LJ Idol Week 1 - A Cold and Lonesome Rain
o/` "'Cause there's holes in the floor of Heaven
and her tears are pourin' down
that's how you know she's watchin'
wishin' she could be here now
And sometimes if you're lonely
just remember she can see
there's holes in the floor of Heaven
and she's watchin' over you and me" o/`
----- "Holes in the Floor of Heaven" performed by Steve Wariner
It happened, out of all possible dates, on Halloween. I had no warning; one moment she was an integral part of my life --- albeit an annoying one --- and the next she was just...gone.
I --- we --- had plans for that date. I'd conspired with friends and co-workers to create an elaborate ruse designed to make my husband think his company needed him down in Tampa, where we'd all planned to meet him and spend the weekend celebrating. I'd booked a room with a jacuzzi at a moderately priced resort hotel on the Gulf. Fox has a love/hate relationship with surprises but I knew he'd appreciate the effort to which we'd gone. The cake, the birthday presents, the decorations...they were all waiting for us in Tampa.
The clouds which hung in the sky like fluffy grey sheep had finally run to ground, leaving the area blanketed in a miserable drizzle split by occasional flashes of lightning. The skies split wide open as we hit the hard top, deluging us with the first cold autumn rain of the season. It had become our tradition to drive the ten miles into town for milkshakes and then park somewhere so that we could observe the community trick-or-treat on Main Street. The stores stayed open and set up mini haunted houses or long tables out front decorated for the harvest where the kids could come by and collect their candy. People came from miles around; it wasn't unusual to see pick-up trucks loaded with freckle faced farm children and a dog or two or even a hay rick pulled by Morgans and piled high with laughing teens. Most of the costumes were hand made rather than store bought and everyone knew one another. It reminded me greatly of my home town.
I've mentioned before that technology and I don't get along and the most frequent victim of this abusive relationship is my poor cell phone. In the past two years, I've flushed, washed, dropped, or otherwise abandoned at least two cell phones. This one has been a bit more lucky in that we always seem to find it but it does go missing quite often. This time, I was reminded that I'd again misplaced it when the seat cushions in the truck began whistling Yellow Rose of Texas.
Glancing at the display and seeing no less than ten missed calls in two days, I realized something had to be wrong back home. My family had an annoying habit of calling me just to pester me about what I was eating and if I had clean underwear on, but they didn't call incessantly unless someone was in jail, in the hospital, or had died. My hands shook too much to dial the voice mail retrieval. Fox pulled into the Walgreens parking lot and we listened while all hope for a happy weekend of any sort drained away.
My baby sister has a form of non-specific borderline retardation. Now they'd probably say she has some form of autism; back then, they called them mongoloid babies or FLKs (funny looking kids). These were babies whose appearance and development wasn't quite normal but they didn't meet the criteria for Down's Syndrome or any of the others. My father flat-out refused to institutionalize her, as was recommended by the physicians, and raised her in as normal an environment as possible. We didn't push her to do things she couldn't seem to grasp but she had the opportunity to do anything and everything a "normal" child her age would have been allowed to do. She didn't speak until she was three years old and then it was a complete sentence: "Daddy, look at that fucking big boat!" As an adult, she does really well as a paramedic and has her own rig. She works for one of the more prestigious ambulance companies in Denver and she's one of their best. It's only if you know her that you occasionally notice those little things that mark her as different: her adherence to routine, her need to have everything in a specific place, the way she does things in a certain order each and every time.
She doesn't like phones and generally won't talk to me --- heck, she barely talks to me when we're face-to-face --- on one but it was her voice, each message more and more frantic.
My grandmother was dying.
The details were garbled but I gathered that she'd developed some sort of intestinal blockage and they'd taken her to the emergency room. Depending on which family member's story you believe, they either didn't make her a priority on their triage list as they should have or adopted a wait-and-see attitude when they should have been doing something. The bowel ruptured and they took her up to surgery to repair it. They did so without anesthetic because she was too weak for them to use more than a local. When the surgeon went in, he discovered a mass in the colon. Asked what she wanted done, my grandmother ordered them to remove it. According to the last message on that thrice damned cell phone, my grandmother had made it through the surgery but wasn't expected to live much longer.
