.Review by Mack Hassler
“… though Cook’s body was never found— eaten by the indigenous people Who killed him, his name will live forever in the remembrance of the people Grateful for the services his labors have afforded to mankind in general.”
A letter by Joseph Banks to Cook’s widow in The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific, edited by A. Grenfell Price (1957), p. 292
Strangely enough, as a UP writer and in this beautifully designed book The Business of Goodbye with a handsome cover of Dobbins watching the surf roll in from the Big Lake with a dog at his side and a baseball cap popped backward on his middle-aged head, resembles the second tough book written by my friend Nancy Besonen and her jaunty Finn husband Don. That first collection was titled Off the Hook and includes my favorite essay of Nancy, a piece about her father fighting in Europe during the Second World War, tied in a bundle and more or less hidden in the basement of their Chicago home. Nancy’s father writes with a jolly sense of humor about wet socks, bad food, and trivia like that—with no mention of the mortal danger he is in with colleagues dying in foxholes around him. Nancy’s usual tone is derived from those letters, and like her Dad, sees no reason to worry her readers with the vicissitudes. When a woman at my retirement is asked, “How are you doing?” her reply is, “Kind of shaky, but no sense in complaining.”
The epigraph for this review was found in my new retirement home Library. At the end of his Third Voyage navigating the vast Pacific, Cook was able to discover and map the huge island continent of Australia that nearly doubled the Empire of .England, nearly twice the size of the British Isles. On the way home, Cook stopped at the Hawaii islands and was killed and eaten by cannibals— his body never found for burial. His fellow navigator, Banks wrote Cook’s widow and said all the expansion of the Empire would remember him forever. Thus the work of the mortician can be moot. Cook remembered more than other famous persons.
Both writers, Nancy and Don are Hunters and fishers and try to feed their large family, and Nancy can write jokingly about their lives together. Dobbins writes at the opening of the book :
“This is not a book about death. It is a book about what happens around it—the people the pressure, the business, the silence, the panic, the grace and occasionally the ridiculous…”. p.3.
I think Nancy’s Dad would be proud of her for always making the best of life, all the pitfalls and minor disgusts of life into funny episodes. She is very good at that. And so is Dobbins. As we age, we live with death. A good friend and former colleague of mine, who was a fine historian, has suffered three strokes since his retirement. He can no longer speak. He can still process ideas and responds with nods and minor chuckles. His wife must feed him and take care of him totally.
Dobbins ends with a few sentences that rather ends up his message, “Working around death teaches you far more about life than you ever expect. And in the end, that is what this book is really about.” p. 147. I like the wit in this short volume of casual anecdote. My friend Nancy, whom I cite as my model for this sort of narrative was raised as a Roman Catholic girl , and would drive from Baraga County all the way up the Keewenaw to Lake Lindon near Houghton because she liked the Priest. Now she worships at Trinity Lutheran in Watton because that is where her children and many grandchildren, who need to be fed; and where much of the humor resides. I think the reader would like to know more about the Dobbins family. He praises his wife for suffering through like a clergyman’s wife the changes and emergencies of being married to a Funeral Director. We know that it was his father who posed the question to him early on about what he intended to do with his life. That confrontation early in the book sets the scene nicely for all that follows I would like to hear more about Dobbins’ family.
The Business of Goodbye , is a funny book, a wise book, and a beautifully printed book. Read it and you will be a better person. I have had many experiences with “undertakers’—burying two wives and my parents. Not just the wit and humor that helps calm our minds at those moments but also our philosophies and beliefs that us move through those dark moments that are part of our lives and destinies.
The Business of Goodbye: Death taught me how to Live What You Only Learn in Funeral Service, by Jim L. Dobbins, 2026 148 pages PBK, $19.95
