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<\/a>I attended the funeral this morning of my friend James Brown Allen<\/a>, who passed away recently in his ninety-eighth year. \u00a0In my experience, the faith-filled funeral services of good people are among the best and most inspirational of meetings, and this one was no exception.<\/p>\n Neal Lambert<\/a>, like the Allens a resident of the Jamestown Assisted Living Center<\/a>, was the first speaker. \u00a0They had known each other since the days when, as young men, they had worked in the lodge at the Grand Canyon. \u00a0His \u201cappreciation\u201d addressed Jim directly, and movingly.<\/p>\n J. Michael Allen<\/a>, one of Jim\u2019s sons, delivered the eulogy. \u00a0I will return to it again in just a moment.<\/p>\n The third speaker was Thomas G. Alexander<\/a>, who succeeded Jim as the holder of the prestigious Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Chair in Western American History at Brigham Young University and who, like me and my wife, was a member with Jim of the Gadianton Polysophical Marching and Chowder Society, our monthly reading group. \u00a0It was another excellent talk, devoted to a considerable degree to Jim\u2019s academic and professional achievements \u2014 including, for example, his co-founding of the Mormon History<\/a> Association \u2014 and to Jim\u2019s ecclesiastical service.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t do justice to any of the talks, so I won\u2019t attempt to do so. \u00a0But it was an excellent funeral, and it was fun for me to see and to chat with a number of long-retired BYU colleagues and historians. \u00a0But I said that I would return briefly to Mike Allen\u2019s talk, and I will do so now.<\/p>\n A couple of years ago, Mike told the congregation, one of the family gave Jim a small edition of Marcus Tullius Cicero\u2019s essay On Old Age<\/em> (De Senectute<\/em>), which the famous Roman politician, orator, and philosopher wrote when he was roughly sixty-two or sixty-three years of age. \u00a0Strictly speaking, the full title of the essay is\u00a0Cato Maior de Senectute<\/em> (Cato the Elder on Old Age<\/em>), with Cato Maior<\/em> as the title and De Senectute<\/em> as the subtitle, but the subtitle has become much more popular. \u00a0As with many of Cicero\u2019s writings, the essay is addressed to his friend Atticus.<\/p>\n In order to lend more heft to his thoughts \u00a0on aging and death, though, Cicero wrote his essay as if it were the voice of the much-admired Roman hero Marcus Porcius Cato (234-139 BC), a staunchly conservative soldier, senator, historian, and farmer, a defender of Roman virtue against Hellenism, from an earlier generation. \u00a0As Cicero sets the essay, Cato is approaching his eighty-forth birthday, and the elder statesman addresses Scipio Aemilianus<\/a> (aka Scipio Africanus the Younger) and\u00a0Gaius Laelius Sapiens<\/a> , who were impressed at how well he was handling the challenges of advanced age and the certainty of impending death. \u00a0Presumably, though, the sentiments expressed by \u201cCato\u201d are actually those of Cicero himself.<\/p>\n Mike says that, when a copy of On Old Age<\/em> was presented to his father, his father responded as if the title were a kind of accusation. \u00a0They agreed afterwards that he would probably never read it. \u00a0And, sure enough, when they began to go through some of his books they found that the little volume of Cicero still looked pristine and untouched.<\/p>\n Until they opened it. \u00a0It was heavily annotated, with passages underlined and marked with asterisks, and with marginal commentary. \u00a0One of the most heavily marked passages was the following (though it may or may not have been in this 1923 translation from the Loeb Classical Library). \u00a0The reference to a \u201cCato\u201d within the text is to a son who predeceased Cato the Elder; Cato<\/em> was a family name:<\/p>\n Really, Scipio, I am carried away with the desire to see your father, and yours too, Laelius, both of whom I honoured and loved; and, indeed, I am eager to meet not only those whom I have known, but those also of whom I have heard and read and written. And when I shall have set out to join them, assuredly no one will easily draw me back, or boil me up again, as if I were a Pelias.\u200b Nay, if some god should give me leave to return to infancy from my old age, to weep once more in my cradle, I should vehemently protest; for, truly, after I have run my race I have no wish to be recalled, as it were, from the goal to the starting-place. \u00a0For what advantage has life \u2014 or, rather, what trouble does it not have? But even grant that it has great advantage, yet undoubtedly it has either satiety or an end. I do not mean to complain of life as many men, and they learned ones, have often done; nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home. For Nature has given us an hostelry in which to sojourn, not to abide.<\/p>\n O glorious day, when I shall set out to join the assembled hosts of souls divine and leave this world of strife and sin! For I shall go to meet not only the men already mentioned, but my Cato, too, than whom no better man, none more distinguished for filial duty, was ever born. His body was burned by me, whereas, on the contrary it were more fitting that mine had been burned by him; but his soul, not deserting me, but ever looking back, has surely departed for that realm where it knew that I, myself, must come. People think that I have bravely borne my loss \u2014 not that I bore it with an untroubled heart, but I found constant solace in the thought that our separation would not be long.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I was impressed with this passage (\u201cI quit life as if it were an inn, not a home. For Nature has given us an hostelry in which to sojourn, not to abide\u201d), and with Jim Allen\u2019s attraction to it. \u00a0As his son Mike reminded the congregation, Jim too was acquainted with grief. \u00a0He had, of course, lost both parents. \u00a0Two years ago, he lost his wife, Ren\u00e9e, although it might truly be said that he had already lost her to Alzheimer\u2019s disease several years before. \u00a0And, nine years ago, he had lost his daughter Kathleen. \u00a0It can easily be seen how Cato the Elder\u2019s confident anticipation of reunions beyond the veil of death would have spoken to him.<\/p>\n Posted from Moab, Utah<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 I attended the funeral this morning of my friend James Brown Allen, who passed away recently in his ninety-eighth year. \u00a0In my experience, the faith-filled funeral services of good people are among the best and most inspirational of meetings, and this one was no exception. Neal Lambert, like the Allens a resident of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":37414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10898,37977,1104,27705,27708,37974],"class_list":["post-106872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cicero","tag-de-senectute","tag-death","tag-james-b-allen","tag-jim-allen","tag-on-old-age"],"yoast_head":"\n\n