Fox didn't say anything; he turned the truck around immediately while I launched into a series of nearly incoherent phone calls to our friends. Several of them were less than sympathetic and assumed I'd either decided to pull a prank on them or had made up the circumstances to garner more attention (a fact which would ultimately cost me those friendships, as I could never convince them that there had been a family emergency). Tearfully I informed my husband that I'd have to spoil all his birthday plans so we could make funeral arrangements.
He uttered not one word of complaint or disappointment as he spent the rest of the evening, his birthday, making phone calls to airlines and arranging pet care. There were no flights available leaving Jacksonville that evening and the next available flight didn't leave for two days. The cost of doing so was, of course, exorbitant; Fox did some quick calculations and determined that we would be better off taking our own vehicle.
Daybreak November 1st, All Soul's, found us deep in the Appalachians of Tennessee refueling Lone Star and munching on stale donuts dipped in coffee which was even more stale. I had no recollection of how we'd gotten there at all. The cell phone rang, shattering the fragile peace of mind I'd somehow constructed in our headlong trek across two thirds of the country, and I wanted to throw it. I answered it instead.
"Grandma passed away this morning. She never regained consciousness and she was comfortable. You don't have to hurry now, take your time."
I did throw the cell phone then, but the damned thing just wouldn't give me the satisfaction of breaking. A sense of frustrated hopelessness and loss boiling across my senses, I swung around and threw a punch at the nearest available target. A satisfyingly loud *clang* resulted. I looked dispassionately at the side of the truck and noted that I'd hit the metal with sufficient force to place a small divot in it. The pleasure of something as unyielding as metal giving way beneath the onslaught of my temper and pent up emotions evaporated when the pain centers finally decided to process the incident.
"Ow!"
It echoed off the ancient mountains, disappearing to nothingness in the morning mists.
My husband wisely did not comment as we got back on the road and continued toward Colorado. He must have known my grandmother had passed away but he didn't slacken the pace. A sense of urgency consumed us even though intellectually we now understood there would be no living being hanging on, waiting for us to arrive.
"I didn't get to say goodbye," I eventually muttered, somewhere around Missouri as I mechanically chewed on some sort of sandwich Fox had ordered for me from McDonald's. "I'll never get to say goodbye." I was surprised by the bitterness and pain wrung from those few words; this was the woman responsible for my eating disorder, the woman who in her later years had made my life a living hell...but someone I'd loved in spite of all that. A sneaking sense of guilt added to the grief; I hadn't been tolerant enough, I hadn't appreciated her enough, I hadn't....
"Stop all that," Fox said. I didn't realize I'd said any of it aloud. "You can't change what's happened. She was a difficult woman to deal with but you did the best you could."
But I didn't get to say goodbye.
That small voice nagged at me, nibbling at my doubts and calling to mind every phone call where I'd been short or blown her off or been less than loving, all the way to Denver.
We switched drivers at the Kansas border and so it was I who took finally took us home. Fox was full of questions, wanting to know what had grown in the fields and what they had done with it. In some areas, I could show him because they were still using the massive combines that separate the wheat from the chaff. In other areas, I had to explain that slash and burn is still very much in use out on the prairie. He didn't understand the concept and wanted to know why the soil didn't just blow away. I told him that sometimes it does but farmers like tried and true methods and many are resistant to change. That's my experience, at least. I pointed out a wind farm and he was fascinated with them. He was disappointed to learn that they require constant wind and so one wouldn't work for our place. Later in the day, I saw a coyote slinking across the stubbled fields. He looked right at me and I knew I was being watched over on this difficult journey. It seemed like each fence post had a hawk on it as well so I am doubly blessed with more guardians than I deserve. The gods do not abandon the family of the heart, even if the family of the blood is treacherous.
Although our errand was a sad one, I found Fox's company a blessing. He'd never seen any of this and the smallest things I took for granted as part of the landscape in which I grew up attracted his attention. I never realized I knew so much about the farms and the harvest and animal husbandry until he asked the questions. The oil and water wells caught his attention for a while; he would press his face to the window and stare until the next one came up; then he'd smile and begin the enchantment all over again. He wanted to see the fields full of food some day, he said. I can understand that urge; when I first came east, I drove across the Heartlands at the height of harvest. The bounty --- what we produce for ourselves --- was amazing.
