives, seeds of joy that
will feed them over time, the same way my giant sunflowers will feed the birds,
and then new sunflowers, long after the plant has ceased to live.
Frank’s funeral was at South Church. I’d never before been
in that church, and was pleased to discover that it, too, is big – big in
physical presence, with a long and interesting history, and big-hearted in its
approach to community and religion. It
was a good fit for giant Frank.
But best of all – and I have to tell you, I’ve never before
said this about a funeral – Frank’s funeral was fun. It was an experience I wouldn’t mind repeating – not the death
part, but the funeral itself, and how it opened up some big ideas about what a
funeral should be, and what it’s meaning can be. Clearly Frank wasn’t the only
one in his family and community with big ideas and the energy and will to make
them happen.
There was a jazz band. There was a bag piper. There were
funny stories. There were hymns set to better-than-the-original music. There were
songs just for Frank. There was singing, and clapping, and finger-snapping, and
toe-tapping, and humming, and –
- I’ve never seen so many Sunday-best-clad New
England butts bopping along to the music as I saw at Frank’s funeral. It was a
joy to be there, and a story I keep telling, because - it was a wow. By the end
of it, though we came in crying, Frank had made us laugh, Frank had made us dance, and everyone left with big ideas
and open hearts and not a tear in sight.
And, by God, that’s big.
Originally printed in The
Concord Monitor, August 14, 2016, as
“There Are Giants Among Us.”
All photos copyright Charley Freiberg, 2016
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