Room Fourteen: A Companion

A room has four walls.

It’s a holding space,

A hiding place,

A sanctuary.

Many things can happen in a room.

Death, for instance.

In room fourteen there was death,

Yes.

I’m sure the walls had witnessed it before.

But on this day they observed so much more:

There was Love,

Laughter,

Support,

Breathing.

There was Singing.

I was there. I heard it.

That room, its walls, guarded a Landslide of emotions…

Sympathy,

Fear,

Sadness.

But also Joy.

I was there. I felt it.

There was remembering happier times.

There was letting go.

There was surviving.

There was darkness…

But also sunshine.

In room fourteen there was death,

Yes.

There was stillness

If not quiet.

But there was also life,

And release;

A gentle fading away.

I was there. I saw him 

As he soared toward San Antone.

The Lightening Power of Laughter

Sometimes it only takes a bit of laughter. Even the witches of Eastwick knew the power of laughter.

I've been down the dark rabbit hole of misery for much of the past week. Okay, why stop at just a week. I've been in that hole for the better part of this year. I seem to fall into it with more frequency and with much ease nowadays. I'm familiar with feeling sorry for myself and with the wallowing that comes with it. As much as I don't want to be a victim I play the victim quite often. I would rather play the dashing socialite that is impeccably dressed (even in jeans and a t-shirt), whose presence is desired where ever he may be. But alas, it is the self-perceived, undesirable victim that I most often play. Although, I'm still pretty well dressed. Even victims can have style.

The words "I hate people" often exit my mouth on the breath of an exhale. But I know that I need people. I don't really hate them. It's the behavior of many who crowd this crazy, sexy, dirty, gray, radiant, glamorous metropolis that I call home that I really hate.

Last night as I sat in a garden with friends and a stranger telling stories, I wasn't miserable. I wasn't sad. I was happy, content, cold! Glass after glass of wine or beer was filled, emptied, and filled again. The contents of a bowl of Seven Layer Dip were demolished as chip after chip scooped up the goods like a backhoe removing dirt. I was talking, listening, laughing. At one point I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. And the coughing started. You know, the coughing: when you're laughing so hard that you can't catch your breath and you start to cough. I had to stop laughing and make myself take deep breaths: in through the nose, out through the mouth. That laughter was wonderful though, even as my lungs burned. I was enjoying the human interaction that we humans are on the planet to enjoy. The interactions that I don't get when I'm down that rabbit hole, isolating. I had forgotten the lightening power of laughter.

Life changes. There is always something that we wish we had done, or wish we were doing. It's up to us to either do those things or find the joy in what it is we are actually doing. I'm currently binging Parenthood on Netflix. I often make myself feel guilty that I'm not taking advantage of everything my City has to offer. But truthfully, I really enjoy sitting on my sofa watching Parenthood. That guilt is so self-inflicted that I should wear a body condom to protect myself from its infection.

As I write this, I'm sitting at my desk listening to the cast recording of the musical Come From Away. It's a 9/11 story. A tale of fear, sadness, compassion, and friendship. This day is heavy. I may never forget what I was doing on that morning 16 years ago when my sister finally got through to me on the phone and informed me of the devastation that was happening outside my window.

As I write this, I'm thinking about my mom and how I wish I could feel her arms around me right now. Sometimes a mother's hug is all one needs to comfort him. I think about how often I don't indulge in her hug when I have the opportunity. This train of thought inevitably leads down the track of impending loss toward that someday (hopefully many years from now) when I will no longer be able to feel her arms around me. My sigh is loud and as heavy as the day. I sent her a text to tell her I love her.

Change can happen in an instant. We can all attest to that. I don't laugh enough. I'm really hard on myself. I wait for things to happen instead of making things happen. Life may seem like it's long but it isn't. It's already September and just yesterday it was June. Time is flying. My waiting and isolating and not laughing only makes what little of it there is miserable.

I have to live. I have to live. I have to live. I am here. I am breathing. I am alive. I have any opportunity I want. I can make choices. I can play the victim or I can write myself a new role. I am here. I have to live.

