Derek, the Jesus Geezers and Gene Hackman

Derek

Derek landed in our church one Sunday afternoon after being recommended by a pastor friend of his. Tall, big build, a former Aussie Rules football player, but now in his late sixties, full head of dark hair, a goatee beard, and a surprisingly light voice.

Dressed tidy, neatly groomed and with a smart black leather jacket, Derek smelled of the customary Brut 33 cologne, the standard for men of his era.  Either that or Old Spice, before it got hip and urban again.

Derek had a past. At least we assumed he had a past, because he never talked about it. We knew there was family, a former wife even, and grown up kids, but not much else.

Which, taken all together, makes one assume that he had a past. He lived alone in one of the nondescript apartment blocks that are mostly single bedroom that had sprung up in the 1970s across from the railway yards in Midland, near where we had church.

Midland was what you would call a hard scrabble area. And the apartments that Derek lived in were full of hard scrabble people. Not bad people by any means. This is not the projects of Baltimore. But they were single bedroom places, stacked on top of each other in an unimaginative way, with a common cracked asphalt parking space, and that air about them that said “aspiration came here to die”.

As many people did. Just the types of people who have had a past and, quite frankly, don’t have much of a future. All of their lives are lived in the present – in other words, day to day.  A shopping bag of groceries at a time. Pint of milk. Half dozen eggs. Sausages and bacon. Launder, rinse, repeat.

Derek was one of those people –  men, they’re not always men, but often are -,  who had found that through a series of events probably – their lives had become lonelier and lonelier.  Derek didn’t have a car, so that first Sunday someone dropped him off to church, and then it was a case of him getting home. Or one of us getting him, which someone duly did.

Now in our church there were a whole bunch of older men the same age as Derek. But that is where the comparison ended. None of them had “a past” in the way Derek did.

Most were retired or semi-retired and had family around them, or at least nearby. Some had been professionals, a couple had run successful businesses, and they all had a bunch of kids and grandkids.  They’d all been Christians as long as they could remember, and had served faithfully for decades in various settings.

Oh, and they had the caravan and the four wheel drive, and the house paid off, and would take the occasional long trip around Australia or overseas.  Grey nomads – that’s what we call them in Australia, seeking the sun in the surprisingly cold Western Australian winter.  And Derek’s life in his late sixties was nothing like that. He was alone for a start.

But they had their faith in common with Derek. Derek had been a Catholic growing up. We knew that, because he was pretty scathing of the Catholic Church, and somehow he’d become a born again Christian through an amazing older bloke from the Uniting Church of Australia who was a gifted evangelist/pastor. And somehow that older bloke found out we had planted a church near Derek’s apartment and had called me to see if we could look out for Derek if and when he showed.

Derek fitted in fine at church. He skirted the outer of the place, but always sat in the front row of the amphitheatre, partly because he was getting stiff in the knees and had had some surgeries – and was about to have more – for various ailments. He sang, he listened to the sermons, and he stood around drinking coffee afterwards. He was affable, a bit opinionated but people were happy enough to chat with him.

The Jesus Geezers

In most cases that would be about it, right? However one day, Ian – one of those older blokes, ex deputy-principal and long term elder in another church before landing at ours with his wife, suggested that the blokes would love to start a Monday lunch time Bible Study. A group for those retired older blokes that met when they were wide awake, their wives were at sewing or at the grandkids, and which could help them hang out and have conversations about Jesus and the Bible that they were often not used to having.

Ian knew how to lead, he was spiritually mature, but he still asked if I would come along for a while and just help with the vibe. Monday late morning and lunchtime? Monday morning after Sunday for a pastor? Yikes. Being a good fifteen to twenty years younger than them, and being a X Generation bloke who tends to age down , I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But I said I’d come along and get them up and running.

So there we sat on Ian’s well maintained verandah, his caravan and SUV out the front, and his home made pizza oven and barbecue. Oh, and a great coffee machine which churned out the best coffee. Ian was a casually good barista, so that made Monday late mornings more bearable for me.

First up we made the big decisions. We’d meet fortnightly and we’d have a sausage sizzle -or something for lunch – most fortnights. We’d do a book of the Bible and a bit of cultural analysis (they loved my blogs!), pray and then chat about life and the aches and pains of ageing, grandkids, retirement, occasional travel stories.  In other words all the stuff I wasn’t yet ready for.

What should we call ourselves as a group? they asked. I suggested, as a working title only that we could change up later, The Jesus Geezers. They were geezers – even if I were not yet a geezer, they loved Jesus and I loved Jesus too. Seemed like a perfect working title. A working title that stuck. Over the months, the name stuck. The Jesus Geezers it remained.

Who else should we invite? Derek of course.  And as the weeks rolled into months rolled into a couple of years, and rolled into me eventually moving on from the church (I remained a Jesus Geezer all that time, despite my initial protestations), Derek became a mainstay of the group.

He wasn’t like them in many respects. I think you’ve picked that up already. Didn’t have the cash, or the caravan, or the retirement plan or the rows of family pictures on the sideboard, ageing photos of the weddings of children in the 90s, and dozens of grandchildren pictures with kids in various states of school uniform and quantities and qualities of teeth.

But they didn’t do much without Derek. If they went out somewhere together, Derek was picked up too. There were lunches and times at cafes, and Derek would be there too. Derek had his say in the group. No one considered Derek to be a “project” of the group, he was just one of the Jesus Geezers, a man who had a past, a past that like so many of our pasts, keeps nipping at our heels in various ways.

Derek started to have some health troubles so he’d get a lift from the blokes from time to time to various things. That’s how the Jesus Geezers treated each other.

