In Memoriam -- Uncle Junior

When I wrote The Summer of France, I included the character Uncle Martin. Uncle Martin came from a family of nine children in Kentucky and volunteered to fight in World War II. He fought in Italy, was wounded and ended up in France where he fell in love with a Frenchwoman and never returned to live in the U.S.
Uncle Martin's character was loosely based on all of my uncles, but mostly on Uncle Junior.
That's what we called him because my mother always called him Junior. His wife called him Luther because that was his name -- Luther John Phillips.
Junior was the oldest boy in a family of nine. He had two older sisters, three younger brothers and three younger sisters. My mother grew up the baby in that family.
Uncle Junior was drafted into the army and  he did serve in Italy in World War II. Somewhere, I have a videotape of him sharing his war experience. He was wounded four times but came home in one piece with a Purple Heart. As we talked about his experience, he recalled that he warned his younger brothers not to wait to be drafted. Instead, he urged them to sign up for the military. Clarence, the next oldest brother, signed up for the Navy so he could avoid the ground war that Uncle Junior faced.

Uncle Junior is next to my mother in the middle. This picture
was taken at the funeral of my most recent uncle who passed.
These are the remaining siblings. 

His two  younger brothers weren't old enough to fight in World War II, but they both served later.
Uncle Junior died at age 94 on Saturday morning. He had been moved to hospice care about 24 hours before.
His death makes me sad for my mother, who loved hearing from her big brother.
It makes me sad for my aunt, who had been married to him for 71 years. 71 years? Can you imagine how empty that must feel after so long together?
And it makes me sad for all of us nieces and nephews who enjoyed hearing his musings, even if we only saw him a few times each year.
Uncle Junior didn't have the same adventures that Uncle Martin did in The Summer of France, but he  had a rich life that took him back home to Ohio and allowed him to volunteer in the Masonic Order and the Shriners, along with telling his war stories.

In Memory of Nana

I imagine that everyone is tired of reading sad posts on my blog. I think about writing stories on Christmas lights or scented soaps or books set in France, but life has other plans.
On Wednesday afternoon, I learned that my 97-year-old grandmother died.

This was in August at my cousin's
daughter's wedding. 

Now, I realize that most people as old as I am are fortunate to have parents living and in good health, much less a grandmother. But my grandmother, Nana, has resisted old age.
One of my nieces pointed out that Nana is the only woman she knows who gave up high  heels at age 92. That makes her practically French, doesn't it?
Nana led a typical Kentucky life, marrying at age 16 to a man 12 years older because he wanted a young bride that he could raise the way he wanted. That sounds terribly sexist, which it was, but he might have gotten more than  he planned on when he married my strong-willed grandmother. The two of them had three children, one of them my father.
Nana helped run a general store and the family lived above the store, until one night a fire broke out. The family escaped and stood outside in the cold watching their home, livelihood and several hundred dollars in life savings burn to the ground, My grandfather didn't believe in banks, so he kept cash. He nearly died trying to save the money.
Some of Nana's jobs after that included running a hotel, which I vaguely remember as a child. What fun to visit my grandmother and get to stay in a hotel room! She also worked at the post office and knew everyone in her small town.
One of my favorite stories from Nana was when she rode a horse into town to get a permanent at the beauty shop. Just the idea that they didn't have a car to drive, they still relied on horses or wagons, but she still searched out the permanent wave for her thin hair. But the story got better. On the way home, the horse got stuck in quicksand. Nana had to crawl off the horse's neck to get to solid ground then tug on the horse's reins until she got him up to dry ground too. Another time she told about the horse running away with her as she lay flat and wrapped her hands around its neck, holding on for her life.
Kentucky, especially the poor parts, has always been behind the rest of the world, but the idea of using outhouses and riding horses to town even 80 years ago strikes me as "Little House on the Prairie."
My grandfather died 32 years ago, but Nana wasn't finished with marriage. She dated a few guys before she lucked into meeting Ish. They fell in love like a lightning strike and married quickly to spend their remaining years together.
Ish freed Nana in a way. She went from a woman who only wore dresses, to someone who discovered pants were sensible and sometimes more modest than dresses. She began to spend winters in Arizona, and she and Ish traveled to explore new lands, including Venezuela.

Here's my Aunt June, Nana, me and Grace

They returned to live in Kentucky and Ish died in the late 1990s. Nana continued to live alone. We convinced her to buy a smaller house for awhile, but after a year, she sold it for a profit and moved back to her big house with five bedrooms, two kitchens, two living rooms, a dining room and acres of land.
A few years ago, she had a stroke. She insisted on lying down for awhile rather than calling the
emergency squad. She never fully regained strength in her left side, but she lived at home with her daughter or a live-in helper, intent on completing many tasks at home. She would slide down the stairs on her butt to get to the lower level and go through her belongings, deciding what to keep or discard.
A few years ago, she became terribly ill. I drove the four hours from Columbus to be with her. My aunt and uncle in Kentucky both had the flu and couldn't visit her in the hospital. My parents in Florida weren't within reach. I sat by her hospital bed, but she didn't wake up. I didn't think she'd make it through the night.
I called my parents and told them to come. They did, and Nana was better by the time they arrived. She seemed to beat all the odds.

