Mark Williams Funeral

Today, Garry and I went to Mark Williams funeral. For those of you who don't know, he is an incredible composer of beginning through high school level music. An absolutely amazing musician, he was a co-author of the the beginning band book "Accent on Achievement" and they estimated that from the time the book was published in the early 90's until now, he has helped over 3 million children learn to play and read music on their respective instruments. Truely a remarkable musician. He had been the conductor and artistic director of the Spokane British Brass Band for the past I think they said 12 years, where Garry and I perhaps got to know him a little better, through his humor and wit while speaking at the concerts we were able to attend.

My biggest observation of the funeral, first of all was as we were sitting waiting for the funeral to begin, we saw this little old man make his way to the organ with the help of his wife, as she turned the organ on, helped him take his shoes off, and get him started. He was an amazing organist. As a member of the LDS Church, I haven't ever really gone to many other churches, so sometimes my perspective is a bit narrow. After I watched the organist prepare, I went back to reading my program, until he began to play! He was amazing, it wasn't exactly jazz organ, but it definitely was not the type of organ music I am accustomed to listening to. He played with out music for nearly 20 minutes, and was thoroughly entertaining the entire time. Needless to say, I don't think I will ever hear that kind of playing at an LDS Church!

I haven't been to many funerals where I wasn't sad, and I'm not sure if I expected to be sad or not, but as I listened to the lovely tribute given by many of his family members, and funeral attendee's, I couldn't help but feeling the upmost respect for this man that I only knew through the music world. He enjoyed life to its fullest whether he was with his family or fellow musicians. As one of the members of the Spokane British Brass Band stated quite eloquently, "I never knew Mark had a family, it's so nice to see you here" and I don't think that was a bad thing, he just took what he was doing at the time and did it to the absolute full extent.

Mark and his wife lived in Spokane for several years until about 6 months ago when they moved to Bellingham. The end of his life truely marked the kind of individual that he was. His son was/is suffering from some kind of mental illness, and while Mark was trying to wake him up to give him some medication, his son found a knife and stabbed his father 14 times, as his mom tried to stop him he began attacking her too. As they both went to the hospital, luckily his mother survived, but tragically Mark's life ended.

Being such a shock to hear of his death, I guess I sort of thought it might be a sad funeral, and it was definitely sad to know of his death, and especially how it happened, but being at his funeral, I did not feel sad at all. Mark lived his life to the absolute fullest, and I don't believe he would have had any regrets on the things that he was able to accomplish.

As we entered the foyer after the funeral and saw all of his many recoginitions he had received, it truely hit me, the kind of amazing talent that is now gone from this mortal existence. I guess most of all I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to go to the dedication of his life, and share with many others who knew him much better than I, and share their many memories to get a bigger glimpse at this truely remarkable man.