Uncle Ernie, larger than life, loud, full of energy skids into the driveway driving a black Lincoln which looked to me to be about a city block long, American flags flying like a diplomat's car. Loud greetings, hugs, quarters for me from his never ending supply, a quick cup of joe and he loads us all into the Lincoln. Off we go at break neck speeds, the conversation never slows and neither does the Lincoln.
We hit all the graves in the Holdenville cemetery placing new plastic flowers on each one as we go. A stop at Aunt Lucy's house for pie and more coffee and home again we go.
My Daddy is dead. I am eighteen and already my life is a mess. I stand in the emergency room looking at his lifeless body on a cold table. Mother is sitting in a corner coming undone. Trudy takes me out in the hall and holds me. I remember thinking how soft she is.
My Nanny is gone. Only days before she had been here on her last visit. Upon arriving home her housekeeper and her housekeeper's boyfriend beat her nearly to death and steal her travelers checks. I never saw her again until we laid her to rest in the Holdenville cemetery.
Uncle Ernest has had a stroke. He is laying in a hospital bed, small and frail looking. and then he is gone. so are all the other five brothers.
Trudy has lung cancer. She is afraid. I won't believe. I cling to false hope and false beliefs and I abandon her because she is faithless. I refuse to believe and I refuse to say good-bye. Mother stays with her. Trudy is gone and I wasn't there.
Aunt Helen asks if Mother and I will take flowers to the graves if she sends the money to pay for them.
Mother and I go alone to the Holdenville cemetery. She is slow and methodical in her cleaning and arranging. It irritates me because she takes so much time. I don't understand it. She goes alone most years to all the other cemeteries where most everyone she knows lays dead and buried. Rosedale to see Mama. Oakman to see Grandpa Caton and Little Granny. Memorial Park to place a white iris on Trudy's grave that lies at the foot of Daddy's. I can't go with her there. It's too hard so I let her go alone.
Aunt Helen has stomach cancer.
Mother is gone. She is lying next to Daddy with Trudy at their feet.
I am my Mother, my family is all dead.
I take my children today and they come willingly to show them where the family is in the Holdenville cemetery.
5 comments:
I'm crying now.
It seems the older we get the more our losses add up.
Is it to much to hope for that life will even out? Our gains, the new friends we make the new babies that are born, can never take the place of those we lose, but in them I find the comfort of knowing that life happens in circles.
I'm glad your family went with you. I hope I can go with grandma tomorrow, but if this fever doesn't go away I'll be stuck here at home remembering.
I cried. I remembered with you. You are my friend.
This is a tradition that my family has, too. Well, at least my mom and dad, so if I'm at their house, it becomes my tradition too. I'm at the point now where I'd rather just go by myself and sit at the graves and talk, angrily ask them why they left because I have so many questions left for them.
jen - i would rather be alone, too, but, I want my children to remember
you are loved now by so many, and the memories of people you love live long within you.
The continuity of life.....
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