NewscomaGot A Two-Pack Habit And A Motel Tan

It’s easy to find joy in the grasp of what appears to be dying. You have to look, but it’s there. I return to the ghosts of my childhood which Squirrel Queen and I shared with Aunt B. on Saturday, as we not only went to cemeteries but to towns with empty building where once busy streets filled with inhabitants have lost some of the vibrancy that I remember as a child.

There were lessons, not for B. necessarily, but for myself of the death of culture and how subcultures scrap and fight to survive. It’s odd to me that the underlying universe that isn’t normally seen thrives by sheer determination as other bits erode under the pressure of time.

The courthouse in Hickman, KY is one of the most beautiful buildings you will ever see. It sets on a bluff over the Mississippi River in a town that has lost so much hope over recent years. A retaining wall protects what’s left of the town. We hear of ghost towns, and although Hickman isn’t one yet, you can’t help but wonder what is next as you look across the murky water into Missouri. The heat was blistering Saturday and the large acreage of trees over the slow-moving river was a summer haze, blurred our vision.

The heat and the silence reminded me of our own mortality.

Three more friends and acquaintance are unemployed as of Friday when my sister called me with the news. I can’t shake the feeling that we are mourning something bigger than ourselves and I don’t have any answers. When I saw Hickman the next day, I found a lump in my stomach that remains with me two days later.

Quite fittingly, we visited cemeteries and I believe it’s all connected. At Camp Beauregard, we saw a mass grave with one marker. 1,200 soldiers who died from disease and neglect are recognized with one large monument, but it’s the smaller graves that gather your psyche. We believe those spirits protect the dead. We visited the cemetery where my mother is buried where bones have been covered with the dirt of the land for two centuries. I didn’t share her grave with those with me. It’s still private for me.

I saw the names of the ancestors of the  townspeople I still know.

As B. wrote:

We had spent all day touring dead towns and cemeteries.

What’cha gonna do when the State runs dry? Drive back roads watchin’ small towns die.  Honey, pretty baby mine.

And there was the river, that muddy god who lays in between the middle of the country so easy you can almost imagine him sliding his tributaries up Illinois’ shirt and singing softly, “… them men don’t know but the little girls understand.”

I wonder what will become of us and I’m pleased that a few bloggers have decided to visit our little patch in the world and are seeing for themselves that the words I continually write here have weight. If you see it for yourself, then you will know what we do.

I’m speaking of two things now. Our younger people, who decided to stay here when so many left, are now faced with the dilemma that we might not be able to stay. That we will trek to places that have a more solid economy that can support us and our families. What once sustained us with a deep well filled with possibility has now run dry for so many. We look to the past to see the future.

As I said, there are no answers because dead men and women tell no tales.

I wonder if we will be all right. In some ways, it’s beginning to look bleak.

So we visit young dead soldiers who fought in the war who have been gone a 150 years and realize that bleak is generational. We visited cemeteries that hold lynching victims from a time long ago. We saw the lines drawn over what was and what is.

And death is a natural part of life but loss is more than the calling of the bones. Death can wear many coats.

I wait to see what will happen next.

Mabel’s friend Larry Kenneth Elam died last night of a blood clot. We always had a good time with him and he liked him some Mabel.

He was a guy that always made people smile.

We saw him about a months ago. He had been diagnosed with cancer. He played with Mabel and he talked about having surgery. You could see he was worried, but he grinned the whole time. He made us grin.

He didn’t make it.

Rest In Peace, friend.

She outlived everyone she knew.
When Mrs. Lucile died on Sunday, Squirrelly and I had spent much of the weekend at Relay for Life and at an event in Obion County called Walk of Hope. We were in the car when the call came.
SQ’s grandmother, who was 98 years old, was dead.