This was probably celebrating her 90th birthday, or maybe 92. 

Nana mostly lived at home, but would go into the nursing home for three months at a time to give my aunt a break from caretaking duty.
In October, another call from the hospital. She had pneumonia. I drove down to sit by her bed. My aunt had been there all night and I waved her off to shower and rest. I pulled up a chair by Nana's bed, and for someone who they thought could die, she sat in bed alert. She hardly dozed at all. Instead, we talked.
She asked me about her great grandchildren, and her great-great grandchildren. I showed her pictures on my cell phone. We talked about her early life.
"When I woke up, I thought Wilbert was sitting in that chair," she said. Wilbert was my grandfather, her first husband.
We talked for a few minutes and she told me, "I was unhappy married," and I knew she meant in her first marriage. "But he was a good father."
She wasn't inclined to talk about her future, in this world or in heaven, in spite of her strong religious beliefs.
She fell asleep about half an hour before I needed to leave for the 4-hour drive back home.
"I love you, Nana," I whispered as I kissed her soft hair, plastered down in the back against the bed.
And she recovered again, returning to the nursing home to play bingo.
Then Wednesday, Mom texted me that Nana  had died.
I have to guess that she has no regrets, even though she didn't quite make it to her 98th birthday.

Stiff Necks and Guilt

Sometimes, I know that I'm not a good person.
I'm not saying that in the hopes that one of you readers will try to talk me out of it.
I'm selfish, not as generous or as kind as I should be.
This morning, I went over in my mind the things that I'm dreading. The visiting hours this evening for my friend's daughter's death, along with Katie's funeral Monday morning. I half hoped I wouldn't be able to find a substitute teacher so I couldn't go to the funeral.
I signed up to take dessert for the funeral luncheon, but I didn't go to mass this morning, where I might have talked to or comforted the family.
And now, the pain in my neck has begun -- a pain I had for
two weeks when my Aunt Lorena died.
I could, of course, skip the visiting hours and the funeral. One of my friends from church called and as we talked she said she expected I wouldn't be able to get out of teaching to attend the funeral. I could have grabbed at that straw and assumed everyone else would think that too.
But, I knew that although I could easily skip the funeral and the visitation, my once best friend Cathy could not. I could pretend that nothing had happened, but she is living with the fact that her 21-year-old daughter died.
And for that reason alone, I will be there this evening, offering my sympathy because I know that nothing can be done to ease their pain. And I will be at the funeral mass on Monday morning. I will drive to the cemetery and watch their tears fall as handfuls of dirt are tossed into the hole that holds their daughter.
I think that I might be able to help their daughters. I was 14 when my sister died. Katie's sisters are 18 and 12. I'm the godmother to the younger one.
But what could I tell them?

My sister Tammy in her senior picture. She died
the night before her high school graduation.

I could warn them that as they move forward in their lives, at each milestone, they'll feel the emotional abyss left behind with the loss of Katie. As they complete college and celebrate with their family, they'll feel Katie's absence. When they plan their weddings or give birth to children, they'll feel that ache -- the certain feeling that an older sister would have good advice and experience to share.
But why should I warn them. They'll know soon enough, and at least they'll have each other, along with their two brothers.
I burst out last night and told Grace that whenever I die, they should just plan the service quickly. I hate the limbo, the in-between time when you can't even pretend that things will be normal because of the wait for the services. I remember that time when my sister died, and with Thanksgiving, the wait has been even longer for Katie's funeral.
As a sister, and I imagine as a parent, the toughest part is to leave the person you love in the metal box, no matter how lovely and lined with silk, to close the lid of that box and leave her in the funeral home or the church. I wouldn't be able to bear it. I cried copious tears at that thought of leaving my sister all alone in the church the night of the visitation.
But I will go tonight and recall happy memories of Katie, in the hopes that I can share some joy in the midst of this painful season.

Another Chance

Yesterday, I wrote about the challenges I face while raising my sometimes stubborn and emotional 19-year-old, but earlier in the week I had been reminded that the two of us have more opportunities to work out our relationship.
On Thursday, my husband called from the newspaper and asked if I remembered a boy named Chase. I did. He ran track with Tucker, and we had been at some parties with his parents.
The boy died in a car accident the night before.
He was 19, going to college, running his own lawn care business during the summer, and he crashed on a curve in the country near his college campus. Not wearing a seat belt, he was thrown from the car and died on the scene.
As I ran the next morning early, I passed the boy's house, and I wondered if his parents were awake. Then I wondered if they'd slept. How could you possibly sleep if suddenly you son was dead?
I knew that they must have been awakened by the police the night before since the accident was at 1 a.m. The police would have known the boy's identity and notified his parents.
As I continued to run, I remembered the feeling when my own 18-year-old sister had died. That feeling that it must be a mistake, that she would walk through the door again any minute. That feeling continued for weeks afterward -- the anticipation that she'd be home.
And I also remembered waking the morning after with the sun sparkling in through the window and feeling happy, until, like a brick hitting me in the chest, the realization came that my sister had died.
There's a moment, just after waking, when it feels like everything might be okay, until the memory flashes the tragedy and it all comes back.
I didn't know Chase well enough to go to his funeral, but I'll be thinking of his family, and being  a little more gentle with my own kids.
We're so lucky to have them alive and in one piece. If we've had a fight or said hasty words, we have another chance to smooth it over.
No matter what path they've chosen, they're alive and at least we have another chance.

