{"id":1021,"date":"2013-05-22T15:04:30","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T21:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2013-05-22T15:05:31","modified_gmt":"2013-05-22T21:05:31","slug":"ronald-west-beckett-1948-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2013\/05\/ronald-west-beckett-1948-2013.html","title":{"rendered":"Ronald West Beckett (1948 – 2013)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My brother Ron died this past Saturday, May 18.\u00a0 His passing was not a surprise, but it is still sad to realize my big brother is gone from this world.<\/p>\n

Ron was a Christian in his early years and in his final days.\u00a0 In between, his religion was\u2026 complicated.\u00a0 That story is not mine to tell, and in any case, I only know parts of it.\u00a0 Wish I knew more\u2026 but that\u2019s what happens when time and distance and priorities draw brothers apart.<\/p>\n

But I do know part of his story.\u00a0 This is the eulogy I gave for him at his funeral yesterday.<\/p>\n

\u00a0* * * * * * * * * * * * *<\/p>\n

My brother Ron was 13 years older than me, so as you might imagine, we didn\u2019t share a lot of experiences growing up.\u00a0 He was a teenager when I was born, he was in high school as far back as I can remember, and he was far too cool to hang out with little kids.<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t matter \u2013 I still worshipped him.\u00a0 I wanted to dress like Ron, wear my hair like Ron, listen to Ron\u2019s music\u00a0 and do all the things Ron did.\u00a0 I remember one Christmas when Ron asked for a TV and a typewriter.\u00a0 So of course, when our mother asked me what I wanted, I said \u201ca TV and a typewriter.\u201d\u00a0 She tried to explain that Ron had to type papers for school and I didn\u2019t, and that I pretty much controlled the color TV in the living room.\u00a0 But if Ron wanted a TV and a typewriter, then I wanted a TV and a typewriter.<\/p>\n

I seem to recall that Ron got the TV and I got the typewriter \u2013 a toy typewriter that was a stone age version of the IBM Selectric.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t have any keys, just a wheel that you turned to the letter you wanted to type.\u00a0 You hit the space bar, the wheel swung forward and typed the letter, then you turned the wheel to the next letter.\u00a0 Gutenberg would not have been amused.\u00a0 I quickly figured out that pencils still worked pretty well.<\/p>\n

Soon after that Ron went away.\u00a0 It was the late 60s, the height of the Vietnam War, and rather than risk being drafted into the Army, Ron joined the Navy and went to basic training in San Diego.\u00a0 He wrote occasionally, and I remember reading and re-reading his letters and wondering what adventures he was having so far from home.\u00a0 I remember seeing a picture of Ron in his white uniform, boot camp haircut and seaman\u2019s cap, with a look on his face that said \u201cyou got me out of bed at six o\u2019clock in the morning for this?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ron did a tour of sea duty on the USS Proteus, a submarine tender, and a tour of shore duty on Guam, where his commanding officer discovered he knew how to type.\u00a0 Typing wasn\u2019t a common skill in those days, particularly among men, so Ron got a desk job that was far more pleasant than the grunt work most of the sailors were doing.\u00a0 Eventually, though, the Navy offered to reduce his enlistment period if he\u2019d volunteer for a tour of duty in Vietnam, and much to the dismay of our mother, Ron took it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been said that war is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.\u00a0 Most of Ron\u2019s time in Vietnam was spent in DaNang as a military policeman, carrying a .45 he couldn\u2019t hit the broad side of a barn with and writing traffic tickets.\u00a0 Somewhere there\u2019s a picture of Ron from that tour, dressed in olive drab and an MP helmet, looking a lot older than the boot camp picture that had been taken just a couple years earlier.\u00a0 In addition to his MP work, there were a couple other missions \u2013 missions he wouldn\u2019t talk about after he came home.\u00a0 He never told me what happened, or how that might have affected him later in life.<\/p>\n

Ron left the Navy without so much as a scratch on him.\u00a0 Eventually he moved back home and went to UTC.\u00a0 I think I had more interaction with Ron when he was in college than at any other time.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t stay home much, but I remember late nights when he would come out of his room and talk about something he was studying.\u00a0 He talked about history, politics, paleontology, anthropology \u2013 I was a bit older then, but I still hung on his every word.<\/p>\n