I’ve heard people say this week that it was for the best, as Alzheimer’s had ravaged her spirit and her small body over the past few years, but there was still anguish over her passing.
Death is always a reminder of our own mortality.
I sat on the sidelines trying to be helpful but in all honesty, I felt mainly unnecessary. So I just watched and listened, tried to make sense of it all as the dying, and ultimately death, tends to make us see things more clearly on what is important and what is background noise.
Mrs. Lucile was born in 1911, became a teacher in 1929 and married her husband Melvin in 1933.
She had a prearranged funeral as many of the folks I know that are older sometimes do. The minister she requested had died some time back. The pallbearers she named for her funeral were all gone as well.
She was the last one left of a fierce tight knit farming community. Those folks she was friends with and that she worked with over decades had all passed on years ago. She was the last one that represented another century that has passed on to leased farms, subsidized agribusiness and corporate interests. She lived in a time when you worked your land and your land took care of you.
Things have changed over a century.
I thought a great deal over the past few days without the distraction of the internet over death and a life well-lived. Usually there is much fanfare over the passing of a relative. For Mrs. Lucile, I think there was relief as she was tired. She lost her husband 18 years ago and according to SQ, in many ways her grandmother died a little bit with him when he took his last breath.
It’s a generation that we will never see again. Mrs. Lucile saw two World Wars, she never drove a car, she fought cancer, she became a teacher but retired from that profession about the time that SQ and her sister were born and went a huge portion of her life without a television. Her life was her small school that she taught at, the family’s rather impressive farm and her church. She didn’t need anything else.
The “new” world evaded her in some respects (as it did for one of my grandmothers as well) and she found comfort with her Bible and a sharp tongue that would make a grown man hang his head in shame if you were on the receiving end of her disapproval.
She lived alone until two and a half years ago. It was the Alzheimers’ that ultimately sent her to a local nursing home. That disease is a cruel one, my friends.
I never knew Mrs. Lucile healthy, per se. She always called me Stacy (more people do than you would think) but she had a nice smile and she loved SQ and was always kind to me although I sometimes confused her. They are alike in many ways from what her family said and it was most likely Mrs. Lucile’s retired teacher that taught SQ to constantly want to learn and to excel in what she did.
And it was SQ that cried the hardest as her grandmother’s 86 pound body lay in the white casket, remembering the woman that taught her math and played board games with her when she was a child. But the grandmother of her youth had been a long time.
She is now with her beloved husband who was taken from her nearly two decades ago. And she is with a son, who she never knew had died three years ago.
Godspeed Mrs. Lucile. .

I went outside a few minutes ago, waiting on the word from one of our co-workers. Her father-in-law is very ill and we all know he won’t make it. She left quickly, the machines have been shut off.

It’s just a matter of time. He’s an older man and has seen more hospitals in recent months, as has his family, then anyone needs to see.

My thoughts are with them. Impending loss is always a difficult thing, because the outcome is known but the journey is still a mystery.

There is a small bench in front of the building where I work. As I sat there, I felt an overwhelming rush of sadness pour over me. I didn’t know if I could keep my emotions contained inside of me. I am full, and at times, it brims so high that it is hard not to just explode. To go on one of the backroads of Hoots and let the feelings just fly where no one can see or hear it.

It’s Mother’s Day this weekend. Year 11 without a day to celebrate. I’m older now, only ten years younger than my mother when she died. Time are different. I wonder how she would see this world a decade after her passing. I’m sure she would be amazed and pleased by much of it, and appalled by other things.

My oldest dog, Kirby, has made it longer than I thought but she is ailing. She won’t be long with us, but she’s a tough independent cuss. We got her one day before my oldest niece was born. She’s 13, a very long life for a miniature schnauzer.

She’s dying. I know this and, quite frankly, you can fight many things but this is not something I can stop. it’s inevitable.

I searched for her last night in the house, calling her name when she didn’t respond. She was hidden in a place I couldn’t reach and ultimately Mabel led me to her. She is having trouble with going to the bathroom and eating has become difficult. I tried to hold her last night, but she wanted no part of it. She laid down on her dog bed and went quietly to sleep.

I’m bruised today. Not literally, but in the sense of not knowing my own journey but realizing the impending loss of more than my dog, of my co-worker’s father-in-law, of my lost mother. My mind is not on politics or pop culture today. My mind has wandered, my body full, my soul pained by not having the answers.