Emotional StraitJacket

Do you remember, 15 or 20 years ago, there was a big hullabaloo about EQ, emotional quotient, as opposed to IQ?
I have to say that if I took an EQ test, I would probably score very low. I have the hardest time understanding my own emotions.
Last week, I wrote about my "denial" of all the trials going on in my life and on Saturday morning, I posted and said I was in a very low place. I'm so out of touch with my emotions, that I couldn't figure out how I got to that low spot.
Okay, learning that my job is cutting back, then Grace crashing the car in the garage and my dad having a triple bypass all were valid reasons for me to feel down. But on Thursday, even as I knew everything would turn out okay, my mood plummeted and I couldn't figure out why.
Finally, mid-morning Saturday, it dawned on me.
Thursday morning, my husband and oldest son had a conversation about a concert he was attending that night. My husband asked where it was and Spencer replied, "At the Newport."
"That place is a tinder box," my husband replied.
"Yeah, it's pretty gross. But fun," Spencer agreed.
That afternoon, my mom posted a photo of my sister-in-law visiting my dad at the hospital. I wanted to visit my dad, but, with two kids in college, we didn't have enough money for me to fly down and visit. I love my sister-in-law (actually ex-sister-in-law) and I'm glad she was there, but I was so sad that at my age, I didn't have the extra money to fly down and be with my parents.
So I slogged through Thursday and Friday then Saturday morning feeling very depressed. --
I was sitting in the sun in the backyard, listening to the band playing as they marched in the Memorial Day parade when it hit me -- Memorial Day.
Memorial Day Weekend. The weekend my sister died 36 years ago. In a fire at a nightclub.
The innocuous conversation about the concert Spencer was going to suddenly made sense.
And understanding why my mood had plummeted helped me climb out of that sad place.
I think I probably feel like this every Memorial Day weekend, but I'm so out of touch with my emotions that I don't even realize it. I always need a light bulb moment.
So next year around this time, will one of you fabulous readers please remind me. It's okay. I'll get through it if I can just remember that it will pass.

Remembrances

My Aunt Marie, dressed in blue, her hair a faded honey color that reached nearly to her shoulders, stood watching her 12 adult grandchildren get their photograph taken.
"Do you want to get in there and have your picture taken with them?" I asked her.
"I guess," she said and took a few steps toward them. Then she stopped.
"No," she blinked away tears. "It's too sad without Dad."
We were at the dinner following her husband's funeral.
My Uncle Clarence died New Year's morning in his sleep. He hadn't been sick. His oldest son thinks he knew he was getting ready to go: "He always said he wanted to go on the back of a tractor and he ran that thing pretty hard the last forty-eight hours."
One of my other aunts asked Marie how old she was when they married 66 years before.
"I was one month shy of my 17th birthday," she said.
In Kentucky, where they lived, she had to be 17 or get her parents' permission to marry.
"My parents wouldn't sign," she said. "They liked Clarence just fine but thought I was too young to know what I was doing."
So her cousin forged the signature, and Clarence married Marie, and they were together for 66 years until Tuesday morning when she found him still in bed at 8 a.m. He had watched the celebration of the New Year before dying in his sleep.
During the funeral, I was sitting behind my Uncle Jim. Uncle Jim has one daughter and one granddaughter. So when the preacher read the list of survivors for Uncle Clarence -- four children, 16 grandchildren, 29 great-grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren -- Uncle Jim exclaimed, "Lawd Al-mighty!"
Uncle Clarence was in the Navy during World War II, so soldiers stood by the gravesite and gave a 21-gun salute. A sailor was there to play "Taps."
When I wrote my novel The Summer of France, I based one of the characters on my uncles' war stories. The character Uncle Martin was a Kentucky boy who jumped in to join the war effort. I even dedicated the book to my uncles.


My Mother in the center. Uncle Albert is on the far right with Uncle Junior next to him.

But I never gave Uncle Clarence a copy before he died. I took copies yesterday for Uncle Junior, 91, and Uncle Albert, 80,  who are still healthy. I wanted to make sure they knew they had inspired me. And I gave a copy to one of Clarence's daughters. So many of us have older relatives that we take for granted. Don't wait until it's too late to gather their stories.
You never know when  you may need a story to draw on, and all of that wisdom is just waiting to be shared.  

2013, I'm Ready For You

What can I say?
An inauspicious beginning to 2013, but I'm sure things will begin to look up from here.
My Uncle Clarence died on Jan. 1, 2013. He's my mother's second oldest brother. In his 80s, he was slim, his hair still dark, and he had a high, southern, tenor voice. Yesterday, he watched the ball drop at midnight, went to bed about 12:30 then his wife couldn't wake him up the next morning. He hadn't been sick.
Uncle Clarence told me stories about fighting in World War II when I asked him. He showed me a huge certificate he got in the Navy when they crossed the International Date Line. His younger brother, who fought in the Korean War, got a tiny billfold sized certificate. It's funny that they both carried those with them. The big certificate was in an envelope in the car.
But some less dire things happened on the first day of the new year too.
For New Year's, we let Tucker, 16, have a gathering. He refused to call it a party. But there were a lot of kids here. Earl and I camped out at the neighbors, coming over every hour or so to check on the party.

