When I left for Alabama, the coming
day was just a pink smudge on the horizon behind my left shoulder. The
honeysuckle vines had begun to stretch their tendrils and reach for the next
rail on the fence. The rosebuds dreamed on their stems.
As I pulled out of the driveway, I
remembered when he was born. How our family waited for three days, my mother
becoming increasingly, uncharacteristically fractious as she prayed for my
sister to give birth safely. And he was safely born, despite his large size,
and his mother’s preeclampsia. My sister, who’d been mad for a girl-child,
forgot all about that the minute she held him, her first-born. He was such a
blond fairy baby, all cherry-pink-and-apple-blossom-white. Such a beautiful, sweet
boy.
By the time I hit the 81 South, the
sun had cleared the horizon behind me and I’d remembered past the worst of it.
How his mother was taken so young. In the time it took for a city truck to run
a stop sign. How he survived that accident with stitches in his dandelion hair.
I remember still, how they felt under my palm, those bloody, crusty cuts, when
I rocked and comforted him that endless February afternoon. Her husband, my
crazed parents and shocked siblings struggled with the technicalities of her
sudden death. The arrangements. That tiny boy cried for his mother as least as
long as it had taken him to be born. I cried with him. More death would come to us, and soon. I was eleven that year.
Passing Knoxville, I skimmed quickly
over my memories after that. There is a reason that fairy tales contain dire consequences
for motherless and fatherless children. A song kept playing on the radio that expressed my
feelings of sadness and anger. And more sadness. And more anger.
I know that time stops for the
grieving. In the space between hearing the news, and living through the funeral,
life goes into an odd slow motion. Like being stuck on a merry-go-round in the
wrong gear. And it feels so strange and unforgiveable to look out and see that,
all around you, the world continues at normal speed.
After Chattanooga, I stopped
remembering, and I began to contemplate what I was driving into.
His children are beautiful and
smart and strong. His wife is loving and courageous. So I have the greatest hope
that they will be alright now that he is gone. I pray for their comfort. And
for the rest of us who loved him so.
I hope for some peace for the man
who unknowingly drove a farm tractor in front of his loaded rig and watched it swerve,
crash and ignite, shocked and horrified, as the cab burned down to the frame in
what must have seemed like the pause between two breaths.
I left my hometown years ago. I’ve been
many places. Wherever I was in the world, there was not a day in my life
without him in it. Not a day without all of my family in it, especially the young ones. My niece and nephews, so close to my own age, so far from my own experience.
I saw them in the faces of my
children, and of the children I worked with over the years. I held them close.
They were always with me, wherever I was in the world. Someone once asked me if
I believed that houses are haunted. I said I believed people are haunted, not houses. I believe it still.
At his memorial, I lingered to
touch his motorcycle jacket and boots. I’d thought as we both aged, and our lives
slowed, we’d have found time for each other again, someday. But he wasn’t
granted age. Sometimes, there just isn’t any more. I headed back to Virginia in the dark of an early morning.
That fairy child grew up to be, in
many ways, a hard man. Hard to know, hard on himself. A hard worker. Sometimes hard to live
with. Now hard to live without. And hard to forget.
On the coldest day of this winter,
they’ll release his ashes on the top of Cheaha Mountain, as he instructed his friends in
one of those conversations we all have, but only half believe in.
When I pulled into my driveway, I could see that the rosebuds had emerged from their dreams into riots of
flowers. The honeysuckle blossom thickened the air with a sweetness that was
hard to bear. That song on the radio started over again just before I cut the
engine.
I’ve seen him several times since
then. A shadow on the floor. A movement at the corner of my eye. The rumble of
his grown-man’s voice as the air conditioning hums into action. It's not him. It’s not the
house. It’s me.
All the winds of northern Alabama
find their way to Bald Rock up on Cheaha. I can see just as clear how it will
be on that cold day this winter. His ashes rising upward on the same winds the hawks ride,
up there at the top of the mountain, swirling together higher, and higher,
hanging in the air. Then drifting down, falling like the mercy that is surely owing to his children, into the valley
where our ancestors lived and worked and died.
I hope I can be there on that day.
I hope, in time, I can remember that he’s really gone.
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| Knows now there are some things she'll never understand |
Leann
