Opinion : The lessons of a sunset over a cemetery

The Thursday sunset over Bear Creek Cemetery inspired some serious thinking.

The sunset last Thursday was so much more fiery than usual, and the red burned on the western horizon ­much longer than I had ever observed, that it seemed more like a message from the heavens than an earthly phenomenon.

Considering what last Thursday meant to me, and from where I watched that sunset, maybe that sunset was such a message.

Thursday was the 8th anniversary of my father’s death.

I still remember the fall of 2004 and how for weeks, the planet Mars greeted me early each morning after dad’s funeral. Although I knew the unusually bright light on the twilight eastern horizon had an astronomical explanation, seeing that early morning reflection from our neighbor during those days was surprisingly comforting.

I felt that same surprising comfort last, week, at the cemetery. I also experienced and even more startling enlightenment – and understanding of my ancestors I had not known before.

The first three words I said as I stood between the tombstones of my parents and paternal grandparents were the final three words I had just read that morning in the novel, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: “Please forgive me.”

Those who read Lisa Lee’s novel about friendship in remote 19th Century Chinese villages – readers who remember well Lily’s kaleidoscope of conflicting emotions as she remembered how her deceased friend Snow Flower had reacted to the challenges she had faced in the 40 years of her life – have an idea of what I was feeling that evening.

The sunset was so bright that you could see it reflected in the tombstones at Bear Creek Cemetery.

That red reflected most vividly in the gravestone of my great-grandfather, Thomas W. Close.

While I had gone to the cemetery to honor my father, it was this tombstone – just a baseball toss north of my parents’ and grandparents’ grave markers – that kept my attention most of the evening.

Of my four paternal ancestors who lived in Iowa, my great-grandfather is the one I know the least about.

He was born in 1857, in Independence, the brother of the first white child born there. His father, also Thomas W., had been one of the early settlers in Independence. My great-great-grandfather had been one of the founders of Independence, one of the downtown businessmen. A large portion of what is now southeast Independence is still called Close’s Addition.

My great-grandfather left that Independence home while still a teenager to join some sort of traveling entertainment group and later apparently joined up with even less reputable travelers. There are legends about him being an associate of Jesse James, but I haven’t found any evidence to make me believe that.

I stood there, with the sunset at my back, looking at the dates on his tombstone. I was pondering the choices my great-grandfather had made. I had always thought our family would have been better off financially and socially if he had stayed in Independence, inherited his father’s land and business.

But last Thursday, I realized something else that changed my perspective: I am here because of the choices he made. If he had stayed in his home town, and married at the usual age of 25-30, he never would have married my great-grandmother, who was 20 years younger than he. It’s likely he never would have even met her. My grandfather never would have been born, which means that my dad, and of course, I, would never exist.

It’s a startling revelation to realize that a drastic decision by one 19th Century man – even a teenager – could and would not only change a life, but make other lives – including my own – possible.

I thought I had gone to the cemetery that night to speak to my father. Instead I realized I was there to listen.

As I stood there that night, I thought about all of the decisions the three of them had made that made my existence possible.

My father received what he wanted for a Christmas present in 1964: to know that his wife was pregnant.

My grandfather did not receive what he wanted in 1942, when he tried to join his older brother in World War II. A bizarre accident involving a horse and a car – I have been told that for some reason my grandfather, who did not seem to be that short-tempered, for some reason felt inspired to kick a car as is passed him on a gravel road. The result was a broken leg that years later would earn him an F4 status. I can almost hear him cussing as they told him he was not eligible to join the Army.

So Grandpa stayed home in 1942, and married a year later. The baby born in his house the first day of December, 1943, was my father.

And I still do not know what inspired my great-grandfather to leave his home in his teenage years. Was he restless? Mistreated? Bored? Intrigued by some fanciful notion of an exciting life in the Wild West? I will probably never know.

My mind, which had been in ultra-slow gear for the past month with its annual hay fever haze, sped through history that night like the posses chasing those outlaw gangs my great-grandfather may have joined.

And in every thing that I observed from the histories of the first three first-born Close baby boys in my family tree – their successes, failures, hopes, dreams, challenges and even their screw-ups – what I saw most of all was: Me.

Thomas W Close, Jr., came back from wherever he went, married and had several children. Several eastern Iowa counties and the southwest corner of Bear Creek Cemetery are the homes of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Grandpa Paul settled on the family farm; my father gave up his dream of farming to spend his life as a factory worker to support the family he had wanted to begin in Christmas of 1964.

Me, since Dad, died, I have been living here on the farm where he was born, trying to figure out what to do with it and how to make it a place where the great-great-great grandchildren of the first Thomas W. Close would want to live and enjoy the nature that makes me feel so at home.

And yes, I see in me all of those things I see as I look back at the few details I know about my ancestors: Dreams. Hopes, Challenges. Setbacks. Screw-ups.

At times, I look at what I have done with my life and I hope those guys would be happy – perhaps even impressed – with what I have done.

And at other times, all I feel I should say, to them, is: Please forgive me. Forgive me for not doing this better. Forgive me for not more clearly understand what you did and why, and what you tried to do, but couldn’t. Forgive me for not more clearly understanding just how much one guy can impact history.

And most of all: Forgive me for all the times I stood here, looking back, without also thinking forward to the day when the 100-year-old ancestral tombstone that someone comes to visit is mine.