A couple years later Ron and CJ got married, and I was honored when Ron asked me to be in the wedding.\u00a0 I assumed he wanted me to do some little kid\u2019s part, but instead he asked me to be one of his groomsmen.\u00a0 I got to wear a tux and process down the aisle and for one day, pretend I was grown up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ron and John, Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, 1998<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After that Ron and I grew apart again.\u00a0 I moved into high school and then went away to college, while Ron concentrated on his job at Moccasin Bend and the beginnings of a family.\u00a0 We saw each other at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we usually faced off on opposite sides in the Fourth of July bottle rocket wars, where despite our father\u2019s dire warnings we never did set the corn field on fire.<\/p>\n

Ron enjoyed camping and hiking, and after numerous invitations I finally joined him for a trip to the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in North Carolina.\u00a0 We spent a long weekend in some of the most beautiful country I\u2019ve ever seen, and even though I was grown up for real this time, we fell back into old roles.\u00a0 Ron mostly talked and I mostly listened.\u00a0\u00a0 We said we\u2019d do it again, but we never did.<\/p>\n

\u00a0* * * * * * * * * * * * *<\/p>\n

When I was a kid, one of my favorite guilty pleasures was snooping in Ron\u2019s room.\u00a0 It was so different from the rest of the house, from the old camping gear and college textbooks to the black light posters and acid rock music.\u00a0 Mainly, though, it was Ron\u2019s.<\/p>\n

On one of my expeditions I came across the Egyptian Book of the Dead<\/em>.\u00a0 I had heard about it, but I had never seen it, and for an 11 or 12 year old whose only knowledge of ancient Egypt came from reruns of The Ten Commandments<\/em> and The Mummy<\/em>, it was exotic and magical and just a bit forbidden.<\/p>\n

And then I tried to read it.\u00a0 Today, Wallis Budge\u2019s 1895 translation of the four thousand year old text is considered inaccurate and very difficult to follow, something I figured out after just a few pages.\u00a0 I put it back and moved on to something else.\u00a0 But many years later I would pick it up again.<\/p>\n

The Egyptian Book of the Dead<\/em> is more properly known as the Book of Going Forth by Day<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s a handbook for the recently deceased; it contains prayers, hymns, and affirmations to help the person navigate the challenges and trials of the Underworld, all of which lead to the Hall of Osiris and the weighing of the heart.\u00a0 In this final judgment, the heart of the deceased is placed on a scale with the Feather of Ma\u2019at, the Goddess of Truth and Justice.\u00a0 If the heart is pure and light, it will balance the feather, and the person will join Osiris in the heavens.\u00a0 But if the heart is heavy, weighed down by evil deeds, the person will die a final death, never to be resurrected in this world or in the next.<\/p>\n

* * * * * * * * * * * * *<\/p>\n

It is no secret that the last years of Ron\u2019s life were difficult. \u00a0He suffered from numerous illnesses and maladies, at least some of which he brought on himself.\u00a0 While those of us who love Ron mourn his passing, we are thankful that Death has released him from his suffering.\u00a0 And it is tempting for us to point fingers, to cast blame, to put ourselves in the role of Osiris and pass judgment on a life that didn\u2019t turn out the way any of us would have wanted.<\/p>\n

But such judgment does not serve us well, particularly those of us whose faith teaches love, and mercy, and forgiveness.\u00a0 Instead, let us remember Ron as our brother, son, husband, father, and friend.\u00a0 Let us remember his service to his country, his family, and his community.\u00a0 Let us remember him as someone who did the best he could, even when his best wasn\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n

As for me, Ron\u2019s heart will always be as light as a feather.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My brother Ron died this past Saturday, May 18. His passing was not a surprise, but it is still sad to realize my big brother is gone from this world. This is the eulogy I gave for him at his funeral on May 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":1022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,89,92,91,88,90],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-death","tag-egypt","tag-family","tag-funerals","tag-ron-beckett","tag-vietnam-war"],"yoast_head":"\nRonald West Beckett (1948 - 2013)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My brother Ron died this past Saturday, May 18. His passing was not a surprise, but it is still sad to realize my big brother is gone from this world. 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