Sometimes a cat is the only comfort.

Tucker promised to control things and he had a miserable time, which is to be expected. He explained that at one point, giving up, he took the cat and lay on his bed. He couldn't wait for everyone to go home.
At 12:15, he shot over to the neighbor's house to get the car keys and drive home a friend.
"Don't you want to wait til everyone leaves?" I asked him.
"Nope," he said.
Grace and her friends had returned and were shuffling teenagers out of the house.
"Does everyone have rides home? Anyone need a ride?" Earl and I asked. We aren't stupid about teenagers and alcohol.
After everyone left, Grace said the toilet in the downstairs bathroom was broken. I figured it was either clogged or the handle had come unhooked from the mechanism in the toilet tank.
Nope.
The toilet tank was empty of any water and had a big hole in the bottom of it. How does someone put a hole in a porcelain toilet tank?
Luckily, whoever did it, knew to turn off the water to the toilet so it didn't flood the whole house. Also, the towels in the bathroom were lying in a wet heap where someone had cleaned up the water overflow.
So whoever broke the toilet was very responsible. Someone also left money on top of the toilet tank and more cash in the mailbox.
Earl spent January 1 driving to Home Depot and buying a new toilet tank. He installed it and had moved on to shoveling the neighbor's driveway by mid-morning.
And those were just some of the activities that started my New Year.
How bout you?

Funerals

I've been at too many funerals in the past year for someone still in my 40s. But funerals often tend to be dry affairs that leave me melancholy.
Yesterday's was not.
Tim, 59, died three weeks after a lung transplant. Six priests gathered to celebrate his life. His wife Therese, 53, was seated beside her brother Martin and his partner Carlos. As I watched the ceremony and sniffled through the songs, I felt like this was what the Catholic church was supposed to be -- a place of ritual and comfort, of rejoicing and worship.
I joined the Catholic Church 17 years ago -- voluntarily. I disagree with a number of policies, like birth control. And recently I've been really agitated when the Vatican sanctioned nuns for spending too much time with the poor and the sick, and not enough time fighting abortion and homosexuality.
Those agitated feelings faded during the funeral.
Father Vinnie stands about my height. He grew up an Irish Catholic in a family of about 10 in New York City. He's in his 70s and is the most gentle soul.
He led the funeral and he asked everyone in attendance to close our eyes and ask a loved one who had died to welcome Tim to heaven. The reality that Tim was in a different realm felt so real.
Then Father Vinnie pointed to a stained glass window made up of thousands of pieces of glass. Just like the window, he said, our lives were mosaics made up of many pieces. Where was Tim in the mosaic of our lives? What piece had he left, what part had he played?
Two sweet boys whose parents came from the Phillipines played their violins throughout the ceremony. They had been taught in religious education by Therese since they were three years old.
The priests took turns swinging the incense censor, the tangy smoke drifting throughout the church. They stepped up to bless the bread and the wine and I watched three of them hold up their hands calling down the holy spirit. I used to picture it like rays of God beaming out of their hands, kind of like the sticky goo coming from Spiderman's hands to form webs, and into the bread.
Two of the priests were older and a bit feeble. One of the younger priests hurried to help the priest with the walker stand during each section of the service. He also leaned over to show the old priest in the wheelchair where to look in the booklet he followed. His service to the older priests touched me.
I managed to stay mostly dry-eyed until after communion when Therese, now the widow of Tim, climbed to the lectern. She read a poem that each of us was put here to share a song or a story. Some of us were meant to share it with only a few, others with people throughout a village, still others with a whole country and others with the entire world. Then Therese challenged us to to decide what story or song we were sharing.
As soon as she stepped up, my eyes filled with tears. I couldn't believe her bravery. She'd just been through three weeks of hell, fighting with Tim for his life in a hospital, and now at his funeral, she gave back to us, the mourners who sat alongside her.

The ceremony ended with a song that didn't staunch the flow: "I have fixed my eyes on your hills, Jerusalem, my destiny. Though I cannot see the end for me, I cannot turn away."

Rest in Peace

This morning was Rini's funeral. They held it in the Greek Orthodox church because Columbus doesn't have an Eastern Orthodox church. Rini's family was from Romania a few generations ago.

The Greek Orthodox church is gorgeous, but the funeral was rather dry. If you don't want people to cry at your funeral, it would be the best funeral ever. The priest chants and sings, sometimes in another language, for a good half hour while everyone stands.
The incense is a nice addition though. I wondered if the incense has some special numbing power as the scent drifted throughout the church. Then the priest gave the brief eulogy. He called her Irene, which, to me, means he didn't know her at all, since everyone called her Rini.
So I was dry eyed. At the end, they asked everyone to walk to the casket to pay last respects. I'm not fond of this tradition. I'd rather remember Rini as she was in life, even complaining in a hospital bed.
Then, when her two sons and mother walked up to the casket, I couldn't help it. I realized they would never see their mom again and I just felt so sad.
As I drove home from the funeral, I thought for a minute that I couldn't wait to tell Rini who was at the funeral and who was missing. She would probably laugh when she found out the secretary from two years ago showed up, but the chair of the department didn't. This was some juicy gossip Rini was sure to enjoy. Then I realized I wouldn't be able to tell her.
Her departure leaves a hole in my life too.
Thanks for your friendship, Rini. Rest in Peace.

