Ubi Sunt

For one semester--and for reasons I've long ago forgotten--I lived in college housing in a basement apartment beneath a brick apartment building, downtown Sioux Center, Iowa. First semester, junior year it was, I believe, right downtown, just an alley between us and the offices of the mayor of the village. 

I don't know that I ever met him personally, although I'm quite sure had I run into him on the street, he would have smiled to acknowledge me. The town mayor lived an odd life for a resident of this cow town on the prairie. Most of his life--we were sure--was lived in his next-door office, not around a fireplace at his home. He was the mayor, very highly respected, acknowledged to be the major mover-and-shaker in his town. Most histories would agree that he hustled the town into becoming thriving little burg it has become.

His strange, off-hour comings-and-goings from that downtown office only increased our estimation of his character--and his mystery: that the man lived to lead Sioux Center seemed perfectly obvious. To the college guys who lived next door, downstairs in those basement rooms, the Mayor seemed town royalty.

But back then he wasn't the only potentate. There was another too, the man who had quite single-handedly chosen Sioux Center, Iowa, as the home of a new college to be created by people from the same tiny denomination, the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) as he and his congregation. That college was and is Dordt College (now "university"). Together, the Pres and the Mayor were the town royalty--they shared the throne and, at least to our 20-year old perceptions, got along royally.

The Mayor's Office is now a laundromat, but the apartment building looks just about exactly as it looked fifty years ago. Sioux Center is probably twice as big as it was in the late Sixties, and the college the Pres carved into existence now enrolls twice as many students, a majority of whom are not members of the CRC. Things change.

Yesterday was the funeral of a daughter of the Pres, not the oldest child but the first of what was once the royal family to pass away. But today most people around town don't remember anything of  her regal birth, or of the royal family from which she came. What ordinary folks know is that she was a long-time elementary school teacher, that her husband is a fine man, a good father. They  may also know that the two of them had three children, each of whom is married, the oldest of which has reached "middle-age."

A small crowd will be gathering, I'm sure. Whatever royal status her father (and her mother) had achieved a half-century ago won't be visible at the ceremony. People are sad, friends and relatives are mourning, but the funeral itself will not be royal. 

Cancer took her. Death, not a respecter of persons, came too early, as it often does. 

It's an old, old story, retold in every town and village on Planet Earth, isn't it? Crowns tarnish, storied lives turn to dust--after all, life is fleeting, memory is all we have, all achievements are temporary. It's one of the oldest songs we sing.

Sometimes when I go past that brick apartment building, I wonder whether anyone still lives in that basement apartment. I wonder if I'd be really polite, I could bargain my way in sometime just to look around, just to remember. 

It's a bargain with truth, isn't it?--because try as we might, we can't go home again. The only rest is eternity. "I am not my  own," the creeds beg us to promise. Death is the final seal.

An old friend, daughter of a preacher, once told me her father used to say that when he did a funeral he learned to just get out of the way. "Just read a psalm," he used to remind himself, she said, "just Psalm 90, no more: "Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

I don't know that I'd really like to see that basement apartment where, just about sixty years ago, we used to live. It can't possibly be the same. Nothing is.

Ubi sunt--one of the oldest themes in human literature, comes up effortlessly on days like today, one of mankind's oldest lamentations--"where have all the flowers gone?"