The Greatest Generation

Today my sister and I stood in the morning sun and said farewell to a friend. Not just a friend of ours, a friend of our father. A friendship forged in childhoods shaped by the Great Depression. A friendship further solidified in the Navy during World War II and Korea. A friendship strengthened still through marriages to the women they loved. A friendship beyond children and jobs. A friendship beyond death. Today we buried Phil.

This generation of theirs, this Greatest Generation, evaporates before us and we are helpless against this, helpless as they leave us one by one and take with them the honor and integrity they carried so easily. Lives lived in constant thought and purpose for others. Lives lived in quiet service.

This friendship between our father and Phil lived in our childhood and lived so intently we are unable to separate from it, unable to think of our history without including it. We learned friendship from their example and theirs was a good one. At the funeral today people learned a piece of this history.

We buried Phil in the same cemetery as my parents, not just the same cemetery, the grave beside my father. This was not the original lot Phil bought, not where he planned to be. When our father died, we grieved not only for us and what we lost, but for Phil and what he lost. Without his childhood friend, without his "Bucky", Phil lived the pain of loss and it was this loss that drove him to move his grave.

And so today, in the warmth of the sun and the company of Phil's family, we laid him to rest beside our father. We stood together with Phil's wife, nieces and nephews and smiled at the thought that these men, these lifelong friends were again together. As the Navy Honor Guard played taps and held the flag, we said goodbye to another of the generation before us. That Greatest Generation.