Haply I May Remember

I hate when people get to the end of a vacation and they have to run around to visit everything the last day. The vacation isn't about the last day. It's about the entire experience and all the other days before.
And that's how I have to think about life too.
My friend Rini died on Saturday.
She was 61 and had a son the same age as Grace. We worked together at the same college and lived in the same small town.
She was diabetic and her health has always been fragile. Then she had a stroke Labor Day weekend but was recovering. No one expected her to die.
I went to see her on Wednesday. I didn't think it would be the last time.
Other women in the community are really torn up that they didn't make it to see Rini again, one last time. And that made me think about the last day of vacation.
It isn't about getting that last visit in at the hospital. It's about all the girls' nights out and meeting for coffee and having lunch or simply going for a walk -- together. All of those moments are the ones that add up to make a friendship, and in the end, only one of you will remember the last time that you saw each other.
Rini was my friend because she was caustic and witty. She offered me insights into the small town I moved into. She'd been teaching longer than I had, and we shared complaints as well as the accomplishments of our students.
Another teacher told me that I had been "lovely" to Rini. But our friendship wasn't about me doing things for her. It was mutual.
I enjoyed her company.
She might have needed me a little more lately, as she went through a divorce this summer, and when she needed someone to walk the dog last summer. But I got as good as I gave.
Thanks, Rini, for your friendship. I hope you're at peace now. You will be missed, but all those moments before, will be remembered.
Here's a poem by Christina Rosetti that I think talks about remembering the life, instead of the death.

When I am dead, my dearest

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Being There for Friends

Many times when I call Spencer to check on him, he'll say, "I'm in Casey's garage." Casey is a boy his age, tall and blonde. He lives across the street from the high school. He's always polite, and the boys like the autonomy of hanging out in his garage. Casey has a younger sister, Josie, who is Tucker's age. Josie and friends frequently show up at our house, sometimes clutching kittens they've found and hope to persuade their parents they should adopt. The girls are always polite, leaving their shoes beside the front door and calling cheery goodbyes when they exit.
Last week, the older brother of Casey and Josie died at his own hand.
My boys didn't know the brother, but I've urged them to be there for their friends. I feel strongly about this, because I think of the one visit my friends paid after my sister Tammy died in the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Northern Kentucky. I was 14 and the house was filled with relatives who spoke in hushed tones and didn't smile.
My cousin Kim spent the night and we slept in my sister's bed together. In the morning, we were talking and laughing about something. I remember that my mom opened the doors and said lightly, "What are you girls giggling about?" She didn't say it in an accusatory tone, but I felt guilty. Guilty that I was there and my sister wasn't. Guilty that I had been talking and laughing when Tammy had died.
Tucker saw Josie last night and he said he felt sure she didn't want to go to her brother's memorial service. She just wants to be finished with it, he explained.
And Josie, 15, is just one year older than I was when my sister died. I remember feeling that way too.
I wanted all of the visitation and notification and funeral stuff to be over. I wanted to not have to wear dresses and answer the phone and find strangers in my kitchen.
I wanted everything to be normal again, and I felt an anticipation every time the front door opened that Tammy might walk in the door. Maybe this was all a big mistake.
One afternoon during the long days of funeral plans and relative visits, three of my friends came over. I was wearing a dress. I never wore dresses. But my friends and I escaped the confines of the house. We walked around my neighborhood.
They didn't know what to say. They tried to talk about my sister, but I wanted to talk about normal things. Who had a crush on whom? What had everyone done for Memorial Day weekend while I lived in this artificial hushed world? After awhile, we started talking about things that had nothing to do with my sister or my family's grief.
When I look back on it now, I could feel guilty that I wanted to rush through the sadness of losing my sister, but I realize that as a 14-year-old, that was the only coping mechanism I had. Pretend things were normal. Go on with my life.
So this afternoon, my boys, probably dressed in cargo shorts and polo shirts, will attend the memorial service for Casey and Josie's brother. They don't have to speak to the parents or share a memory about the brother, but they just need to be there for their friends.

Loss of a Good Man

I received the most poignant email forwarded from my mom this morning. It came from some friends in New Zealand.

I am very sorry to tell you that Rex was knocked off his bike and has died.
Of course we are all devastated and find it hard to believe.
We are coping,somehow.
I'll be in contact again later.
Just wanted you to know.
Love,Joy.

