Yesterday, my father’s ashes were interred at The Washington Crossing National Cemetery in Newtown, Pa. This is a relatively new cemetery – for veterans and their families — on an endless expanse of green — marked with tiny identical gravestones — and a series of walls — identical square vaults in each one — where my father would have his final rest. After a moving service of two military representatives — two uniformed young men — who played taps and opened and folded the flag above that white square brick of my father’s cremated remains on the dais — who then presented me with the triangular folded American flag, I read the following brief remarks. My partner pointed out later that during the moment of silence at the end, there was a palpable presence of peace.
Albert Mason 1919 to 2017
I remember my father, Albert Mason, telling me that when he was a boy growing up in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia that a picture of the Parthenon hung on his family’s wall. When I was forty, about five years after my mother died, I visited the Parthenon, which is situated on the Acropolis, the highest part of Athens, Greece.
As I told a street vendor in Athens, a Greek man, this story – that even the humblest of Americans recognize and pay respect to the origins of Western civilization — he nodded thoughtfully.
After my father died – on May 7th — I found a postcard of the Parthenon at his house and it now sits on the shelf in my office along with a photograph that I took of him in Fishtown on a trip that we took more than ten years ago.
Both of my grandparents on my father’s side, Albert Mason (also the name of my grandfather) and Florence Jones Mason died before I was born in 1959. But it has recently occurred to me that my interest in antiquity started with my father as a child looking at that picture of the Parthenon on that apartment wall in Fishtown.
Since my father’s death – and somewhat before – I’ve been interested in different philosophies on the afterlife. Recently, in researching a novel set in the Middle Ages, I came across the writings of Augustine of Hippo, a Christian philosopher who was born in the year 354.
I thought of my father when I read Augustine’s words:
“….we say of the righteous … that he is dead according to the body but not according to the soul.”
And when Augustine (also known as Saint Augustine) quotes Cicero, the early philosophical statesman and orator, I thought of my father:
“…we may have good hope that although our power of feeling and thinking is mortal and transient, it will be pleasant for us to pass away when life’s duties are done. Nor will our death be offensive to us but a repose from living; and if, however, as the greatest … of the ancient philosophers have believed, our souls are eternal and divine, then we may rightly suppose that the more constant a soul has been in following its own course, that is, in the use of reason and zeal in inquiry, and the less it has mingled and involved itself in the vices and delusions of man, so much the easier will be its ascent and return to its heavenly country.”
My father was 98-years old when he died. There is much to be said of his life. He was a good father and a good man. Perhaps my biggest testament to him, was that I chose a life partner who is so much like him. And after we were together more than three decades, he was able to say, “So you’re finally marrying Barbara!?” He loved her like a second daughter or as my mother wrote in her journal decades ago, “an unexpected daughter-in-law.”
We all have different memories of Albert Mason and in those memories are slices of his life. I want us to take a moment to remember Albert — and in particular (since he had such a good sense of humor) to remember him making us laugh.
Then let’s take a moment to promise him that we will take care of ourselves to the best of our abilities and then release him to the universe and to his heavenly rest.
Peace
Here is my first remembrance of my father, Albert Mason, after his death in May.
“When my father died, it felt like a library burnt down.”
–Laurie Anderson
My father, Albert Mason, Jr., died on May 7, 2017. He was ninety-eight years old. He was born on March 28th, 1919. There is much to be said of his life which lasted nearly a century. A decorated veteran of the US Armed Forces (Army/Air Force), he served in World War II where he unloaded the dead and wounded off of helicopters.
Janet Mason, author 