By the time we crossed the Colorado border, it was too dark to see the Rockies but the stars were starting to come out. He marveled at the utter blackness of the skies (cities are so few and far between that there's little light pollution) and that there were so very many stars. I counted constellations for him and told him that the higher we went in elevation the more and brighter they would be. I still remembered most of their names.
I checked in with my family before we collapsed into exhausted sleep; my mother asked me if there was anything of my grandmother's I wanted. I hate that aspect of death most --- the parceling out of a person's life and the quibbling about the more valuable bits. Fortunately, I didn't think many would contest my claims; I wanted to take home her hummingbird collection (ironically, my collection of these little birds started with the death of Fox's grandmother when his mother gave them to me) and some of her clothing to be made into a memorial quilt. I'd have liked to take some of her costume jewelry but I thought everyone else would be arguing over that. Since the break-in a year ago, there wasn't not much of value there but I think I'm the only one who remembers that.
The house was eerily empty without my grandmother there; I hadn't realized just how much stuff she'd accumulated whether she used it and needed it or not. Her poodle broke my heart; the poor little guy kept wandering around, whimpering and crying for her while he sniffed through the boxes and bags.
Much of the day was spent catching up on family, including the details of my grandmother's death. I was absolved of not getting to my cell phone in time because they assured me it wouldn't have mattered; she went downhill so quickly I couldn't possibly have gotten to her in time to say goodbye while she was still alive. She wan't conscious for long before they took her to surgery. She breathed for about ten minutes after the doctors removed the ventilator and the her eyes opened wide, she turned her head to the right... and she died. I'm just glad she didn't suffer.
I didn't have the unhappy task of sorting through her things; my mother and sister had already taken care of that. In addition to the hummingbirds, which no one else seemed to care about, I received some vintage turquoise. One was simply signed with an "X", which indicated the artisan could neither read nor write. The other wasn't signed at all. There were several sets of earrings, all in very old designs no longer used in Navajo jewelry making today. None of those were signed either and the turquoise looked like it might be from the Kingman mine too. I didn't know if the rings could be resized to fit my fingers (her hands were very small) but I'll find out at least. They're too small even for my pinky. If not, I'll put them away and treasure them anyway.
We talked about the genealogy and I told my mother what I'd found out about the physical characteristics found only in Native populations. I have several, including the high wide cheekbones which make fitting glasses difficult, the broadly constructed feet with the elongated second toe, and the shovel shaped incisors. Before, my grandmother vehemently denied that there was any Native blood in our veins (which conflicts with family stories about what happened to the wagon train on their way up to Wyoming). Mom said, however, when asked she had confirmed it and identified a tribe. We also found papers to that effect but they're useless without a birth certificate or a correct birth date (neither of which we had). The line is direct through my grandmother...and it's entirely possible that the ancestor was on the original roles. This, incidentally, tallied with the preliminary research I did which traces the line back to Enid, Oklahoma during a time when that land was an Indian Reservation. She was uncertain of the blood quantum because my grandmother's mind was starting to wander. It will either be one quarter if the line is direct through my grandmother (meaning she was full blooded and recognized as such within the tribe) or one eighth if the line is direct through her mother (my great grandmother). I didn't plan on doing anything with it in terms of legal recognition for benefits but I did want to pursue the heritage, whatever it may be.
You still haven't said goodbye. When are you going to do it and let her go?
I loved my grandmother, but I didn't like her very much.
After my father died, my mother gave up on living. I was twelve years old and scrabbling around trying to pay bills and scrounge enough food for my sister and I. She couldn't manage money and I sometimes made mistakes. She always spent more than we had. Montrose is a small town and word eventually got back to my grandparents about what was happening. My grandfather took over her finances --- he took care of them until he died in 1997 --- and my grandmother took care of us.
