Wm. Hydrick, LA Gamma (Loyola) sent this post saying goodbye to his home chapter.
Requiem for my chapter
All things die.1
Birds die. Fish die. Flowers and trees die. Dogs and cats and
hamsters die. Even cars, and ships, and buildings die. People die,
too, as do ideals and their expression. Dying is simply the logical
end to living. Things come into existence, serve their purpose, and
exit the stage of life’s great drama. Some things die in a matter
of hours while others go on for centuries before their end comes.
Millions of years from now even our sun will die and fade. All
things die.
A man of wisdom2
once wrote that being finite “may be the greatest gift our race has
ever received. To live on . . . is to leave behind joy, love, and
companionship because we know it to be transitory; of the moment. We
know it will turn to ash. Only those whose lives are brief can
believe that love, is eternal.” Would that I would not have lived
to see this day; happier I would have been to enter that eternal
realm of knowing nothing, ignorant of when this day would come. But
come it has, the curse known to the parent who outlives his child.
To know now not the joy of watching a becoming but to feel the
desolation of having no further purpose and the emptiness of failure;
this is all I am left with.
As a youth, I remember hearing the
parable of the sower and the seeds3.
Having not read the passages myself, I always thought it was a
treatise concerned with the distribution of wealth; that we were the
seeds. Some seeds feel on good soil and flourished (the rich), some
seeds fell on rocky soil and toiled harder (the middle class), and
still others fell upon the road and were devoured or trampled (the
poor). It is therefore not the seeds at fault for their circumstance
but rather a result of the environment in which they were place. As
seeds we are equal. But as an adult studying the Gospels I came to
understand we are not the seeds but the soil.
The biblical texts go on to explain the
seed is the Word and the soil is those who hear it. I think that is
equally true in Sigma Phi Epsilon. The seeds are the values of the
fraternity and WE are the soil. For some, the values are hollow and
meaningless. They never take hold and those men never understand the
true meaning of our motto. Some will hang on through graduation but
many will simply fade with time. Then there are those who become the
weeds and choke the life from the new growth. There are also those
for whom the meaning is clear but it doesn’t survive long beyond
the academic halls. These men find true solace in the values while
in school but consider it only a passing phase. Once they graduate
they quickly fall into new routines and the fraternity is quickly
forgotten or only viewed as a childish affectation now put aside.
Then there are the few where the lifetime responsibility of
brotherhood takes deep root and the values of Sigma Phi Epsilon are
foremost in their minds to their dying day.
I have seen you all in the men of my
chapter. I have loved you all as you passed in and through my life.
And now you are gone.
I shall miss having you in my daily
life. I shall miss reading Green Eggs and Ham on Dr. Seuss’s
birthday. I shall miss dressing as a Santa in December. I shall
miss sharing the football games on Saturdays or the meals we part
took in celebration of the all too rare win or the more common
defeat. I shall miss knowing that, through you, I had the chance to
change the world. Without you what purpose shall I serve? What
meaning can I ascribe to this existence where all joy has left my
world? Let the long night come, the sleep eternal. Let the labors
be put to rest at last. What you were, you are; you will be nothing
more. No more growth, but no more pain.
Many years ago, at the funeral for the
mother of a brother, I was approached by a youngster who told me he
had never been to a funeral before and he wasn’t sure what to do.
I told him that funerals are more for the living than the dead. They
are a time for celebration of all that makes us what we are. It
should be no less for our chapter than any brother.
What words remain but “farewell?”
The souls that made the corpus breath must now depart to take on
whatever challenges lie ahead. What once we did together, we now
must do apart. But when the memories of the greatness we shared
come, think not of the sordid end but of the glory that once blessed
us with its presence. Think of the magic and the wonder of the times
we had together. Hold fast to the lessons learned at the knee of our
once great assemblage: Live always with virtue in your heart for only
in this way can we purge the world of selfishness and degradation;
work diligently so that our the Opus Magnus of our lives truly have
meaning beyond this temporal existence; and, Love each other whole
heartedly for if you do, the Gospel says, in this way all will know
you as one of us.
The flames burn dim and the time grows
short. Soon it will only flicker within your hearts; all that is
left of the great fire that once burned with passion and delight.
But that can be enough if you will but nurture it. And as the light
fades as the distance between us expands, let us remember who and
what we are; the few where the seed grew strong and lived beyond the
child for long. And think well of me when I am gone.
God Bless Sigma Phi Epsilon.
God Bless Louisiana Gamma.
Amen.
1
Acknowledgement and thanks to Robert Fulghum and All I Really
Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
2
J. Michael Straczynski in the television series Babylon 5
through the character of Lorien.
3
Matthew 13:1-23, Mark 4:1-34, Luke 8:4-18