The weight is heavy because I don’t know what to do this time.

I don’t have the answers.

I was told by my friend The Coroner about fifteen years ago that I blocked my feelings like a man and that’s what strengthened our friendship. I have no idea why those words stayed with me, but they have. I don’t necessarily agree. I just funnel the black in my system out like letting the air out of a balloon, but it’s caught up with me today. I’m only human. These things happen.

I’m also a true believer that feelings pass. They can change on a dime. I have learned that nearly 44 years on this planet.

This too shall pass.

There is loss in the air. I feel it and it will be o.k. but this path is a rocky one.

And this is the kind of writing that makes me love Kathy T. who talks of loss and love.

I don’t want to be scared of death.  But through my death, I know the memory of my existence on Earth is limited.  I’m not a king or queen or messiah nor is my face carved in stone (for the Taliban to eventually blow up) nor have I achieved something so incredible that I’ll even make an encyclopedia – not even Wikipedia.  But that thought doesn’t bother me like it would have 20 or 30 years ago.  Because in my old age, I know how I’ve remembered people and passed their stories other generations.  Maybe those stories will survive, maybe they won’t, and maybe along with them will be stories about me.  “Remember when Mom blew her nose?  It was so loud!”   Either way it won’t matter because either I’ll be gone and so will my own memory or I’ll be in heaven or hell living on.  Or I’ll be a ghost coming back to scare the crap out of people which I think would be a lot of fun.

She is wonderful. And we need her. She’s that good.

Life, my friends, is not always fair.

Rest well, Toot.

The air is chewy these days.

Within moments of stepping outside, I find myself covered in sweat and breathing is amazing and labored. The sky is thick with the humidity of the South. As Squirrel Queen and I were headed out to enjoy the Monday of our staycation, the tire on the truck was flat. We changed it, SQ rather as I fetched things as is my role in situations like this, and we were wet, our skin clammy from the heat.

We were headed to play darts. It’s become a special thing between us in the last couple of weeks. We keep seeking the best place to play, away from the issues of the day. We aren’t good but we are getting better. We’ve also found in our dartplay that it creates a bubble where we don’t have to talk to other people. If that sounds rude, I’m sorry, but it’s true. We play the game and we don’t have to answer questions. We laugh. We encourage each other.

Life is about transformation. I’ve been spending more time with Homer which is wonderful. In the mornings, we are watching Angel although I’ve seen it. It’s a quiet bond where we can lose ourselves for a little while.

When I was younger, I used to collect things. Now I wish to unburden myself with the things that I thought I had to have. My life is simpler now. I realized in a moment of epiphany over the weekend that I haven’t lived in the moment for awhile. Always living in “what would happen next.”

I’m sure a lot of this has to do with Stew’s death. Sometimes I miss him so much that I choke back tears.

What a waste of living in events that might happen and not seeing the world around you at the moment. The dart games have taught me this. One throw of the dart, then another. Some games you win. Some games your strategy works. Other times you are just slinging darts hoping for the best, relying on luck that you might come out ahead.

Life is like a dart game.

I was hot last night and I’m starting to hit the numbers I’m aiming at. It feels good seeing I’m getting better. I came home and made a salad made with what we bought at the Farmer’s Market and heated up some corn. I ate the salad with my fingers, the balsamic vinegar making my fingers oily. My niece talked about playing basketball while I cut the vegetables.

In the moment. We forget in the moment.

I don’t want to wish my life away.

I watched sharks biting people. It was graphic.

Random thoughts swirl through my mind.

I ask Squirrel Queen if we can play darts again. She smiled before she fell asleep.

When you lose someone you care about, it’s hard.

Tomorrow is the memorial for our friend Stewman. He wanted Squirrel Queen and I to speak at his service.

I don’t know what I’ll say. I plan on working on that later today.

This summer has been a violent mistress. I am comforted by knowing this too shall pass but I’m in critical burn out right now. My leg is still sore from the spider bite but it’s better. It could have been so much worse so I’m grateful for that.