Every town has a designated "hanging judge" --- a no-nonsense judicial official known for adhering to the letter of the law and never giving anyone a break. Ours was known as Hanging Judge Brown. Had my grandfather not been an important person in the down and had my grandmother not pulled in the favors she did, my sister and I would have ended up in foster care. My grandmother essentially raised me. She went to all the conferences, band concerts, fund raisers. She bought my first formal dress. She took me to get my permit and loaned me my first car. She made certain my sister and I didn't go hungry even when my mother was busy doing other things (mostly drinking and hanging out with people she shouldn't). I didn't get much of a childhood but I did get some of it, thanks to her.
I'd just lost the woman who essentially raised me. Yes, she was elderly and so the death was not unexpected. Yes, she was suffering from dementia and the behavior problems which go with it. She'd once been an intelligent, sharp witted woman with a keen business sense (she kept the books for my grandfather in their private contracting business). The strokes and dementia turned her into a bitter, manipulative old woman no one wanted to be around.
That was not my grandmother. I didn't like what she became but I could forgive it. I did love her and the loss is just as great as any other suffered.
Tuesday, after waiting for them to release the body for burial, we took her home. At the funeral, I finally broke down and cried but I still didn't say goodbye. She'd have been absolutely thrilled that she'd managed to get me into a church of any sort and that I'd sat still for the sermon. I wouldn't have told her that it didn't bother me because the altar was covered with fall flowers, plants, and harvest offerings to be distributed later to the less fortunate...or that I thought the simple wood furnishings and bright sunlight streaming through the windows one of the best blessings available to the soul.
We made a slow, sad procession up the mesa to her final resting place and the urn was placed in the ground beside my grandfather.
Now...now do you say goodbye?
I couldn't, it hurt too much.
I didn't give myself permission to heal and her permission to depart on the next life's journey until we were up in the craggy rock formations of Mesa Verde.
My first trip to the national park had been with my grandparents. My grandfather, an engineer employed with the Bureau of Land Management, knew all sorts of information about the area in general and kept a constant commentary about the building materials, methods of preservation, and all sorts of other things. In particular, I remembered the first set of archaeological ruins into which I ever climbed: a long, paved path led from the top of the mesa where the museum and book store were housed down into the canyon. Along the way each plant was labeled with its uses to the peoples who originally lived there. At the bottom, you could take the path to the spring --- which still held water, depending on what time of year you visited but was surrounded by poison ivy --- or you could continue to the ruins. I spent hours poking through all the nooks and crannies or curled up in the shade of an ancient wall reading and sketching or writing, back when you still could enter the ruins.
We arrived in late afternoon and the park ranger warned us that we wouldn't have more than two hours to look around before the park closed for the evening. It was just enough time to show my husband that one set of ruins, the place where I'd spent hours of every childhood summer...and the place where I could say goodbye without feeling quite so lost.
A brilliant Colorado autumn sky highlighted the fading aspen leaves as the truck climbed the mesa. I hadn't been here since the park got caught in a wildfire back in 1996; it amazed me, and I took it as a good sign to my own soul, to see just how much had rejuvenated in those ten years. From the desert had arisen a new wealth of green growth --- small junipers, low lying yucca, delicate desert cacti and wildflowers. Even some of the trees had been spared. Turkey, quail, and other wildlife were abundant. I showed Fox his first mule deer there.
Arriving at the point I had sought, I was pleased to note that the crutches covered the ground as readily as my feet once had without missing a step. Could I still climb a mountain? I had to find out, had to try. Fox skipped ahead with the camera, marveling at all the desert had to offer and at the complex ancient structures which had once been small cities. I discovered that the path presented no obstacle but I couldn't cover the distance and get back in the time we had. Waving to him, I climbed back up to the lip of the mesa and found a picnic overlook. From there I watched my husband venture down into the ruins questing, taking pictures, asking millions of questions of the ranger on duty.
A sense of peace settled over me.
Yes. This is where we say goodbye.
Among the ruins, I found a sense of connection and a knowledge that though she was gone we were forever bound by blood and by the land. I could always find her here, this place of the ancients where memories are collected and stored.
Most of my memories of this trip are vague at best. They've been recreated through the photos taken along the way. If you're curious:
The journey out to Colorado.
