James M. Redwine

funeral

While We Can

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Peg with her black umbrella

I had my funeral August 16, 2014. I loved it! I recommend you also consider having yours while you and your family and friends can laugh instead of cry. My parents had already passed before 2014 and I attended each of their funerals; they were sad. More importantly, the things I regretted not asking them or not saying to them were no longer possible. Another reason to hold your own wake is you can invite whom you want and see who really cares.

At my “Fun-er-al” we played and sang songs and marched a “second line” around our barn while singing, “When the Saints Go Marching In”. We shared not only good memories but speculated on the new adventures we would have. I cannot, for fear of missing someone, name all the wonderful dear people who helped plan and join in the celebration. But I still remember each one who made the effort to re-live my and their pasts together. And, I had no concerns that my transgressions might be mentioned; after all, I was right there! Unlike Mark Antony said of Julius Caesar in Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, only my good lived on.

I believe my wish to attend my own funeral had its genesis in my twelve-year-old boy’s reading of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. You recall that Tom, ever the mischievous imp, watched his Aunt Polly and the community of the small town of St. Petersburg on the Mississippi River mourn Tom’s supposed drowning. Tom and his friends Joe Harper and Huck Finn listened to people praise them just before the boys marched down the church aisle in glory. It was grand.

Then there was the splendid 1998 Irish movie Waking Ned Devine. Ned had just won the Irish lottery but the shock of winning caused a deadly heart attack. In the plot, the law was to claim the prize, 6.9 million pounds, one had to be alive. Ned’s friends in his tiny village had his friend, Michael O’Sullivan pretend to be Ned. To help with the ruse, the town held a funeral for Michael posing as Ned at which Michael’s best friend, Jackie O’Shea, gave a eulogy and said wonderful things about Michael. He got to attend his own passing albeit under the pseudonym Ned Devine.

One of my favorite folk singers was Phil Ochs who died in 1976 at age 35. He must have had many thoughts about how to save the world, but one of my favorite Phil Ochs songs is “When I’m Gone”. Part of the lyrics are:

“There’s no place in this world
Where I’ll belong when I’m gone
And you won’t find me singing
On this song when I’m gone

Won’t see the golden of the sun
When I’m gone
And the evenings and the mornings
Will be one when I’m gone

Can’t be singing louder than the
Guns when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it
While I’m here.”

In other words, words are not worth much if we do not say them to the living person. Therefore, say it now while we can and while we and those we care about can know how we truly feel.

This lesson was reinforced for me in an article by Angela Haupt in the August 5, 2026 Time online magazine. The general theme was about what we can and should or should not say to someone who is dying. “There is no perfect script and your presence likely matters more than anything you manage to say”. Haupt quotes Ira Byock, a palliative care physician, on the issue of whether to go see a dying friend. His question is, “Would you go to the funeral?” If the answer is yes, then say the things you want to say to your family and friends now while they can actually hear it.

Funerals are helpful for some of the survivors but they mean nothing to the deceased unless it is someone like Queen Elizabeth who pre-plans all the pomp and circumstance. For most of us, if we do not have frequent physical contact with those we care about and if those people do not make the effort to tell us now and then how they feel about us, it does us no good for them to show up at our funeral and say nice things to our casket. Unless you have your funeral while you are still alive and can enjoy it, what’s the point? I still cherish every moment of mine from 12 years ago.

August 16, 2014

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Do Not Fly the Unfriendly Skies

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Photo by Jim Redwine

If you have traveled by commercial aircraft recently you can only marvel at the British security measures for the Queen’s funeral queue. From September 14 to September 19 about 250,000 people lined up for up to 24 hours to view the Queen’s coffin for less than one minute. Other than one fool who tried to touch the flag on her coffin and was immediately arrested, I am not aware of any “security incidents”.  In other words, our English cousins managed to process about 50,000 people a day without so much as a scuffle.

Now compare that to the airlines’ inability to keep many thousands, perhaps millions, of people from losing their luggage and missing their connecting flights while being prodded like cattle into uncomfortable seats next to complete strangers. And for that dubious privilege you pay enough money to purchase stock in the company. Although that may not be such a wise waste of your money.

It is not that I am unaware there may be bad people who both fly commercially and may want to harm others. Evil exists; I get it. But our response should not add to our grief. If the Brits can process 50,000 people per day and prevent any real problems, surely the airlines can manage to get a plane load of 300-350 passengers, such as fly on a Boeing 700 Series plane internationally, from point A to point B or points A, B, C, etc., within the time an airline ticket promises. After all, our tickets represent an obligation that is what we in the legal field call an adhesion contract. That is, you and I and all our fellow travelers are totally without any influence on the agreement. The airlines tell us where and when to show up and how much to pay and we show up and pay, even if we miss flights, lose luggage and wonder whom to blame but the gods. Does the Federal Aviation Administration come to mind?

