The pictures are posted, the toasts have bee raised. The haunting sound of the highland pipes covered the retreat of hundreds of officers and Sailors from the grave site. Mac’s earthly remains were given over to the soil, and to the patient presence of his beloved Sara V., better known as Billie.
There are a hundred or so pictures I took, posted of the event on social media. Pictures are not reality, of course, but the pageant, dignity and tradition displayed is clear enough from those images. I have been to far too many of these funerals and will probably attend only one more, one in which I do not anticipate a speaking part. This was one for the ages, and is going to stand in my memory for all of us.
The haunting sound of Amazing Grace and Scotland The Brave were the last echoes of the official ceremony. Mac had been a piper in his youth, and this completed another circle per his detailed instructions. The Piper is a physicist in his day job, by the way, and a good man. But his day trade is just as relevant as his skill on the pipes.
But of course there were a lot of good women and men there that gray afternoon to say farewell and Godspeed. They paid tribute to a man whose like does not come along very often, and who stood as an icon of his age. And a very good friend to many.
The world being what it is, we did not know of the latest outrage until we got to Willow to join family and friends to celebrate what will stand in my mind as the finest example of a private interment at the Nation’s place of ultimate honor.
Mac would have been proud, I think. Now we have to turn back to the events of the world we have all made, and it will be another grim bit of business. Mac would have had something to say about it, but his cares are not now of this world.
We are on our own.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com