A couple of years ago I traveled to Brooklyn Park to say
goodbye to an old friend. Rog had passed away the week before and I had another
hole in my heart. Although we hadn’t seen much of each other lately, we packed
a lifetime of memories into the years we were together. When we were both
starting out in life we lived across the street from each other. Our kids
played with each other and our wives became good friends. At that time I was
stuck in a factory job I hated and one day Rog told me to put in an application
where he worked with the city and the rest was history.
For the next thirty years we worked together, played
together and enjoyed each other’s friendship. Trips to the boundary waters to
fish, and trips to Sparta on the range to deer hunt. We fought many a fire
together on the fire department. Trimmed trees and flooded skating rinks and
plowed snow in twenty below weather. Rog always led by example. He was a
soft-spoken man but if you didn’t pull your weight, he was quick to tell you
and although small in stature he backed down from no one, if he thought he was
right. I never knew a harder working man.
I got to know some of his siblings and family including his
parents, steeped deep in their Finish culture. Rog was so proud of his family
and their heritage. He liked to sprinkle a little Finnish into his
conversations from time to time. Always in the morning it was hyvaa huomenta,
when he first saw you and at night hyvaa yota. His pocketknife was a puukko and
a match for his cigarette was a tulitikku. He would count, yksi, kaksi, kolme,
nelja, and viisi when he counted up to five. He had that sly little smile when
he spoke in Finnish because he knew that only a Finn could talk that sing songy
language. He celebrated St. Urho’s day every year and he was an Iron ranger at
heart. He said they called me “The Sparta flash,” in school where he played
hockey.
Teddy Roosevelt said, “Walk softly and carry a big stick.”
That was Roger’s mantra too. He led by example and with him it worked because
you saw how much he loved life and people and you couldn’t help but want to
emulate him. Sadly missed but never forgotten.
I have a drawer in a hutch, where I put all of the
obituaries of my friends and family. For a long time it was maybe one or two a
year. But lately the drawer is filling up because---well life-- or should I say
death is catching up with all of us. Sometimes I look through the drawer and
each obituary and I try to think of the good that I drew from that person. How
they were special or different from the others in the drawer. How they made my
life better and in some case completed me. We are all a work in progress from
birth to death. If we were smart,
we took the lessons that were shown us by others and learned from them but it
was the love we had for each other that meant the most. Love is unique because
it is so personally tied to you and the giver and in the end it is the greatest
gift you can ever give to anyone.
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