Requiescat

Went to the Civil War again this weekend.

“During the 1860s, following a death in a family, once the funeral was over and the family felt emotionally ready, an announcement would be sent out as to what day they would be ‘at home’ to receive visitors. At that time, friends would call upon the bereaved to offer their condolences. This would allow the family to set a time when they would be ready to face others, and would allow friends an opportunity to visit briefly without feeling they were intruding upon the family.”
- The Journal of the National Civil War Association, Vol. XXX, No. 10, October, 2008

Ken’s widow wore a dark green hoop skirt and a fetching bolero hat and sat with family under a canvas shade. She was in her early thirties. When the company came to visit, in our suspenders and foraging caps, black ribbons pinned to our vests, her eyes filled.

“I met him two years ago,” I said. “He made quite an impression.”

“He does that,” she said.

We had cake and lemonade, served by a large caring matron who was all love and bustle, and chatted with other friends and family. It was interesting how genuine the moment could be in spite of anachronistic dress and manners. Well, the couple met and married as re-enactors, and she had a particular love for the Victorian era, or some aspects of it, and she was surrounding herself with one of her support networks.

I felt the sadness, as one does around the mourning, and thought of loved ones gone, and for a moment would have fallen to crying. But it was my loss less than anyone’s, for I knew him least. So I had more cake. Someone said it was the hardest thing he’d done in so many years re-enacting. I didn’t understand what he meant: There was nothing to do but be with her a little bit, show her the company that her husband was a part of missed him and cared about her. I wondered if he meant he was one of those men who find it difficult when faced with emotion so immediate and graceful. Or maybe I missed something else entirely.

We remembered him in other ways too: set aside an empty chair in camp, wore hats askew as he would do when marching off the field. People are peculiar creatures. Other than that, though, we mostly did the weekend: drank, sweated in heavy blue coats, ignited black powder in the direction of men in gray, took a rest playing dead, drank some more, listened to very old-time band music, endured uncomfortable shoes, slept in canvas tents, ate out of an iron pot, and leaned back on hay bales with our feet near the fire, tin cups full, watching fireworks go off among the warm farm-country stars.

There are a lot of parallels between Burning Man and pretending it’s 1863. Ren Faires too, no doubt; but I will have to be happily unemployed before there’s time to add that too to the mix. Meanwhile, I'm grateful to sometimes have precious moments that can be captured forever, because a time will come before we know it when they will be no more.