Earlier
this week, Michael Yon wrote
in the Weekly Standard, “Infantry is perhaps the most dangerous, underpaid, and
unglamorous job on the planet. Infantrymen are called grunts,
trigger-pullers, cannon fodder, and ground-pounders. Long hours, low pay, and
death, death, death. If they
survive, they get a welcome-home party. Sometimes. And that's
it: Thanks.”
When
I left this morning for the 40 mile trip to the funeral site, it was cold. The sun had not been up long enough to warm
anything, and it had rained overnight.
It was the humid cold air that layers of clothing cannot overcome, at
least not on a motorcycle. Seven hours
later it would be even colder. As I
would later pass O’Hare on my return trip, giant jets would slowly rise from
the tarmac and then suddenly disappear into the 500-foot ceiling. Such was the weather for the Haupt family as they buried their son Ryan.
I was
the second to arrive at the funeral home – Fred was idling in his truck. He and I talked about our shared experience
at the
A
gentleman stopped his car in front of us.
Apparently he was a regular commuter who saw those PGRiders
standing in the rain last night and wanted to present us with two large coffees
and two sandwiches this morning. He was
gone before we could get his story, but the coffee cups bore the name of the
convenience store just up the block. Two
large coffees, two sandwiches and on with his commute. He will probably never read this, but at least
others will.
A
hour later as we stood in formation at the doors of the funeral home, a
gentleman would emerge from those doors and take a series of pictures of
us. Then he positioned himself in the
middle of the sidewalk we lined with our bodies and our flags. He said he was the step-father of this 24
year-old 4th I.D. staff sergeant and he thanked us. I am the step-father of a 24 year-old 4th
I.D. staff sergeant. We each have our
reasons.
The
day would be full of thank-you moments; cars would slow as they passed so the
passenger could be heard from the car window, mourners as they walked past us,
the funeral director in the cemetery.
That last one was the biggest such moment. The ceremony was done and as he stood in
front of the casket that was ready to be lowered into the ground, he first
invited everyone on behalf of the grieving family to gather at a restaurant for
which he gave directions.
Then
he offered general thanks to the participants in his production. The Catholics and the soldiers performed most
of the ceremony but he did not mention them.
The only ones mentioned were “the Patriot Guard Riders” and the
assembled congregation broke into an enthusiastic and embarrassingly long
ovation.
I was
standing next to Joe again (as I was when Timothy Mackenzie was lowered into
the ground) and I know that he always stands the straightest of any of us so I
was good and straight myself. Through
the applause I made every effort to remain motionless and continue my fixed
gaze on the tree in the distance. No one
of us were going to say “You’re welcome” because we really didn’t want to be
thanked in the first place.
And
that’s okay because it wasn’t really for us, it was for them. The people clapping their hands together had
gathered at the funeral home, sat at the church and stood at the
graveside. They trusted their country
and they had faith in their God but still Ryan was dead. Things felt wrong.
In
us, they found something right. We were
a group of people who had never met Ryan but we were there. We were outside the funeral home and outside the
church when they were inside. We were
standing in the weather holding flags just so that they and others would see us
standing and holding. And when they saw
us they were reminded that Ryan’s life and Ryan’s death were things to
celebrate.
And so
they wanted to celebrate us. On this day
when everything felt wrong, we gave them something right. I say:
The colder, the better.
Pictures
from the Ryan Haupt funeral are http://news.webshots.com/album/555150192SwhCrX
And
index of a few other PGR-supported funerals is http://pgr.pxxq.com/