Memorial

My friend Cliff Tanner died a few weeks ago. The family asked me to play and sing at his memorial service this past weekend at Camp Lee in Anniston, Alabama. It was among the more moving, memorable experiences of my life, and I'm grateful to Marjory, Fara, and Seth for asking me.

Cliff was an adult friend to me at a time in my life when kids need the right kind of adults in their lives. I worked for him off and on painting houses when I was an older teenager (16 and 17 maybe?), and we worked together on "mission" trips like Appalachia Service Project and John's Island Service Project, improving and rebuilding houses. I can't really articulate how much Cliff meant to me, how much his influence shaped my life, but I can say that I only fully realized it when I learned he was gone.

Fara (Cliff and Marjory's daughter, who is my age) called inviting me to play a Brad Paisley song and to accompany and lead some other songs. I arranged to drive to Alabama on the day of the service with my Mother and Sister, and we arrived very early on that Saturday. Three hours early, in fact.

It was nice to be at Camp Lee with lots of time on our hands. While Meg and Mom went for a walk, I got out my guitar and found a shady spot to sit down and play awhile. By and by, it started to rain really hard, so we gathered on the screened porch of the dining hall and whiled away the time till the event rocking and talking.

When people started to arrive, it was clear there was going to be a really big turn out. Ended up there were a couple hundred. When it came time for me to play, the mood was downright funereal. Which is appropriate for a memorial service I suppose, but it felt like it was time to lighten up a bit. Not least because the song I was about to play had tearjerker potential, and that wasn't the way I wanted it to go. So I felt compelled to crack a joke or two before playing to ease my own anxiety as much as anything.

As it happened, the song went fine, and the rest of the service was moving without being maudlin. At the end, the family had asked me to lead a "camp" song of the type we'd have sung when I was a kid playing guitar at youth camp. And we closed by singing together the "Irish Blessing," "May the road rise to meet you," a song that we had alway closed vespers services with in my youth, when Cliff and Marjory led all us gangly and uncertain teenagers through the maze of doubt and awkwardness into adulthood.

After the service, I realized that having the opportunity to participate in the service in that way had been a great gift to me. From the time I first heard of Cliff's death, I had struggled to say what he had meant to me. By giving me the chance to offer music to his memory, Marjory, Fara and Seth allowed me a rare chance to say goodbye in a way that really meant something to me, and I hope helped others to say goodbye as well.