Not Fade Away

By Ed Staskus

   I hadn’t been to a funeral in several years, but when we got the news that my wife’s uncle Romas Bublys had died, we made a point of going. Even though I am not a faithful churchgoer, I go to church for weddings and funerals. When grieving, obsequies are a way to create connection and acceptance about something beyond our control, and a way to begin moving forward. The ritual inspires catharsis, helping everybody, especially the immediate family, feel better. 

   Even if you didn’t know the deceased very well, going to a funeral to support a friend or a family can be the best reason of all. Funerals are one of the few times when saying “I’m sorry” doesn’t mean “I apologize.” It means “I understand.” It means you understand it is a difficult time. We are all in our own boat but everybody is in the same ocean.

   The requiem mass was at the Church of Gesu in University Hts. next to the campus of John Carroll University. Romas was a life-long devout Catholic. The church is a Jesuit church, one of only 60-some in the United States, and the university is a Jesuit school. Jesuit parishes are guided by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, encouraging adherents to ponder their experiences and search for God’s presence in their lives. 

   I didn’t know Romas Bublys well. Even though we both lived in northeastern Ohio, we travelled in different circles. I might have met him face-to-face and spoken to him for the first time the day I got married in the Lithuanian church on the east side of Cleveland. Some of his daughters, my wife’s cousins, and nieces were in our wedding party. I knew them slightly, although I knew their mother, Ingrid, well enough through her unceasing work in the ethnic community.

   Romas was born in Taurage, Lithuania in 1936. The small city is on the Jura River not far from the Baltic Sea. Most of it was destroyed by fire in 1836 and again during World War One. After the war it was rapidly rebuilt, industrializing with new up-to-date factories. A revolt against the national authorities broke out there in 1927 but was suppressed. His family fled the country when the Red Army invaded in 1944. Romas was six years old. After five years of treading water in displaced person camps, the family emigrated to the United States.

   The funeral wasn’t standing room only, but it was close. There were 400-some mourners in attendance, almost filling the large church. There was a line snaking out the door to get inside when we got there. While we inched forward more cars crept into the parking lot and more people got in line. Even though I assumed most of everybody at the service was Lithuanian American like me, most of them were strangers to me.

   Romas grew up in Detroit before relocating to Cleveland, Ohio. He served in the US Army with the 82ndAirborne Division. He earned a master’s degree from Cleveland State University and an MBA from Baldwin Wallace University. He went to work for TRW. It was a systems and  aerospace company. They built spacecraft, including the Pioneer series. His professional life revolved around engineering.

   The Church of Gesu is spacious and almost regal. It isn’t new, built in 1958,  but it looks new. The superstructure is steel so there are no interior pillars. By the time we got in we were lucky to find a pew in the back. We sat with my brother-in-law’s family. The service was conducted by Fr. Lukas Leniauskas, the son of somebody I grew up with. He was 20 years old when he left Cleveland and went to Lithuania where he entered the Jesuit Novitiate. He professed perpetual vows two years later and was ordained a priest in 2015.

   Romas’s eldest daughter gave the eulogy. I wasn’t sure if she ever got to the end of it, or not. She choked up and seemed to cut it short. She said her father loved to travel and read. He was proud of his children. He believed in faith, family, and the homeland. He loved life. He was wise and funny, a family man as well as a businessman. She said their father taught the five children in the family how to be successful. “One thing he always said was dress for success. He never wore blue jeans.” The burly man in the pew in front of us was wearing a blazer with gilt buttons and blue jeans. He didn’t seem to take her remark the wrong way.

   Romas was big on keeping Lithuania alive in the hearts of his compatriots who had emigrated to the New World. He was on the National Board of Directors of the Lithuanian American Community. He was the Director of the Lithuanian Club in Cleveland and its Chairman for six terms. He didn’t sit on the sidelines. He got involved and stayed involved.

   Two more of Romas’s daughters spoke. A cellist played “Ave Maria.” There is a hymn sung at many Protestant funerals called “The Day Thou Gave Us Lord is Ended.” It wasn’t sung at the Jesuit church, although the sense of it hung in the air. Romas had a good voice and had performed with the Cleveland Male Octet. He would have done the song justice.

   The service ended with a homily and prayer of commendation. Two men guided the coffin from one end of the nave to the other end and into the narthex. They were accompanied by the priest, a cross-bearer, and the altar girls. In my day it was a boy’s club. One of the girls swung a thurible burning incense. She swung it forward and back in time with her steps. What I could smell of the smoke was pungent.

   I had been an altar boy and served at many funerals at St. George Catholic Church. The funerals were usually on Thursday and Friday afternoons. After the final blessing we always finished with a recessional, no matter how few or how many were in attendance. If there were many people, and I had my hands on the thurible, whenever I saw a friend of mine in a pew, as I passed by, I swung my thurible sideways so my friend would get a good whiff of the smoke. My passing was always marked by coughing in the pews. 