Laughter was indeed my best medicine. But with medicine, one has to take it in order to feel better, to heal. In order to heal, to feel better, to enjoy my life I need to laugh more. I need to spend more time with my friends. I need to speak the stories instead of just writing them. My sofa will still be there when I want to binge the next television show. But laughing with people is different that laughing at the television.

I've been too heavy lately. It's time for the lightness.

Tears and Laughter

There were so many tears. Not that I'm surprised that I, or anyone else, shed them. There were just so many tears. When death takes a loved one away it doesn’t matter how prepared you think you are--you’re not prepared.

I recently wrote a post entitled My Granddaddy. It was a mostly a memory piece. Within that post I wrote about how my granddaddy used to take some of the younger grandkids to the local convenience store--The Little Store as it became known in our family--to fill a little brown bag with penny and nickel candy.

I flew home to Kentucky on the evening of February 25th, my granddaddy having passed away earlier that morning. When I got there all the grandkids that used to get that little bag of candy were there. I had an idea. What if we each got a little bag of candy and placed it inside the coffin? Or what if we each got a little bag and wrote our names on it and placed it inside the coffin? There are nine of us grandkids. I realize that nine bags of candy is obnoxious. I mean what do you do with that? You can’t really sit nine little brown bags of candy in the back of the coffin and you can’t really place them around the body. And then there’s the questions from people wondering what all those brown bags are doing littering granddaddy’s casket. Flat, empty paper bags with our names on them just didn’t seem right either. But a tribute in the form of a brown paper bag seemed so personal and right that I had to figure out a way to make it work.

After discussing it with members of The Family Band, my sister suggested we get one small brown bag and write “The Little Store” on the front then place inside 1-2 pieces of the candy we used to get as children. (Searching for that candy was quite the trip down memory lane and more difficult than I had anticipated as the candy choices today are quite different from what they used to be. Discovering which of those candies was still available, however, brought many smiles.) I then suggested that we each sign the bag. My initial intention had been that we--the grandchildren--each write our name. This seemed like the perfect compromise between nine bags of candy and nine empty bags with one name on each. However, the first person to sign the bag actually wrote a message to granddaddy. So that’s what happened. Each grandchild in his turn wrote a message to granddaddy on that little brown paper bag. Words of thanks, inspiration, love, and gratitude. 

I was the bag carrier. On Tuesday evening as we prepared for the visitation to begin I carried that bag from one grandchild to the next asking each in his turn to write a message to granddaddy. I couldn’t stop myself from crying. The idea was so beautiful and the message so personal from each grandchild. Each of us took our turn with that bag and then the representations of love in the guise of candy were placed inside. It was an offering, a gift, a memory ready to be forever sealed away with granddaddy; a symbol from our childhood’s that none of us would ever forget.

Hot, wet tears streamed down my face as I held that bag of candy in my hand and walked it to the coffin that held the body of my granddaddy. One small brown bag given in honor to a man who gave us so much.  

§§§

The day of the funeral I had to keep myself composed. I was to sing “Amazing Grace” with my sister. Tears tighten the throat and tightened throats don’t allow sound to freely flow. There could be no real crying until after the singing was done. I needed to sing the best I could for this man who'd always loved me unconditionally. I couldn’t allow myself to fall apart.

Much like when I sang “Wind Beneath My Wings” at my grandmother’s funeral nearly 9 years ago, the minute the song was over, and I was back in my seat in the front row beside my mom, I fell apart. I took her hand and the tears began to stream down my face. That poor tissue that I used to catch those tears never had a chance. So many tears. Exhausting tears. In that moment it’s almost impossible to believe that there will ever be smiles and laughter again. But there are. 

§§§

The day after the funeral I was not prepared for what I knew had to be done. We were all present: the children and grandchildren. The manpower was never going to be as strong as it was at that moment. We had to start emptying the house. Granddaddy was one day buried and three days gone.

