14,000 words, with captions

This is a silhouette of Jon when he was about, oh, 7 or 8 or 9. The piece of paper on the left is written in the preschool Jon's adorable scrawl, on that thin paper with the dotted line between the solid lines to indicate how high lowercase letters should be. It reads, with enjambments, "Dear Mom I love / you a lot love / Jonathan Lobko. / I love you so / much love. / Jonathan Lobko." Two things kill me about this. One, the repetition. Since it was a writing exercise, his teacher made him write what it was he had to write twice. Two, the lack of punctuation. Call me biased but this seems to be one of the purest, most true pieces of writing I've ever read. The paper on the right reads just "I love you," one word per colored Post-It, and signed in the lower right corner "Love Jonathan Lobko."





A representative sample of the flowers we've been receiving. Thanks, everyone.





Jon, with arrangements of flowers. Notice the little picture of Jon on the right, taken when he's a wee little cherub, and the picture on the left, when Jon's in his hale 20s. I assume that Jon's head is on the left and his feet on the right. I have to assume this: we were not to open the casket. I assume this because of all of the funerals and wakes I've ever seen on TV and in films. The head always seems to go to the viewer's left. Anyone know why?




The Video Tribute. It turned out to be OK with me, mainly because the wake was loud enough with the voices of well-wishers to drown out the piccolo and string soundtrack. The picture here is of Jon and myself: I'm in red and Jon's in blue. Picture quality is not optimal, but you can make out Jon's blonde hair, which sometime in his adolescence finally went and stayed brown.




The four of us stood in front of these chairs and portraits when we received everyone. It looks depressing...




... but it really wasn't. These displays were on the opposite side of the room.




Young Jon and the flag the older Jon earned via his brief but storied service in the U.S.N.




Mikhael Lobko, a.k.a. Pa, in his Russian Cossack's uniform. He's standing guard. I wrote a poem about this image this morning.



Jon being borne into the hearse by the following Excellent Men: David Geary (his cousin), Alex Klimchuk, Peter Filonovich, Edward Filonovich (more cousins, on my Dad's side), Rick Heald (an uncle on Mom's side), and Phil Mathis (Jon's best friend).




To the right of this shot, about 20 cars are idling, with little flags of hard blue plastic reading "FUNERAL" on them affixed to their radio antennae. For one brief and v. weird moment it had the feeling of an Indy Racing start line. The hearse went forward and took a left around Buranich Funeral Home, then took a left onto West Genesee. We drove forward from where this shot was taken and took a left to follow the hearse - pride of place. A Camillus PD cruiser escorted. Drivers who happened to be on the road, including one old woman, were coming up behind the processional and didn't know what the protocol was; the old woman sort of weaved her car from lane to lane until she decided it was best to just stop altogether. I didn't see whether or not she waited for the whole processional to turn onto West Genesee.




Moving down the 1/2 mile stretch of West Genesee between Buranich and St. Joseph's Church. A mercifully short drive.




The Navy personnel on Burial Detail. I'm ashamed to say I don't know your ranks. I'll find out. See the post called "My Honor" for more about these Excellent Men. There was a fairly strong and fairly cold wind blowing at this moment.





There are more funeral pictures to get to, and there's never going to be an ideal moment to share the first picture of Jon as he was in his prime, so here.





This picture might seem too similar to warrant inclusion. Let me tell you why that isn't the case. The "Oh yeah" set to Jon's eyebrow is one of his dominant expressions. The other Alaska shot of Jon makes him seem demure, even somber. Whereas this shot gets across his cocksure moxie.