Hays City and points west.
The old home town.
The mountains and Mesa Verde.
The family.
Written for season five of therealljidol. If you liked what I wrote, please vote for me when voting opens.
and her tears are pourin' down
that's how you know she's watchin'
wishin' she could be here now
And sometimes if you're lonely
just remember she can see
there's holes in the floor of Heaven
and she's watchin' over you and me" o/`
----- "Holes in the Floor of Heaven" performed by Steve Wariner
It happened, out of all possible dates, on Halloween. I had no warning; one moment she was an integral part of my life --- albeit an annoying one --- and the next she was just...gone.
I --- we --- had plans for that date. I'd conspired with friends and co-workers to create an elaborate ruse designed to make my husband think his company needed him down in Tampa, where we'd all planned to meet him and spend the weekend celebrating. I'd booked a room with a jacuzzi at a moderately priced resort hotel on the Gulf. Fox has a love/hate relationship with surprises but I knew he'd appreciate the effort to which we'd gone. The cake, the birthday presents, the decorations...they were all waiting for us in Tampa.
The clouds which hung in the sky like fluffy grey sheep had finally run to ground, leaving the area blanketed in a miserable drizzle split by occasional flashes of lightning. The skies split wide open as we hit the hard top, deluging us with the first cold autumn rain of the season. It had become our tradition to drive the ten miles into town for milkshakes and then park somewhere so that we could observe the community trick-or-treat on Main Street. The stores stayed open and set up mini haunted houses or long tables out front decorated for the harvest where the kids could come by and collect their candy. People came from miles around; it wasn't unusual to see pick-up trucks loaded with freckle faced farm children and a dog or two or even a hay rick pulled by Morgans and piled high with laughing teens. Most of the costumes were hand made rather than store bought and everyone knew one another. It reminded me greatly of my home town.
I've mentioned before that technology and I don't get along and the most frequent victim of this abusive relationship is my poor cell phone. In the past two years, I've flushed, washed, dropped, or otherwise abandoned at least two cell phones. This one has been a bit more lucky in that we always seem to find it but it does go missing quite often. This time, I was reminded that I'd again misplaced it when the seat cushions in the truck began whistling Yellow Rose of Texas.
Glancing at the display and seeing no less than ten missed calls in two days, I realized something had to be wrong back home. My family had an annoying habit of calling me just to pester me about what I was eating and if I had clean underwear on, but they didn't call incessantly unless someone was in jail, in the hospital, or had died. My hands shook too much to dial the voice mail retrieval. Fox pulled into the Walgreens parking lot and we listened while all hope for a happy weekend of any sort drained away.
My baby sister has a form of non-specific borderline retardation. Now they'd probably say she has some form of autism; back then, they called them mongoloid babies or FLKs (funny looking kids). These were babies whose appearance and development wasn't quite normal but they didn't meet the criteria for Down's Syndrome or any of the others. My father flat-out refused to institutionalize her, as was recommended by the physicians, and raised her in as normal an environment as possible. We didn't push her to do things she couldn't seem to grasp but she had the opportunity to do anything and everything a "normal" child her age would have been allowed to do. She didn't speak until she was three years old and then it was a complete sentence: "Daddy, look at that fucking big boat!" As an adult, she does really well as a paramedic and has her own rig. She works for one of the more prestigious ambulance companies in Denver and she's one of their best. It's only if you know her that you occasionally notice those little things that mark her as different: her adherence to routine, her need to have everything in a specific place, the way she does things in a certain order each and every time.
She doesn't like phones and generally won't talk to me --- heck, she barely talks to me when we're face-to-face --- on one but it was her voice, each message more and more frantic.
My grandmother was dying.
The details were garbled but I gathered that she'd developed some sort of intestinal blockage and they'd taken her to the emergency room. Depending on which family member's story you believe, they either didn't make her a priority on their triage list as they should have or adopted a wait-and-see attitude when they should have been doing something. The bowel ruptured and they took her up to surgery to repair it. They did so without anesthetic because she was too weak for them to use more than a local. When the surgeon went in, he discovered a mass in the colon. Asked what she wanted done, my grandmother ordered them to remove it. According to the last message on that thrice damned cell phone, my grandmother had made it through the surgery but wasn't expected to live much longer.
