Conservative, progressive, comfort in contradictions
There’s something unsettling about taking part in a memorial service on your birthday; it’s almost a contradiction.
On a recent morning when I turned 60, I read from Scripture at a funeral Mass for a friend.
Just 51, Roger Knoblauch was older than his years, forever young, so special as to be almost unique. Roger also was like all of us: a wonderful contradiction.
He was a Christian liberal and a conservative parent, a modest citizen and a proud son, sibling, dad, grandfather and more.
He liked Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican legislator Dave Leitch. He was intelligent but not arrogant about his wisdom; he was confident but innocent.
Roger loved old-fashioned board games and cards and new-fangled web resources like Beliefnet.com.
Roger was one of the few St. Louis Cardinals fans I know who celebrated the Redbirds without gloating or bashing the Cubs. He was a comforter. More than once, he sympathized with this Cub fan’s losses.
Speaking of baseball, Roger was an example of what one-legged ex-White Sox and Indians owner Bill Veeck meant when he said, “I’m not handicapped; I’m crippled.”
A one-time athlete who worked for and with the disabled for years, Roger coped with muscular dystrophy for more than a decade, becoming another sort of contradiction – activist and observer, involved with meaningful work with groups such as Advocates for Access, the Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities in Illinois (CCDI) and the Muscular Dystrophy Association, yet sometimes content watching mindless TV game shows.
He often quoted Christian writer Tim Hansel: “Pain is inevitable but misery is optional. We cannot avoid pain, but we can avoid joy.”
Roger took joy in his family and his faith, and I tried to take a bit of joy – bittersweet comfort – helping to send him off to freedom from the physical world, off to everlasting joy.
When a local newswoman asked me about interviews I’d done as a journalist, I felt joy in recollections of conversations I’d had and covered with regular people and celebrities alike. Remembering, I realized so many of them had died, too: jazz drummer Louis Bellson and comic George Carlin, musician Dan Fogelberg and actor Jim Jordan (“Fibber McGee”), comics Sam Kinison and Richard Pryor. The week before, another had passed on: singer Mary Travers from Peter Paul & Mary.
The joy and melancholy mixed in a heady brew spiced by a tune from a fellow survivor, recording artist Big Al Anderson. A great songwriter and former NRBQ guitarist, Anderson reminded me of the context of birthdays and death days as I motored home after midnight – returning from an extra-inning Cubs victory at Busch Stadium.
The number is “Trip Around the Sun,” and its lyrics are progressive.
And conservative.
“I hear ‘em singin’ happy birthday; better think about the wish I make/ ‘Cause this year gone by ain’t been a piece of cake./ Just another revolution; pull it together and it comes undone – /Just one more candle and a trip around the sun.
(Chorus) “I’m just hangin’ on while this old world keeps spinnin’,/ And it’s good to know it’s out of my control./ ‘Cause if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from all this livin’/ Is that it wouldn’t change a thing if I let go.
“No, you never see it comin’, always wind up wonderin’ where it went./ Only time will tell if it was time well spent./ Just another revelation, celebrating what I should have done / With these souvenirs from my trip around the sun.
(Chorus)
“I think I’ll make a resolution/ That I’ll never make another one, / Just enjoy this ride on my trip around the sun./ Just enjoy my ride until it’s done.”