Joy and Rex are in their 70s like my parents.
I met them a couple of times when they travelled here to the United States and my parents went to New Zealand to visit them once. If I had to describe Rex, I would say alive is the best word. He was always moving, always had a plan. He played every sport every invented, and if he hadn't yet, he would try it. He was very "fit," I think is the word the New Zealanders would use to describe him.
It seems appropriate that he didn't grow old sitting in a chair and losing his memory, yet no one was ready for him to go so unexpectedly.
My parents' friendship with Rex and Joy came about through me.
I met their son Mike when he was bicyling through the United States. He was staying with a couple in Middletown, Ohio and I was a reporter there. When the editor told me to interview this guy from New Zealand, I didn't know anything about the country.
"Do they speak English?" I asked.
I immediately fell under Mike's spell -- tall, blonde and athletic with the dulcet New Zealand accent. He tried to explain to me the difference between the Australian and the New Zealand accent, moving his tone up into his nose to talk like an Australian. We talked for hours: he was an accountant, he wanted to own race horses, he'd worked in Australia and they always wanted to fight. I returned to the newsroom to write my story and when I went home that night, I told my younger brother Kevin that I had met the man I was going to marry.

I misspelled his last name in the news article.
Still, when I called and asked if he wanted to go out to eat, he did. We shared some meals and time. He planned to continue biking and I asked if he wanted to go to my grandmother's house in Kentucky.
He did. We went boating with my cousin Mike, and Mike from New Zealand worried that we might run into alligators as we swam in the lake. I laughed at him because, obviously to me, no alligators live in Kentucky, and he kissed me that day for the first time.
I took Mike to a truck stop/bus station so he could hitch a ride or continue his bicycle journey. A few weeks later, he called and returned to Ohio on a plane. I met him at the airport. When he flew out again, we looked at the travel posters on the wall and talked about how we would love to visit Greece. I thought, "Who knows." But I was starting grad school that fall and he was off to New Zealand.
We stayed in touch for a long time, writing letters that probably sound overblown now.
A few months before Earl and I got married, I sent him a letter to let him know. Our letters must have crossed in the mail, because I received one from him about his new wife, Leigh. Leigh and Mike visited once with their girls and Leigh was here again a few years ago to stay with us.
Today, I sorted through photo albums to find a picture of Mike. I called Grace down to the basement to look at some old college pictures.
When I finally found the picture of Mike that the newspaper used, I pulled it from the sticky page.
"Who's this?" Grace asked.
"It's Mike. From New Zealand," I said.
"And you didn't follw him?" she asked.
She turned as Earl came down the stairs. "Can you believe she didn't follow him?"
"I don't think he's the one you want to ask that," I told Grace. "Besides, you wouldn't be here if I did."
Plus, life isn't like a romantic comedy movie, well, maybe the comedy part.
Funny, because I was never sure how much I meant to Mike, until his wife visited a few years ago and told me he thought very highly of me and felt strongly. Maybe if I'd known then...
But the reason I wrote about this lovely family today was to mourn a great man and to send sympathy to his family, who will always be looking out the window to see if he's returning from his latest run, his latest bike ride, his latest cricket match. The road will seem so empty without him there.

Seasons

My Uncle Don died this week and my mother, having just returned home to Florida, returned north for his funeral. She didn't get to see him on the last trip because he was in intensive care after a botched surgery.
My mom is the youngest of nine children. Her oldest sister Lula died when Grace was young, and her sister, Lorena, the eighth child, died about four years ago. Now her brother Don, who is the seventh child has died.
Unlike the rest of his brothers and sisters, Uncle Don did not leave his home state of Kentucky, so he always sounded more southern than the others. His voice was a high tenor. He also went bald early. I don't remember him not being bald, while the rest of his brothers still have thick heads of hair as they journey through their 80s.
When I think of Uncle Don, I remember visiting there as a child and the time he had the three-legged dog named Rainbow.
My mom and Uncle Don fought when they were children. They grew up on a farm in the hills of southern Kentucky and Uncle Don was the brother who tortured her, mostly because the others were grown and moved away. Uncle Don knew my mom was afraid of pigs, so he would hide and make pig noises to scare her. He knew it would always get a rise out of her.
The other story I remember is about Uncle Don's military service. He was in the Navy during the Korean War. I sat down with all of my uncles a few years ago and videotaped their reminisces about their military experience. Uncle Don pulled out a card the size of a drivers license. It was a mini certificate for crossing over the Prime Meridian while in the Navy. My Uncle Clarence, who fought during World War II, hurried over to his car and came back with a full-sized, wall certificate that he got for crossing the Prime Meridian. His certificate dwarfed Uncle Don's. They laughed at the way the certificates had shrunk as crossing the Prime Meridian became less of a feat.
The question I asked Uncle Don about his military service was whether the rumor was true.
"Did someone else take your swimming test for you?" I asked.
That was the story I had heard. To be in the Navy, Uncle Don was required to take a swimming test, but he wasn't able to swim, so he had someone else swim for him.
Now, just a few years later, I can't recall what his answer was. I'll have to search for the videotape to see what he said. But that's how I'll remember him, a man willing to get on an aircraft carrier and cross the Pacific Ocean while unable to swim a lick.
Uncle Don always wore a hat, not a baseball cap, but more of a tractor or trucking cap with a bill. He always spoke to me at the crowded family reunions and asked how my family was. He raised two sons who now have wives from the Phillipines, one of whom helped care for him while he was ill.
Today as she mourns his passing, my mom doesn't think about the ways he teased her as a child, but the relationship they built as adults.