   When Romas’s coffin came to rest in the narthex, two unformed US Army servicemen draped an American flag over it. One of them saluted, holding the salute for several minutes. The other one said a few words. When they were done they ceremoniously folded the flag. The funeral was over when they were done.

   Everybody was invited to the parish hall in the basement. I exchanged small talk with some grown-ups and bantered talk with my brother-in-law’s kids until I noticed a man I thought I recognized. I stepped over to his table where he was alone. He was Arunas Bielinis, somebody from the east side ethnic crowd back in the day. He had made a career as a lawyer, so after we established our bona fines, he asked me twenty questions about myself. He told me his friend Kestutis Susinskas and he used to borrow books from me when we were teenagers. “We liked that you were always reading books by James Michener and Leon Uris,” he said. “I’m not sure we returned all of them to you.” I told him it was water under the bridge.

   The Lithuanian Club catered the food and drink. Vic Stankus, a long-time local dentist, and long-time friend of Romas Bublys, was eating when something went down wrong. He started choking. A man stepped up and applied the Heimlich maneuver. Standing behind the dentist he placed a fist slightly above Vic’s navel. Grasping his fist with the other hand he shoved his fist inward and upward. The deadly morsel stuck in Vic’s throat went pop and flew out of his mouth. 

   Romas wasn’t going to be buried in the All Souls Cemetery in Chardon, where many of Cleveland’s Lithuanians are buried. My father is buried there. My mother is going to be buried there. Anatanas Smetona, the President of Lithuania during the inter-war years, is buried there. Romas was going to be buried in Luksai, not far from where he was born. A year removed from passing away, his relatives will visit him, spending the day, cleaning his grave, and leaving flowers.

   The 31st of October is Halloween. The 1st of November is All Saint’s Day. The 2nd of November is All Souls Day, or Velines, in Lithuania. It has nothing to do with trick or treating. It has everything to do with not fade away. It is the Day of the Dead. Shops and schools close on the first day of November for a couple of days. Everybody heads to their cemeteries to visit those who have given up the ghost. 

   All Souls Day, also called Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, is a day of remembrance. Families visit gravesites, lighting candles on the tombs of loved ones, and soliciting for their well-being. Many cemeteries become a sea of candles at night. It is one of the most important holidays on the Lithuanian calendar. Some people pray for those they suspect are in purgatory and try to win indulgences for them.

   Velines is a Catholic observance, even though some Lithuanians who get into the spirit of it on that day are not Catholic or even identify as the same. “V�-lin�-s has overflowed the banks of the church,” is how one churchman has described it. All Souls Day got started in the year 933 at Cluny Abbey in France when Pope Gregory V proclaimed November 2nd as a day to pray for the departed. Lithuanians were pagans at the time and didn’t pay any attention to the news bulletin. They had their own Day of the Dead. They called it Liges. It wasn’t just one day, either. It lasted three days and nights as soon as all the crops were harvested. Life is for the living and the living need bread.

   Lithuanians were the last Europeans to abandon paganism. The cemeteries of Kernave, the one-time pagan capital of Lithuania, had always been bereft of crosses. The Grand Duchy finally gave up and accepted Christianity near the end of the fourteenth century. During the centuries they were holding out, families gathered food and gathered in their boneyards in mid-autumn. Wine and honey mead were sprinkled on graves. It was a flock together as well as an observance. Romas had always enjoyed his cocktail hour. Although a modern man, he might have approved of some ancient pagan practices, although he wasn’t the kind of man to waste a drop of distilled spirits.

   Fresh farm eggs painted red and black were left on graves as good luck charms for next year’s crops. Tables were set up. Black bread and black pudding were served. Whatever was left over was given to the poor in return for their prayers. When the three days of Liges were over, branches were culled and thrown into a bonfire while everyone sang songs for the souls of the departed. They drank whatever wine and honey mead was left over.

   Returning to one’s birthplace to spend eternity is a promised land kind of return. When Romas Bublys went back to where it all started, he was rounding a circle that is not often unbroken. Very few are afforded a resting place that is the same place where they came to life. Promised lands lie on the other side of wilderness lands.

   After the post-funeral gathering at the Church of Gesu, when I thought about memory and remembrance, about what is between the saints and the deep blue sea, I thought if there is a promised land for me on the other side of time, I will probably be the last to know. I won’t mind as long as there is a candle to light my way.

Ed Staskus posts on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com and Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com.

Reviews

[JayG]

You have this listed as a story, but it’s presented as a chronicle of events. From start to finish this is a transcription of you talking to the reader. But that can’t work because in all the world only you can hear the emotion you’d place in the narrator’s voice. Have your computer read it to you to hear how different what you get is from what the reader does. Also missing is the performance of the storyteller: The gestures; body language; expression changes; eye movement; meaningful pauses for breath. In short, everytig that gives it life in a live performance,

So in the end, what the reader gets is a storyteller’s script without the stage directions and performance notes to make it live.