It’s packing a life. It’s voyeuristic in its discovery of hidden treasures and secrets. It’s boxes filled with paperwork that should have been thrown away two decades ago. It’s a lifetime of acquired stuff that isn’t yours to part with, but the owner is no longer there to make the decision on its fate so the living are left to decide.

If I’m honest it was too soon, but when would we all be there together like that again? I quickly realized that not only were we mourning the death of my granddaddy we had to mourn the loss of my grandmother again. Everything inside their house was her--all the pictures, the flowers, the knick knacks. The joke was made that it was her house and she just let granddaddy live there. Hear the laughter? I can. The day before one wonders if they’ll ever laugh again and if it’s okay to even do so. And then there’s laughter. It just happens. That joke is part of my memories now. I can replay it. And as I do so, feel the smile pull up the corners of my mouth. 

It was true though. That joke about it being her house. When grandmother passed away nothing was really changed in the house. People took things, but they were small things. Her clothes had eventually been taken away, but otherwise the house looked the same.

As drawers and closets were opened and emptied so many things were discovered. Most of them pertaining to her. It felt like we had just lost them both.

I opened a cabinet in the kitchen and saw the bowl in which grandmother almost always served her potato salad. Nobody in the family can make potato salad like she did. Using the same ingredients it just doesn’t taste the same. I couldn’t help but smile, but I couldn’t stop the tear from falling down my cheek at the same time. It welled up in my eye before I knew what was happening. It spilled over the rim à la “Nikki Newman” on The Young and the Restless; that single tear that always amazes me. And the Daytime Emmy for Best Supporting Actor goes to... As that tear rolled down my face my mother asked me if I wanted the bowl. I told her that what I wanted was for her to take it. Before she could even respond to me I changed my mind and told her that I wanted it. It’s just a bowl, but it’s a bowl I remember from so many family meals. A bowl sitting on the table filled with the potato salad that everyone wanted. If I squint I think I can even see granddaddy using it for popcorn back when popcorn was popped on the stove. I could be making that up, but it feels right.

So many tears were shed over the course of that week. Sleep was a welcomed visitor every night as exhaustion both physical and emotional took its toll on us.

Amidst the tossable JCPenney statements marked "paid", the bank statements full of cancelled checks, pictures of people no one in the house could remember, and an empty L’eggs brand panty hose egg, the most amazing discovery was found. In a dresser drawer in what had once been my uncle Joe’s room my sister and cousin Casey found love letters. Love letters my grandmother had written to my granddaddy in 1949. She was a senior in high school. He, having graduated the year before, was living in Tennessee where he’d had to move for work. We read those letters aloud and listened to her words. She recounted her day and professed her love. She talked of how much she missed him; how she longed to see him again. 

In one of those letters, adorned by her lipsticked kiss, grandmother mentioned their song, “How Soon” and how she wanted it played at their wedding. She ended that sentence with, “Ha.” None of us knew the song, but I went to my iPhone and started searching the title and the year. I found several recordings of the song “How Soon (Will I Be Seeing You)?” Without knowing the artist’s version she liked the most I bought Dinah Shore’s. Since I know of the song’s importance to my grandparents only through the voice of my grandmother’s words in that letter it seemed only fitting that the voice who sings it to me be female.

Those letters had travelled from Arlington via mail to Tennessee and back to Arlington via, one would suppose, my granddaddy’s suitcase; from the original homestead where they lived as a new family to the house they built in 1978. More than 60 years later they were found stowed away in that drawer. 

One might argue that they were forgotten tokens saved from a bygone era, but I would say they meant so much to my granddaddy that he kept them because he loved her--though tokens they might be, they were tokens of that love. We’ll never know why granddaddy saved those letters or if he even remembered that he had.

§§§

No matter how many “things” filled their house the one thing no one can dismiss is the love that was there. And even though the house is now mostly an empty shell we carry on our lives with the spirit and essence of their love living inside us. 

There is no longer the question of How Soon? lingering between them. There is, however, a bag of candy from The Little Store that will have to be shared.