"Bereavement in their death to feel
Whom We have never seen --
A Vital Kinsmanship import
Our Soul and theirs -- between" -- Emily Dickinson

Thoughts on Afterlife

I get up sometimes before the sun, so I try to get to bed early most nights. The other night I was in bed by 10:30. I was awakened at 11:50 when Spencer came in and kissed me on the cheek to let me know he was home.
Then, around 12:30, Tucker climbed into bed next to me.
"I can't sleep," he said. "I keep thinking about what happens after you die."
Maybe I should have anticipated this question.
A boy from his school died last week after he touched some live wires. The boy, a tall lanky kid with curly blonde hair, was on the track team with Tucker. Tucker declined the opportunity to go to the candlelight vigil.
But this week, as he lay alone trying to sleep, the question began to haunt him. Where was this boy now? What happens when people die?
We are Catholic, so Tucker has grown up hearing stories about Jesus, and he knows the timeline includes some point in the future when there will be "a new heaven and a new earth."
I couldn't bring myself to remind Tucker of that story in the dark of the night. It seemed too much like a fairytale that I would tell a six year old.
I told him that I thought there was more after this life. That our spirit doesn't just snuff out.
"What happens?"
He's 14. He wants black and white.
"Maybe we come back again," I suggested.
"Everybody?" he asked.
He realized that I wasn't able to comfort him in my groggy state. He decided he would read his "boring" book for Honors English and that he would probably be able to sleep once his dad got home from work, and he stumbled away without a definitive answer.
That's one answer, whether morning or midnight, that I won't be able to give him.
Maybe I should tell him about some of the near-death experiences that people have written about. They tell the same stories about a bright light and seeing figures. They talk about watching the efforts to revive them and the wonderous feeling. That's about all the hard proof we have.
I do believe in God and I believe that there's an afterlife, but I don't believe in hell, which makes it harder to think there's a heaven where everyone is having a big family reunion.
Maybe our spirits stay close to those we love. Maybe we all hover some place waiting to be needed by our loved ones. And when they need us, our spirit goes to comfort them with a familiar smell or a feather on the ground.

The Words We Don't Say

Yesterday afternoon I spent about three hours working in the costume room. We have taken out every item of clothing in the hundreds of bins and the four big closets. We have organized them according to article of clothing, length, color. We have looked at every item and found some incredibly long pants that would have gone under my armpits, and some incredibly big pants that one teenager each fit into the legs. We have tried on hats and capes and ahhhed at the beautiful gowns. We've thrown away some hideous stuff too.
So Jennie and I were working and her daughter Olivia, a sophomore, was there sorting and helping us complete the final work. Olivia's boyfriend Ben came to help.
He's a dark-skinned boy with dark hair, not very tall but lithe muscle. I've seen him race around the soccer field and he is fast. If I had to guess, I'd say Ben has some American Indian in his blood (from the looks, not the quickness.)
He's a very nice boy. He climbed up the 8-foot ladder and handed down bins then helped arrange the ones that were already on top of the closets. He climbed into the very big pants next to Olivia and, as a joke, held up a bottle of Fuze Slenderize to show how much weight he and Olivia lost to fit in the size 60 pants.
He asked me about Spencer and we commisserated on the miserable English teacher they had last year.
"Still, he should have stayed in honors English," Ben said. "He's really good at English."
What a nice boy.
As we finished, Olivia tried on a pair of old-fashioned roller skates and I told the two of them that Ben is supposed to skate backward while Olivia skates forward. They were off down the hall.
"She is so good for him," Jennie said when they were out of earshot.
And she wasn't just bragging about her daughter.
None of the three of us had asked Ben how his mother was. None of us mentioned that he had spent a few hours away from home in what might be his mother's last week of life.
The only time the subject was broached was when Ben told Olivia how he, his father and little brother had gone to Nordstrom's to look for suits -- suits to wear to their mother's funeral. They couldn't find anything at Nordstrom's so they ended up at Macy's and found suits there.
I'm not sure if I can think of anything sadder than a 5th grader and 10th grader going to the store to buy suits for their mother's funeral.
Their mother, although I don't know her well, is always smiling and energetic. She fought off cancer last year and would come to the pool with a scarf wrapped around her bald head. This year, her hair grew a short and spiky brown. She worked hanging up coats at the swim meet over Christmas break.
Then the cancer reappeared and her time with those boys and her very kind husband is short.
But Ben wants to not have to think, every minute of the day, about the fact that his mom is dying. So he escapes to spend time with Olivia, to be silly and to be part of a normal family.
I remember when my sister died that I enjoyed laughing with my friends and not thinking about that other part of my life, that I could put away for whole minutes at a time.
So I'm happy to see a smile on Ben's face and that for a little while he can be a teenager who doesn't have to focus on how his life will change one day very soon.