Fox didn't say anything; he turned the truck around immediately while I launched into a series of nearly incoherent phone calls to our friends. Several of them were less than sympathetic and assumed I'd either decided to pull a prank on them or had made up the circumstances to garner more attention (a fact which would ultimately cost me those friendships, as I could never convince them that there had been a family emergency). Tearfully I informed my husband that I'd have to spoil all his birthday plans so we could make funeral arrangements.
He uttered not one word of complaint or disappointment as he spent the rest of the evening, his birthday, making phone calls to airlines and arranging pet care. There were no flights available leaving Jacksonville that evening and the next available flight didn't leave for two days. The cost of doing so was, of course, exorbitant; Fox did some quick calculations and determined that we would be better off taking our own vehicle.
Daybreak November 1st, All Soul's, found us deep in the Appalachians of Tennessee refueling Lone Star and munching on stale donuts dipped in coffee which was even more stale. I had no recollection of how we'd gotten there at all. The cell phone rang, shattering the fragile peace of mind I'd somehow constructed in our headlong trek across two thirds of the country, and I wanted to throw it. I answered it instead.
"Grandma passed away this morning. She never regained consciousness and she was comfortable. You don't have to hurry now, take your time."
I did throw the cell phone then, but the damned thing just wouldn't give me the satisfaction of breaking. A sense of frustrated hopelessness and loss boiling across my senses, I swung around and threw a punch at the nearest available target. A satisfyingly loud *clang* resulted. I looked dispassionately at the side of the truck and noted that I'd hit the metal with sufficient force to place a small divot in it. The pleasure of something as unyielding as metal giving way beneath the onslaught of my temper and pent up emotions evaporated when the pain centers finally decided to process the incident.
"Ow!"
It echoed off the ancient mountains, disappearing to nothingness in the morning mists.
My husband wisely did not comment as we got back on the road and continued toward Colorado. He must have known my grandmother had passed away but he didn't slacken the pace. A sense of urgency consumed us even though intellectually we now understood there would be no living being hanging on, waiting for us to arrive.
"I didn't get to say goodbye," I eventually muttered, somewhere around Missouri as I mechanically chewed on some sort of sandwich Fox had ordered for me from McDonald's. "I'll never get to say goodbye." I was surprised by the bitterness and pain wrung from those few words; this was the woman responsible for my eating disorder, the woman who in her later years had made my life a living hell...but someone I'd loved in spite of all that. A sneaking sense of guilt added to the grief; I hadn't been tolerant enough, I hadn't appreciated her enough, I hadn't....
"Stop all that," Fox said. I didn't realize I'd said any of it aloud. "You can't change what's happened. She was a difficult woman to deal with but you did the best you could."
But I didn't get to say goodbye.
That small voice nagged at me, nibbling at my doubts and calling to mind every phone call where I'd been short or blown her off or been less than loving, all the way to Denver.
We switched drivers at the Kansas border and so it was I who took finally took us home. Fox was full of questions, wanting to know what had grown in the fields and what they had done with it. In some areas, I could show him because they were still using the massive combines that separate the wheat from the chaff. In other areas, I had to explain that slash and burn is still very much in use out on the prairie. He didn't understand the concept and wanted to know why the soil didn't just blow away. I told him that sometimes it does but farmers like tried and true methods and many are resistant to change. That's my experience, at least. I pointed out a wind farm and he was fascinated with them. He was disappointed to learn that they require constant wind and so one wouldn't work for our place. Later in the day, I saw a coyote slinking across the stubbled fields. He looked right at me and I knew I was being watched over on this difficult journey. It seemed like each fence post had a hawk on it as well so I am doubly blessed with more guardians than I deserve. The gods do not abandon the family of the heart, even if the family of the blood is treacherous.