Peg and I recently flew from Tulsa, Oklahoma to the country of Georgia. The cost of our tickets were such that Jesse James would have been proud. Since we were on business we paid an exorbitant rate to fly Business Class. What that got for us other than a hole in our checking account I have yet to discover. However, that is not the issue you and I are here concerned about. As instructed by the airlines, we arrived at the Tulsa airport three hours before our flight was to depart. Then we went through security and customs right there in Tulsa. Next the airlines flew us west to Denver. That is right, Gentle Reader, United Airlines flew us west to go east. The plane did not take on enough fuel in Tulsa, so when we got close to Denver we had to land in Pueblo, Colorado to refuel. That totally unnecessary stop caused us to miss our connecting flight from Denver to Munich, Germany. Once in Denver I had to stand in line for six hours, from 8 p.m to 2 a.m., to book another flight. Once we had our new flight plan we had to spend the night in the Denver airport on cots waiting to depart the next day. There were so many passengers who also missed their flights we were unable to sleep next to each other. Our flight from Denver to Chicago, yes, I had to rebook us through Chicago to Munich, took off around 11 a.m. We arrived in Chicago about 1:30 p.m. and had to wait in Chicago for our flight to Munich that took off about 10:30 that night. That was day one of our trip and we still had not left the United States. Of course, we had to go through security and customs again in Chicago before boarding the flight to Munich. The flight from Chicago to Munich was about 9 hours which took us into day two. When we got to Munich we had to wait about six hours for our flight to Tbilisi, Georgia, and, of course, go through security and customs again. By the time we got to Tbilisi at 4 a.m. Georgia time it was day three. Plus, our luggage got lost along the way. As our final destination in Georgia was the city of Batumi, that is a long car trip from Tbilisi, we had to wait in Tbilisi for two days for the airlines to find our luggage.

So, what can the airlines do to comply with the contract they have written and to treat passengers like customers instead of an inconvenience? I suggest one security and customs check at one’s initial departure airport should be plenty. At that first airport you can arrive early and give the airlines all the time that is needed to make sure one is not a danger and that one’s baggage follows along. Also, in this age of computerization, all of a passenger’s security and customs clearance information could be shared among the airlines, airports, cities and countries involved in a passenger’s trip. In our case that would have involved Tulsa, Denver, Chicago, Munich and Tbilisi and the United States, Germany and Georgia. It would also be helpful if the airlines would put enough fuel in the planes to avoid unplanned refueling stops and if the flight plans could exempt flying the wrong way.

If this approach is too sensible for the FAA and airlines, we could allow them to lose a customer’s luggage every now and then on a random basis so they do not feel superfluous. And, by the way, congratulations to the British for sending that marvelous monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, off royally. Maybe we should ask those Britons who planned and executed the Queen’s funeral to operate the airlines.

Death Is Swallowed Forever (Isaiah 25:8)

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Barbara Taylor Pease & Jim at Echoes of Our Ancestors: The Secret Game Book Signing OCHS

Barbara (Taylor) Pease passed away ten days after my brother Phil Redwine. Their Baptist Christian services were similar in several comforting ways. They were also differing as Phil’s funeral was in Norman, Oklahoma and Barbara was honored as a member of the Osage Nation in Indian Camp in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Peg and I had attended Barbara’s mother, Judy Taylor’s, funeral in 2016 and were moved by the Osage graveside rites. Perhaps the coincidence of my appointment as a Special Judge in a recent Indian law case made Barbara’s services even more impressive to Peg and me. I know I was surprised about how little I knew of Osage traditions even though I was born and raised in Pawhuska.

As part of my legal research into an area of the law completely new to me I went to my personal library and reviewed my autographed copy of John Joseph Mathews’ book, The Osages, Children of the Middle Waters. Mr. Mathews was well known to my parents and, at our mother’s request, Mathews signed a copy of his book “with special pleasure” to my brother Phil and me. Mathew’s extensive scholarship into Osage traditions brought out the beauty and solace of Osage burial rites.

Barbara’s services included former Osage Chief Johnny Red Eagle fanning over Barbara’s body with an eagle-tail fan. This impressive ritual reminded me of the following passage in Mathews’ book that described a burial of several Osage members of a hunting party who were killed by a lightning strike:

“The survivors came into the village carrying their comrades and singing their song of death. The Little Old Men looked at the sky in fear, then fanned away the evil spirit from the bodies with an eagle-tail fan…”

See Page 68

At Barbara’s services Palee Redcorn sang beautiful, haunting and comforting acapella renditions of hymns in the Osage language and then transitioned seamlessly into English versions. One of those death songs was the traditional Christian hymn, “Amazing Grace”. At my brother’s funeral his youngest son, Ryan, who is an ordained Baptist minister, sang a deeply felt acapella version of “Amazing Grace” from the pulpit.

Of course, Ryan also gave a marvelous and inspiring message under the most difficult of emotions to honor his father much as Reverend Scott Kohnle of the Indian Camp Baptist Church spoke for Barbara. I do not know if Ryan’s mother’s Native American heritage influenced Ryan’s message for his Dad, but I do know Ryan and Scott both captured the essence of Barbara’s family’s and our grief and pride in our loved ones. Barbara and Phil were similar in their kindness and generosity and in their steadfast pride and support of their numerous grandchildren.

To lose two such priceless members of our small circle within ten days of one another was a lot to bear, but the thoughtful and heartfelt services helped. Peg and I now better understand the communal support of family and tribe.