With Stew’s passing, I’m, of course, thinking of life and mortality and how everything has a root system. I feel like the world is connected. I’m also thinking because of intense stress that has accompanied these hot months that I may need a break from the world and sleep for a few days. Death reminds you that there is little time on this planet. We must make the most of it. We just have to.

I’m also thinking about being in a pattern that isn’t pleasing me right now. And how that if people are stuck, how do they get unstuck.

I’m working on that.

Stew was always supportive. He was amazing and he never backed down, even if he was afraid. He walked through the fear even when he was terrified.

I hope that I can as well.

There really isn’t anything I can say about George Carlin that hasn’t already been said who died yesterday of heart failure.

He was funny. He could be very insightful and biting in his humor. Sometimes, his humor was about how society ignores the big picture, how we allow to be herded around like goats by The Powers That Be and that the words that we put so much emphasis on are not really the ones that can hurt you.

Those words got him arrested in Milwaukee, you know. Lots of folks have forgotten that. Sharon has more on his legacy.

My only recommendation is to watch “The Aristocrats” and see him be almost gentle and the elder statesman to younger when it comes to comedy. You will also see him, and others, tell the dirtiest joke ever uttered.

R.I.P George. You made things very much of the good and you will be missed.

Katherine wrote this last night about death. It resonates with me because it’s absolutely the truth written eloquently.

It goes like this, though, the way death sits with you like the hiccups.  You think it’s not bothering you anymore and you have moved past it, and then you start with a wee break and you’re gone again.   Those five stages of Elizabeth Kubler Ross are very neat and antiseptic and make you feel like you can spreadsheet the whole thing when your turn comes–and your turn is coming–but it doesn’t work like that.   There is no “Okay I had denial, now let’s bargain for awhile.”   After the first few days when you realise that nothing is quite the same you are sort of normalish and then angerbargainingdenialgrief  come burbling out at the oddest times.   No amount of scaring it away, of drinking water while standing on your head, makes it any easier.

Grief comes is so many ways, but it’s that little moment that finds you and doesn’t let you get away with anything. It’s like momentarily being blinded.

I’m not going to write about my mom today. I’ve done that before. Today is the tenth anniversary of the death of my mother. For me to go into any detail of this day, which is significant in the life of my family, I would just say it means a lot to us and I’m trying to figure out what to do on a personal level that would have some significance for myself about today. It’s a private thing that runs as deep as the Mississippi River. It’s hard to put those feelings into words.

To say I feel sort of lost and insignificant is an understatement.

No, this morning, I want to talk about life and survival and one woman who I have so much respect and admiration for that it’s hard to put into words.

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Homer knows. Squirrel Queen knows. Big Daddy knows.

You see, this month is the anniversary of my mother’s death. It’s significant. We love and we lose.

We do.

And we remember. And if we don’t, shame on us.

She was named after a box of shoes that my grandmother saw on a box in Michigan during WWII. She didn’t have a middle name because my gram thought her name was long enough.

You know, I do this every year, and each year, it gets harder.

Dammit.

It will be a decade. February 28th.

I’m going to get this out of the way. On that day, I will have to drive into the country to stare at the fields and meadows she loved, then go to her grave and lay down flowers. She liked flowers, but maybe, this year, I will play Beethoven or John Coltrane there.

Will that comfort her?

No. It will only comfort me.

So, anyway, I want to tell you the story, one I might not have told, about her. She was a musician and she studied music. She studied theory and how music evolved. She loved Miles Davis better than anyone and thought he was the epitome of progressive transition in music where there wasn’t a blueprint. She loved that. She thought Gil Evans was a genius. She made Homer and I listen to the blues and then Mozart because we may have lived in Hooterville but we were going to know THESE things. We needed to appreciate all music or we would have gotten a hard stare. We needed to be open-minded. And, this wasn’t a request from her.

It was mandatory.

And I thank her.

She loved her kids, she loved her husband and she loved music. As a child, there was always a violin, a bass, a cello lying about the house in Hootervegas although she was a singer and a pianist but the instruments were there because she was always in school.