Although our errand was a sad one, I found Fox's company a blessing. He'd never seen any of this and the smallest things I took for granted as part of the landscape in which I grew up attracted his attention. I never realized I knew so much about the farms and the harvest and animal husbandry until he asked the questions. The oil and water wells caught his attention for a while; he would press his face to the window and stare until the next one came up; then he'd smile and begin the enchantment all over again. He wanted to see the fields full of food some day, he said. I can understand that urge; when I first came east, I drove across the Heartlands at the height of harvest. The bounty --- what we produce for ourselves --- was amazing.
By the time we crossed the Colorado border, it was too dark to see the Rockies but the stars were starting to come out. He marveled at the utter blackness of the skies (cities are so few and far between that there's little light pollution) and that there were so very many stars. I counted constellations for him and told him that the higher we went in elevation the more and brighter they would be. I still remembered most of their names.
I checked in with my family before we collapsed into exhausted sleep; my mother asked me if there was anything of my grandmother's I wanted. I hate that aspect of death most --- the parceling out of a person's life and the quibbling about the more valuable bits. Fortunately, I didn't think many would contest my claims; I wanted to take home her hummingbird collection (ironically, my collection of these little birds started with the death of Fox's grandmother when his mother gave them to me) and some of her clothing to be made into a memorial quilt. I'd have liked to take some of her costume jewelry but I thought everyone else would be arguing over that. Since the break-in a year ago, there wasn't not much of value there but I think I'm the only one who remembers that.
The house was eerily empty without my grandmother there; I hadn't realized just how much stuff she'd accumulated whether she used it and needed it or not. Her poodle broke my heart; the poor little guy kept wandering around, whimpering and crying for her while he sniffed through the boxes and bags.
Much of the day was spent catching up on family, including the details of my grandmother's death. I was absolved of not getting to my cell phone in time because they assured me it wouldn't have mattered; she went downhill so quickly I couldn't possibly have gotten to her in time to say goodbye while she was still alive. She wan't conscious for long before they took her to surgery. She breathed for about ten minutes after the doctors removed the ventilator and the her eyes opened wide, she turned her head to the right... and she died. I'm just glad she didn't suffer.
I didn't have the unhappy task of sorting through her things; my mother and sister had already taken care of that. In addition to the hummingbirds, which no one else seemed to care about, I received some vintage turquoise. One was simply signed with an "X", which indicated the artisan could neither read nor write. The other wasn't signed at all. There were several sets of earrings, all in very old designs no longer used in Navajo jewelry making today. None of those were signed either and the turquoise looked like it might be from the Kingman mine too. I didn't know if the rings could be resized to fit my fingers (her hands were very small) but I'll find out at least. They're too small even for my pinky. If not, I'll put them away and treasure them anyway.
We talked about the genealogy and I told my mother what I'd found out about the physical characteristics found only in Native populations. I have several, including the high wide cheekbones which make fitting glasses difficult, the broadly constructed feet with the elongated second toe, and the shovel shaped incisors. Before, my grandmother vehemently denied that there was any Native blood in our veins (which conflicts with family stories about what happened to the wagon train on their way up to Wyoming). Mom said, however, when asked she had confirmed it and identified a tribe. We also found papers to that effect but they're useless without a birth certificate or a correct birth date (neither of which we had). The line is direct through my grandmother...and it's entirely possible that the ancestor was on the original roles. This, incidentally, tallied with the preliminary research I did which traces the line back to Enid, Oklahoma during a time when that land was an Indian Reservation. She was uncertain of the blood quantum because my grandmother's mind was starting to wander. It will either be one quarter if the line is direct through my grandmother (meaning she was full blooded and recognized as such within the tribe) or one eighth if the line is direct through her mother (my great grandmother). I didn't plan on doing anything with it in terms of legal recognition for benefits but I did want to pursue the heritage, whatever it may be.
You still haven't said goodbye. When are you going to do it and let her go?
I loved my grandmother, but I didn't like her very much.
After my father died, my mother gave up on living. I was twelve years old and scrabbling around trying to pay bills and scrounge enough food for my sister and I. She couldn't manage money and I sometimes made mistakes. She always spent more than we had. Montrose is a small town and word eventually got back to my grandparents about what was happening. My grandfather took over her finances --- he took care of them until he died in 1997 --- and my grandmother took care of us.