What Life Could Have Been

Disclaimer: This is a post I didn't want to write, but like a broken down car in the fast lane, it seems to be blocking my forward progress. So, here it is, more than 30 years after, my attempt to understand.
This week was my sister's birthday. I usually call my parents and we talk around the birthday, not usually about it. My sister, Tammy, four years older than me, died when she was 18 at the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Cincinnati on May 28, 1977 -- the night before her high school graduation.
Growing up, we were like normal sisters. We shared a bed until I was about in the fifth grade. I remember playing dress up and tea party and tying up our little brother. I remember lying in bed and talking after the lights were out. I remember the time she asked if I would "freak out" if her boyfriend tapped on the window one night. Yes! I told her.
She seems to have been incredibly stable. Good grades, steady boyfriend, in the chorus of the high school musical The Sound of Music. She was pale and thin, probably not even 100 pounds. She had big brown eyes and a tiny mole that looked like a beauty spot on her face. She liked to curl up on the couch and read, which I loved to do too, but I picture her calm while I was whooping about the neighborhood loud and rowdy. If we played Little Women, I was always Jo and she was Meg.
Her life was going places I couldn't begin to imagine. Her high school graduation was the next day. My mom had cleaned the house and gathered food. Relatives were coming, even my grandmother from Kentucky.
That Saturday night I had a Rainbow Girls event. I don't remember where we traveled to -- Blanchester or one of those far outposts. I do remember that Tammy's friend Jane drove me home. We went through a neighborhood in my small town that I couldn't find again, but Jane pointed out a spooky window where someone is said to watch for someone who never returned.
My parents were in the remodeled basement playing cards with another couple. I could hear their laughter carry up through the floor. I turned on the television and plopped onto the couch.
The Carol Burnett show was on. Was it the end of the show or did they interrupt it with news of the fire? I'm not sure now. Did I yell downstairs to my parents or did they come running up because they heard something on the radio? I can't recall. But I remember that we huddled in front of the television watching the place where my sister and her "fiance" Brent had gone to celebrate -- his new job, her graduation. I don't remember when my brothers came home, Craig, two years older than me, Kevin, two years younger.
I tried to stay awake waiting for news. We saw survivors and searched the crowds hoping to see Tammy and Brent. About 2 a.m. I went to bed, my single bed in the small room that I had moved into after we remodeled the basement. I cried and cried.
When I woke the next morning, I remember my mom hugging me and with eyes red and swollen she said they had found her. Hope soared before she continued that my dad had gone down to identify her body.
"They wouldn't let me hold her," I remember my dad crying when he returned. "They wouldn't let me hold my little girl." He seemed frail, this dad who had always been strong.

Photo from PBS.org
Her friends filtered through the house for confirmation. Graduation continued with a red rose on her chair. Relatives filled the house and ate the food that was prepared for a celebration.
I selfishly wanted things to return to normal. I wanted to finish all of this so we could be normal again. I didn't understand that normal was gone.
160 people died in that fire. My sister was just one of them. Her picture and her story filled the papers. People called and brought food. Relatives stifled laughs as they reminded themselves of the reason they were all together.
My cousin Kim came to stay. The two of us slept in Tammy's room. One morning, I don't remember how long after, a day, two days, we were lying in bed and the sun was filtering through the curtains. Kim and I talked and we giggled some. My mom stuck her head in the door and smiled, "What are you girls laughing about?" Maybe it was nice for her to stand outside the door and hear girl laughter, to imagine that life might go on. I felt guilty about being happy even for that minute.
I don't remember moping or crying as we passed Sunday and Memorial Day. Some friends who owned a dress shop opened the shop on Memorial Day so I could find something to wear to the funeral. As a 14-year-old tomboy, I owned no dresses. And the stores were closed on Memorial Day -- too weird to think about now.
We held the visitation and funeral at our church. I was okay through the visitation until it was time to leave. We couldn't just close the casket and leave Tammy there all alone. The idea was horrifying. I started to sob and didn't know if I would ever stop. I turned to my parents who were making their way methodically around the church checking the cards on all of the flower arrangements. They couldn't deal with my crying right then. They were too numb themselves.
I ended up sobbing into the chest of the minister, a tall man with a tailored suit that I covered with tears and snot. I couldn't stand the idea of leaving my sister there alone in the church. Maybe the fact that she had died was just hitting me.
The funeral was a blur. My cousin Kim sat with me. My brother's girlfriend squeezed into the pew next to us. We were crowded together in that pew like an overloaded life boat.
I don't remember the burial. I'm sure that I had to block it out because alone in the church was too much, alone in the ground would be unbearable.
After that, life was supposed to return to normal. I missed a few more days of school and was voted into student council -- sympathy vote.
We started the summer and I began a life of how everything would have been different if Tammy had been there. I busted through high school in three years and moved on to college, the one where Tammy had originally planned to go. Each step of my life, I wondered what she would have advised. College, boyfriends, career.
The magnitude of the loss came when I held my baby girl in my arms and thought "I have no idea how to be a mother. If Tammy were here, she'd be beside me offering helpful tips. She'd know how to do all of this."
But she wasn't there when I was married or had my three kids. She wasn't there for the fights or the falling in love. She's not here now as I watch my own daughter approach high school graduation.
Maybe because I now have an oldest daughter at the same place my sister was, maybe I'm standing in my mom's shoes and I can't imagine the devastation. Or maybe I just need to look at the life I've lived and realize that a gaping hole was torn in it that day in May 1977. It's a hole that I can never patch over as much as I try to stretch the material to reach the other side.