Morain quintet down to quartet

Brother Tom’s memorial service was celebrated last Sunday outside on the Graceland University campus in Lamoni. My youngest brother, Tom died from prostate cancer last October at the age of 73. The service was held on his birthday weekend, and it provided all the comfort such a celebration can bring.

I was privileged to serve as pianist, a humbling experience given Tom’s virtuosity on the piano. The service featured several recorded interludes of his stylings on well-known hymns, played from some CDs he had cut a few years ago. Flash drives of the CDs were available as “party favors” for those who attended.

Tom was the first of us five “Morain kids” to die.

It’s an odd feeling to lose a sibling, as many of you have experienced. I’ve always defined myself as part of a quintet, and now we’re down to a quartet. I haven’t yet come to terms with the new identity, but I’m working on it.

The celebration also conjured up another odd sensation, one I’ve experienced before in another setting. More on that other one in a moment.

My peculiar reaction derived from the juxtaposition of dozens of people from diverse chunks of Tom’s and my past sitting together at the same moment in the outdoor amphitheater.

Tom undertook, and excelled at, several different careers: a college professor at Iowa State, a director at Living History Farms, executive director of the Iowa Historical Society, and an administrator and professor at Graceland. He also went on the road for years to take Iowa history to venues across the state for the Iowa Council for the Humanities, and was a prize-winning author of Iowa history textbooks and scholarly publications. He was well known in Jefferson, Ames, Des Moines and Lamoni.

As such, his funeral service at Lamoni drew a large and diverse crowd. I knew many of the attendees, both through my own life and through Tom’s. 

The strange feeling I experienced at the Lamoni service came from the boxes into which I had pigeonholed those folks. Each of them “lived” in my mind in separate eras of my past, and of Tom’s. They occupied different spots in my life’s chronology, each comfortably ensconced in his or her own cubbyhole.

It was jarring to see them “escape” those conveniently arranged boxes and mingle on the same day across six or seven decades of my memories. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever been jostled out of synchrony that way. It wasn’t unpleasant for me, but it was sort of like one of those dreams when someone you haven’t thought of for a long time suddenly stands before you in a strange setting, acting as if it were perfectly normal for him or her to be there.

The other times I’ve been jolted the same way were at Bell Tower Festivals in Jefferson in mid-June because of the high school class reunions held there.

Class reunions, as you know, are celebrated on anniversaries of graduations of five, 10, 15, 20, etc., years ago. Since I’ve lived in Jefferson, nearly all my life, I know a great number of the returning graduates, and connect them in my mind with the times in which they lived. 

So long as they remain there, my memory is satisfied. But when decades of graduates fly the coop of my remembrance and crowd together of an evening in the street bistro, I lose my sense of chronology. It’s like that weird dream venue again. 

This all probably sounds pretty strange, and I wouldn’t have divulged it except that I’m allowed to write my column on anything that crosses my mind, and that’s what crossed it this week. 

Anyway, it stayed with me after Tom’s service, and I thought it was worthy of mention.

It was an interesting part of our heart-warming sendoff for Tom.

Sincere thanks to everyone who helped celebrate his life, last Sunday and since his passing seven months ago.

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