The approach you’re using, fact-based and author-centric is the nonfiction approach we were given in school to make us useful to future employers, who need reports, papers, and letters from us.

But the goal of a report is to provide an informational experience. Useful on the job but useless for fiction. Why? Because fiction provides an emotional experience by making the reader live the story in real-time, as-the-protagonist. The reader is made to feel and care, not be informed on events in the life of someone they know nothing about. As E. L. Doctorow puts it: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” And we cannot do that with the skills given us in school.

They offer degree programs in Commercial Fiction-Writing. Would they do that if what they teach was unnecessary? Remember, all your life you’ve been choosing only fiction that’s written with professional skills. You can’t see the tools, or know where the author’s decision-points are. But you do expect the result of using those tools, and will turn away in a paragraph if they’re not.

More to the point, your reader expects to see those skills in use in your writing. And that’s the best argument I know of in favor of acquiring the necessary skills.

Look at your opening, not as the all-knowing author, but as the reader must, having only the context you provide or evoke, and the images inherent in your presentation:

• I hadn’t been to a funeral in several years, but when we got the news that my wife’s uncle Romas Bublys had died, we made a point of going.

Why does the reader care that this unknown person hadn’t been to a funeral lately? Would the story change had they been to one the month before? No.

• Even though I am not a faithful churchgoer, I go to church for weddings and funerals

No one cares, because that’s not story. And again, it’s irrelevant to the plot. You’re opening the story with history not story. Were this part of a submission to an agent or publisher the rejection would happen before the end of paragraph one. And I say that as someone who has taught at workshops, has owned a manuscript critiquing service, and has successfully convinced more than a few publishers to say yes.

In the end, not a damn thing of interest to a reader happens for the entire 2010 words. What year is it? Unknown. Where are we? Unstated. It’s overview and synopsis of events in the lives of people the reader has NOT been made to want to know about. There are no conversations. There is no protagonist living the events as we read. And at the end, we don’t know our protagonist name, background, age, marital status, or even gender. And, the reader has been plowing through the words for more than eight standard manuscript pages. They’ve been reading for nearly ten minutes and still don’t why this matters to the protagonist, or why you feel the reader will find it entertaining.

Here’s the deal: It’s not a matter of talent, it’s that like the vast majority of hopeful writers you’ve fallen into the trap I call The Great Misunderstanding: You left school believing that writing-is-writing, and you have that taken care of. But you don’t. Professional knowledge is acquired in addition to the general skills we’re given in school. And Commercial Fiction Writing is a profession.

So...you have the desire, and the dedication. But to that you need to add the tricks the pros take for granted.

Try this: The article I link to below is a condensation of two critical skills needed in order to pull the reader into the story to the point where they feel that THEY are living the events in real-time, and as the protagonist. Give it a read, then chew on it till it makes sense.

Try writing using the 4 step MRU procedure outlined. I think you’ll like the result.

And if you do, grab a copy of the book the techniques were condensed from. It’s filled with things like that. It’s out of copyright, and ree on archive sites like I link to below.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

And for what it may be worth, my own articles and videos on YouTube are meant as an overview.

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

[Ed Staskus]

That is by far the longest review of anything I have ever written. Thanks for suggesting I read books about writing, but I never read books about writing. If I did I would start caring about what every single reader thinks about what I have written. I can't do that. There are more ways than one to skin a cat. Last thing, the story is non-fiction, not fiction.

[JayG]

• the story is non-fiction, not fiction.

Doesn't matter. I looked at your fiction, and it's written with the same nonfiction fact-based and author-centric approach, so it all reads like a report.

• If I did I would start caring about what every single reader thinks about what I have written. I can't do that.

Uh-huh. Uou spent years of your life learning the skills of report-writing in school, but can't be bothered to learn how to make fiction and bios interesting for the reader? Seems a bit short-sighted.

You have 42 pieces posted here, but have only two comments, total. That should tell you that you aren't getting the reader reaction you would like.

I'm not a particularly talented writer but I get pages of comments, And the only real difference between us is that I took the time to learn what I'm doing, instead of using the basic nonfiction writing skills we're given in school.

•There are more ways than one to skin a cat.

That's like saying "Mashed potatoes have no bones." It's true, but so what? It's irrelevant to the discussion.

They offer degree programs in writing. And they do that because the skills taught there are necessary. Yet you dismiss that with a false equivalency between good intent and learned skill. You give what talent you possess no tools to work with.

You, and your reader, have been choosing nothing but professionally written and edited work since learning to read. But when reading, you can't see the tools or the decision-points, only the result of using them. And you demand that. If it's those tools aren't used you'll turn away in a paragraph, as your reader turns from your presentation.

No one says you must learn the necessary skills. But if you don't, your readership, everywhere, will be as it is here, forty-two pieces that generate virtually no response. And given how easy it is to change that...