I have no musical ability. I wonder sometimes if that was disappointing to her. I did other things. She encouraged me. This, of course, is of the good.

She was really beautiful. She was a petite woman that was the unaffected beauty queen of the local town who was more interested in politics than chiffon in 1960 but she was living in a small town and women didn’t do politics as much back then. She hid in the shadows. Not because that those options weren’t there, they were, but it meant a fight with a bunch of societal crap. And it did. Don’t deny it. She opted out but taught us (Homer and I picked it up, Mom, so you did your job well.)

I think she always canceled my dad’s vote out. And she made me watch Watergate and anything she thought might form me. At ten, it drove me crazy. Today, I smile when I write ‘not so much.’

She talked about feminism when it wasn’t even conceived in small rural towns. Did she make mistakes? Yeah. Did she teach me how to be an equal. Don’t even doubt it because I know I am. You know she did.

And she taught Homer and I to think for ourselves.

She was so shy. Painfully shy to the point it took her breath away until she sang on stage or she was at home with her family. Man, this woman could smile and it washed over all of us but she hated being in a group of people which is weird for me because I can hang in a church basement or at a nudist colony. This ability of mine didn’t come from her, I assure you.

Her shyness was her enemy and her largest demon. In the day, it was being shy, now I’m sure there are 20 different clinical names for it.

With that said, she created her life in spite of it all. She sang, won a contest and performed with the Everly Brothers because of it (Mid-South Fair Talent Contest, LWC), met my dad over a hamburger, fell in love and started her journey. She was a bit vain, who isn’t, but remained beautiful and curious and incredibly in tune to the world around her. She kept her hair blonde, because Big Daddy liked it that way. And her eyes were so blue they were deeper than the color of the ocean. I see these eyes in my youngest niece, Chuck, who doesn’t even know. She never met Jacque, how would she know? So I have to tell her and show her pictures. That’s my job.

Jeez, this is always hard.

She was completely confounded by me. I wasn’t traditionally beautiful like she and Homer were. I was different. I was eccentric. And she honed that in me.

You know, she loved me anyway and taught me swagger.

She smelled like sunshine. Dammit if she didn’t.

Homer was the good kid who would whip your ass in five minutes although I think most people think I’m the tough one.

I’m not. It’s Homer.

I was the kid that walked the line but wanted to dive into the deep waves of rebellion and free-spiritedness which didn’t interest Homer but, dammit, it did me. (And it did for my mom because she told me this before she died. It’s an odd thing between us. I never knew that I was her free-spirited one in her eyes.) I wanted to know those depths. And I did, delving into things that probably weren’t good for me but I was ambitious and bright enough to not go too far into the dark although it beckoned me. It was dangerous and sexy and I wanted the passion of it all. She knew this about both of us. And she guided, taught and only stopped me when I went too far.

Sometimes we went too far. We had a safety net.

Her name was Jacqueline. Named after a box of shoes and I find that to be so very compelling and charming.
The night before she died, my friend Mark, who my blogger friends met on Wednesday night in Nashville, came and sat with me in the hospital at midnight that horrible evening. He came. You guys need to know this for reasons I can’t explain. He sat with me as I sat slumped against the ‘dying room’ at the local hospital against the wall in the bright, fluorescent hallway at midnight and he tried to convince me that it wasn’t as bad as I knew it was, and despite it all, I knew in my depths that she was dying.

She was leaving and there wasn’t anything I could do.

And he tried to help.

That, my friends, is why he’s my friend. Even when I disagree with him in public.

And he did my mother’s eulogy in a packed funeral home where all I did was smile at people who apparently needed more comforting that I did, I smiled and I talked of things that were wonderful. I gave a hug and I said it was going to be okay to strangers and friends alike.

I didn’t cry for two weeks. When I did, I didn’t move for three days.

This, my blogger friends, will happen once a year. This is a gift, and curse, I give to myself.

So, I raise my glass to the woman who gave up so much for me.

Allow me a moment… as this is my blog and isn’t this what blogs are for?

I’m allowed that.