Gene Hackman

You know where this is going, don’t you? So many of us read with sadness, and not a little shudder, at the manner in which one of the greatest movie stars of the latter half of the 20th century died. Alone. Confused. Befuddled. Wracked with Alzheimers, and probably unaware that his much younger second wife – who had been his support – had died probably a week before him and was lying in another part of their house.

Hackman was 95.  I loved his movies, especially Mississippi Burning. He had the right mix of toughness and tenderness.  There were few his equal.

Yet he and his wife – Betsy Arakawa (who likely died of a virus and was thirty years his junior) were dead for several weeks before two workers found their bodies. And the body of one of their beloved dogs.

In speaking about the incident, Hackman’s daughter from his first marriage said that she had spoken to them every few months.  She maintains that they were close. She said that her father had been in good health despite his age. The coroner’s investigation said that he had been in poor health.  Hard to know.

And easy to speculate, but we shouldn’t. Suffice to say, both Gene Hackman and his wife were dead for some time before anyone was in touch with them.  Their deaths have triggered articles and commentary around loneliness and the scourge of ageing apart from family members.  Justine Toh, from Australia’s Centre For Public Christianity, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, says this:

What’s more tragic than dying alone and going undiscovered — aside from the distinct likelihood that, in Hackman’s case, Arakawa’s “heroic” (which is to say, solitary) efforts were probably what kept him alive so long? It is the tragedy that lonely deaths aren’t uncommon, with some people’s decomposed bodies going unmissed for one, two, three, even ten years.

In other words, without a younger wife, or the social capital that accompanies the likes of Hackman, there are many no-names who end up lonelier for longer, and undiscovered, after having died, for longer.  Especially if you, like Derek, have had a past.

Justine Toh makes this point:

A world separates most of us from the Hollywood elite enjoying retirement in leafy privacy. But many will overidentify here: a glimpse of the neighbour’s bins is all we see of them. I live in a townhouse complex with several families, older couples and a good handful of elderly people living alone. All the houses face each other, yet it’s possible to go months without seeing neighbours. Yes, many of us have busy schedules and maybe many of us prefer — as the saying goes — to keep to ourselves.

So true. So tragic. So common.

One day, the police phoned the chief Geezer, Ian. They phoned him to tell him they would be coming around to see him. And the reason they came around to see him was because Ian’s phone number – and another number as it turns out from one of the Geezers, were the last phone numbers unanswered on Derek’s phone.

Derek’s phone which had been found in Derek’s house alongside Derek’s body, where it had been lying for a couple of days. It would seem he had come out of the bathroom and dropped dead suddenly.

And two of the Geezers, having not heard from Derek for a couple of days, had gotten worried about him. Had called him several times each, apparently each of them without knowing that the other had done so.  And the police found Derek on his floor, with his unanswered phone calls on his phone. So they did their investigation.

Derek had died alone. But he hadn’t died lonely. The Geezers, his church community who, despite having led different lives to Derek, and despite having pasts that they were willing to display proudly on the sideboards and fridges of their houses, were his friends. Not just his church acquaintances. But his friends.

I’m often struck by James 2:

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place”, while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there”, or, “Sit down at my feet”, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Now Derek, as I said, was always well groomed and tidy, so no issue there. But partiality comes in all shapes and sizes. And for men who have done well in life, who have some retirement money to spend and who have intact family units and connections, Derek is that “poor man in shabby clothes” equivalent. Fine for church on Sunday, but let’s not get carried away!

Except the Geezers did. Well not so much carried away, but just responded as a Christian community should respond. They didn’t make distinctions among themselves.

Derek’s Funeral

Derek’s funeral was an eye-opener. A whole bunch of his family members were there. They were sad, and kind, but clearly there had been a past. His ex-wife was there too. She was kind-hearted. And broken-hearted for Derek too. One of his sons helped with the family side of things.

About twenty five members of his family turned up. Equalled by at least the same number of people from church. People who were middle class, self-funded retirees, and some younger people too who had gotten to know Derek. It kinda took the family members by surprise. Who were these people? Dad had a past. Dad lived alone.

Yet here were these church folk attending his funeral. And not only attending, but leading it and speaking about Derek their friend. Family members were visibly moved. Many of them came up to comment and commend. I pray that it was the love of Jesus for all of us that they saw, not just the outflowing love we had for Derek.

I did a reading, but the service was led by the new pastor who did a great job about speaking about the hope of the gospel that Derek’s had. A couple of the Geezers prayed and did Bible readings and said a few things. It was emotional. Emotional and joyous.

I can’t say it didn’t get a bit ugly at times – in fact the police were called to the graveside. But that’s another story.

What’s central however, is that Derek was part of a group of friends, who were not just friends, but who were brothers in Christ. And that made all of the difference in life. And in death.

In closing her article, Justine Toh quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose work on God’s community I have been reflecting on in preparing for a time away with a church group this coming weekend. We will be exploring a biblical theology of how God gathers people together in salvation blessing.

Justine finishes by saying this:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theologian and pastor hanged for his part in the plot to assassinate Hitler, wrote a book on Christian community in which he outlines “the ministry of bearing”. We “must bear the burden of a brother”, he insists, because “it is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated”. Sounds grim, yet for Bonhoeffer in the caring community everyone is loved to the degree they are a burden.

One day you too may be a burden. You may be there already.  One day you may have a past that results in you living in one of those austere, no-frills apartments like Derek did in the hard-scrabble part of Midland. Or you may know someone who is a burden.

Gene Hackman was feted in life. But died a lonely death. Derek’s life got hard at some point and just never got easier. Yes, he died by himself, but the Geezers were onto it quickly. And Derek’s funeral was a testament to their desire to bear the burden of a brother, and not just a brother, but a fellow Geezer, whose primary – indeed only – common feature with their lives, was the Jesus of the Geezers.