Generational Transitions

I was at a funeral the other day and a wake the night before. They were for different people, but both of the deceased were from a generation that is passing. One was ninety-one and the other eighty-five years, both had lived full lives, both appear to have led relatively happy and prosperous lives. The same was true for two other funerals of the past several months. One person was seventy-five and the other was eighty-four – again, both having lived full and apparently contented lives with ample material and emotional support as they moved on. None died alone, none died with apparent regret, all passed into the ages. What did these people have in common besides the obvious end of life scenario? They were part of a generation that is now passing into eternity was one thing, but another was their common ethnicity and their common historical connection as the first generation born of immigrants.

As I scanned the room during the bereavement meal after the funeral yesterday it struck me how most everyone in that room, with the exception of a handful from my generation, but with that exception noted, barring catastrophic illness or accident, everyone else in the room was at least seventy-five to ninety years and most would probably be dead in the next five to ten years. With the exception of only a couple or so, everyone looked well, was well dressed and apparently living their last years rather comfortably. I felt both privileged and sad at the same time: privileged to be among family who had weathered the storms of the Great Depression, World War, and the myriad changes that took place during their lifetimes – during the twentieth and now early twenty-first centuries. Sad with the realization that the standard bearers of tradition and cultural familiarity, people who have either known each other, or were familiar with the names of families from a time when they lived in the same community, were living their final years. Many in the room had not seen one other since their childhood seventy or eighty years before and as they gazed upon one another, you could hear: “You look familiar, how do I know you? Oh my God, Bessie, we used to play together.” Or, “I knew your brother and remember you when …”

There is something about this generation that makes me feel the loss of a distant past, a time when there were still many little shops with Greek lettering on their storefronts, and Greek could be heard on the streets. Yes, it’s easy to say a generation is passing, but more difficult to understand, to feel the passage, to feel the end of an entire way of life. We didn’t realize when we were kids that we would grow up to experience the end of a culture, one borne of immigrants, but nurtured by the intersections of Greek and American life. The first generation of Greek immigrants has passed and now their children, the first American born generation, are becoming part of the ages. The world that made many of us feel comfortable, that nurtured us in ways not easily comprehended, that such a world would fade into the mists of time is not fully grasped until sitting in a room at a funeral watching a cultural reality about to die. What will happen to us when this generational shift completes, when we become the next generation to pass? What will the next generation go through when the time comes for them to have the experience of reflecting during bereavement meals? Will they feel what my generation feels? It is unlikely they will experience similar moments as many of them have grown up in suburbia or in communities too diverse to appreciate the holistic aspects of growing up as a hyphenated American with the Greek immigrants still around or in recent memory. Indeed, they would not think in terms of hyphenated America, simply in terms of America and Americans.