Breakfast at Family Restaurant, continued: compartments of the heart; The Daily School Bus

The food here is good and hearty, and before Abby started up her home cooking, I was a frequent guest. So much so that when I walked in today, waitress Connie exclaimed,"I was just thinking about you and wondering why I had not seen you for so long?" When I told her I wanted an omelette, she knew exactly what ingredients should be in that omelette and that I would want hashbrowns with it and just how those hashbrowns should be cooked. She knew I wanted multi-grain toast, "on the delay," after I had finished everything else.

During a prolonged period of deep grief during which sleep came harder than normal and then only in spurts, never for long, I would come here almost every day, frequently right at opening time of 6 AM. Often, I would be the only customer in the restaurant. I would sit here for long after I finished breakfast and slowly sip coffee. Sometimes, I would hear the rumble of the train, the whistle and then it would roll by, only its headlights visible through the reflections on the window. This morning, as I lay in bed awake at 6:05 AM I heard the distant whistle of the train. I knew that if I had already gotten up I could've sat right here and watched it roll by.

Deep grief does not leave you. You learn to live with it, to put it in a box and store that box in a compartment in your heart. The heart can hold many such boxes. Every now and then, one or more of these boxes will come out of your heart to remind you that laughter and smiles notwithstanding, the grief remains. This is good. It holds the one who is gone close to you. Yet, the moment always comes when you must put that box back in the compartment in your heart and carry on with your day.

When I arrived, Family Restaurant was nearly empty. As I leave, it is nearly packed.

Right after I began my drive home from Family Restaurant, I had to stop at an intersection. A school bus rolled by. Hence, The Daily School Bus. The Squarespace nightmare continues.

I do not think there is any need for me to blog any further this day. You never know, though. 

Carmen remembers the burglary - and the tears that flowed at the last hockey game her husband ever got to watch their son play

I back up to this morning, just after Shoshana served my coffee to me. Carmen came in. I had hoped we might have a nice chat, but all sorts of people kept coming in – Amanda the hockey mom; Jay, my fellow pilot and lover of airplanes, Ollie Kent, Carmen's four-year-old neighbor who came with his mom; others whose names I do not know. Some of the talk was about the burglary, and how violated Carmen and Shoshana felt to have had someone smash his way into their space, and then snoop about doing whatever he wanted in there.

Here, Carmen describes a much more joyful moment, yet a moment ringed in a halo of deep sadness. It was Branson's final hockey game of the past season – for state championship - and the last his father would ever see him play. His father knew it, too.

Branson's team was one goal behind and the game was drawing to a close. With just seconds to go, little Branson knocked in the tying score. Tears flowed from his father's eyes – tears of joy, of pride, of gratitude; tears of sorrow and of longing for all those future games death would force him to miss. Tears flowed from the eyes of all of Branson's teammates and their parents. Only Branson did not cry. His father had taught him to be strong and he was going to be.

They lost the state championship in overtime, but this could not diminish that special moment Branson had given to his team, his mother and his dying father.

Wrapped in the sweet, hymnal embrace of their community, Johnny and Lloyd go to their graves

August 22, 2013: As his sons Jordon and Joe join the other pall bearers and carry my good friend Johnny Lee Aiken down the aisle of Barrow's Ukqeagvik Presbyeterian Church, the choir and congregation sing, My Savior First of All. They sing in Iñupiaq, and their voices blend together in a gentle, sweet, beautiful loving caress that wraps around all present. It is a communal embrace, both around the family to assure them that Johnny was loved and cherished in this community, will not be forgotten and those whose pain runs deepest will find support through the darkest days, and around Johnny, whose body may rest in this casket but whose soul, it is strongly believed here, has begun a new and exciting journey and has already been reunited with loved ones and the Savior he himself embraced before his death.

Johnny Lee Aiken, April 26, 1988. His father, Jonathan Aiken, Sr., had just harpooned a bowhead whale. Eli Solomon had followed with a shot from the shoulder gun. The whale had disappeared briefly beneath the surface, come back up, rolled over and died. It was an intant kill. "Praise God!" Kunuk had exclaimed as he raised his hands above his head. 

Johnny flung his arms around Claybo Solomon. They embraced.

August 21, 2013: The day before Johnny was buried, the community had also gathered in the same chapel for the funeral of another hunter who was well thought of in Barrow and across the Arctic Slope - Lloyd Nageak. He, too, would be carried out of the chapel wrapped in the sweet, loving, embrace of the community singing My Savior First of All. Before that, speeches of remembrance were made. Hymns were sung.

"How Great Thou Art!" Lloyd's brothers and sisters sing, with much help and support from the community.

Glimpses from Lloyd's life, as seen at his funeral.

To family members and friends of Lloyd and Johnny: I must leave here in just over an hour to begin my journey to Nuiqsut and from there on to Cross Island. I still have to pack. Yesterday, an unanticipated work-related emergency arose and I simply had to deal with it. It took the better part of the day and I did not complete it until midnight. I have made an initial pass through of all the photos I took at the funerals of August 21 and 22. I will still make and post the special albums for family and friends after I return home, sometime in mid to late September.

She saw my picture on Facebook

Here I am at Abby's, having slept in very late today. "I saw your picture," Joanne, who is waitressing today along with Leslie, said right after I walked in. She looked sad. I thought she must have seen the one I took of myself on the plane last night. No, she hadn't seen that one yet. She saw one on Facebook - I was sitting alone in a pew with a stained glass window behind me. She said it was beautiful. That would be a singspiration picture, for Lloyd. I haven't been on Facebook for over two days. I will have to check it out. I wonder who took and posted it?

Ever since I picked Margie up last night, I keep suddenly and spontaneously making little mutterings like, "shoot!" or even "dammit!" She will say: "what?" I will answer: "Johnny." The strong, quiet, calm, skilled young man who I followed whaling on Arctic ice through four spring seasons. After such a beautiful funeral service for him, the beautiful service the day before for Lloyd and all the gospel singing, it does not feel right to swear. But still I do.

A quick bite to eat

I found myself shedding tears more than once, but I must say the funeral of Johnny Aiken was a beautiful gathering - as the funerals of good people so often are. Along with deep sorrow, good people generate an outpouring of love at death and that love translates into beauty at their funerals.

This is the blessing of the food at the post-funeral dinner inside the house that Johnny Lee Aiken built and with wife Marietta made into a home for their famiily. That's Marietta to the right, with niece Ruby Aiken Donovan and her baby, Shaelynn. I had a plane to catch so I took just 5 minutes to eat a bowl of soup and grab three strips of smoked salmon and then headed toward the door, but it took longer than that to pass through all the hugs and to make it to the car of Marietta's brother, Tony Edwardsen, who drove me to the airport.

The plane is delayed. I could have stayed longer and enjoyed my food. If time permits before I leave again in just a few days, I will blog the funeral, but I don't believe I will Instagram it.