Another funeral

A daily funeral blog would likely get very old very fast. It would be like reading the obituaries after a while, and if you are like most people you would be skimming the names and nothing more. For that reason and the fact that I don't like losing friends, I sincerely hope this is my last blog having anything to do with death or funerals for some time to come.

But after the funeral today I can't help but feel there is something more to say than I said in yesterday's blog. Today I left a weeklong class on fire cause investigation at a very crucial place to attend the funeral of my good friend Dan Gilbert. The firefighter whose funeral I attended last Saturday was gone before I started here. But firefighters being who they are, you go in uniform simply to show your support for the family and to honor the profession. It's a brotherhood thing.

In the case of Dan Gilbert, however, I worked with him for the entire time I was a police officer here in Pocatello. On top of the time at work, we rounded up cattle together, in good weather and bad, sometimes eating dust at the drag (back of the herd), sometimes pushing the aspen groves for strays that escaped the main drive. Dan was one of those people you love immediately, the kind of man whose soft voice you know will ring in your ears for a long time after they are gone. He was a loving man, a great father, a good example both as a cop and as a human being. He was a superb athlete who sat his horse, as I said yesterday, like poetry in motion. I only saw him buck off his horse once, and that was in the middle of a fight we had between a big, curve-horned hereford bull, the two of us, and our horses. Ironically, it was the smallest one there, a blue heeler dog, that caused the bull to get so mad, which eventually led to Dan hitting the ground.

But Dan got up off that ground with a smile, and I never heard him swear. Fact is, I don't believe I ever heard him swear in all the years I knew him. I'm afraid what he would have heard from me if I had been hitting that same ground, especially with that angry 2,000 pound bull ready to stomp him into the dirt. Well, Dan came away with only bruises, the bull disappeared for good into a thicket, and we had to admit defeat until another day.

That didn't change Dan's mood, however. He was the best of good-humored cowboys.

I didn't want to misspeak yesterday, so when I spoke of his disease I didn't call it by name. It seemed too coincidental that he would have died of the same rare disease as our firefighter a few days later. But Dan did indeed die of Lou Gehrig's disease, as I believed. He could beat many things, bad horses, bad bulls, the few criminals who wanted to fight him. But he couldn't beat his disease.

Even to the end Dan was thinking of other people. Like me, he too raised chickens, and if he found a good deal on wheat he was right on the phone calling me. Or with any other information he thought might be helpful. Even when he was getting to where he could barely hold the phone he wanted to help other people. I will always miss Dan.

As I sat there through his funeral, I realized that if people could truthfully say even half of the good things they said about him at my funeral, I would be able to consider my life a success. "Live your life in such a way that no one should have to lie at your funeral."

In tomorrow's blog I think I'll talk about creationism, evolution, and faith in God. Until then, stay out of the weather, as long as you can do it by wearing a good cowboy hat, a good slicker, and a pair of chaps. Otherwise, no day is bad enough to not spend on the back of a horse.