Every town has a designated "hanging judge" --- a no-nonsense judicial official known for adhering to the letter of the law and never giving anyone a break. Ours was known as Hanging Judge Brown. Had my grandfather not been an important person in the down and had my grandmother not pulled in the favors she did, my sister and I would have ended up in foster care. My grandmother essentially raised me. She went to all the conferences, band concerts, fund raisers. She bought my first formal dress. She took me to get my permit and loaned me my first car. She made certain my sister and I didn't go hungry even when my mother was busy doing other things (mostly drinking and hanging out with people she shouldn't). I didn't get much of a childhood but I did get some of it, thanks to her.
I'd just lost the woman who essentially raised me. Yes, she was elderly and so the death was not unexpected. Yes, she was suffering from dementia and the behavior problems which go with it. She'd once been an intelligent, sharp witted woman with a keen business sense (she kept the books for my grandfather in their private contracting business). The strokes and dementia turned her into a bitter, manipulative old woman no one wanted to be around.
That was not my grandmother. I didn't like what she became but I could forgive it. I did love her and the loss is just as great as any other suffered.
Tuesday, after waiting for them to release the body for burial, we took her home. At the funeral, I finally broke down and cried but I still didn't say goodbye. She'd have been absolutely thrilled that she'd managed to get me into a church of any sort and that I'd sat still for the sermon. I wouldn't have told her that it didn't bother me because the altar was covered with fall flowers, plants, and harvest offerings to be distributed later to the less fortunate...or that I thought the simple wood furnishings and bright sunlight streaming through the windows one of the best blessings available to the soul.
We made a slow, sad procession up the mesa to her final resting place and the urn was placed in the ground beside my grandfather.
Now...now do you say goodbye?
I couldn't, it hurt too much.
I didn't give myself permission to heal and her permission to depart on the next life's journey until we were up in the craggy rock formations of Mesa Verde.
My first trip to the national park had been with my grandparents. My grandfather, an engineer employed with the Bureau of Land Management, knew all sorts of information about the area in general and kept a constant commentary about the building materials, methods of preservation, and all sorts of other things. In particular, I remembered the first set of archaeological ruins into which I ever climbed: a long, paved path led from the top of the mesa where the museum and book store were housed down into the canyon. Along the way each plant was labeled with its uses to the peoples who originally lived there. At the bottom, you could take the path to the spring --- which still held water, depending on what time of year you visited but was surrounded by poison ivy --- or you could continue to the ruins. I spent hours poking through all the nooks and crannies or curled up in the shade of an ancient wall reading and sketching or writing, back when you still could enter the ruins.
We arrived in late afternoon and the park ranger warned us that we wouldn't have more than two hours to look around before the park closed for the evening. It was just enough time to show my husband that one set of ruins, the place where I'd spent hours of every childhood summer...and the place where I could say goodbye without feeling quite so lost.
A brilliant Colorado autumn sky highlighted the fading aspen leaves as the truck climbed the mesa. I hadn't been here since the park got caught in a wildfire back in 1996; it amazed me, and I took it as a good sign to my own soul, to see just how much had rejuvenated in those ten years. From the desert had arisen a new wealth of green growth --- small junipers, low lying yucca, delicate desert cacti and wildflowers. Even some of the trees had been spared. Turkey, quail, and other wildlife were abundant. I showed Fox his first mule deer there.
Arriving at the point I had sought, I was pleased to note that the crutches covered the ground as readily as my feet once had without missing a step. Could I still climb a mountain? I had to find out, had to try. Fox skipped ahead with the camera, marveling at all the desert had to offer and at the complex ancient structures which had once been small cities. I discovered that the path presented no obstacle but I couldn't cover the distance and get back in the time we had. Waving to him, I climbed back up to the lip of the mesa and found a picnic overlook. From there I watched my husband venture down into the ruins questing, taking pictures, asking millions of questions of the ranger on duty.
A sense of peace settled over me.
Yes. This is where we say goodbye.
Among the ruins, I found a sense of connection and a knowledge that though she was gone we were forever bound by blood and by the land. I could always find her here, this place of the ancients where memories are collected and stored.
Most of my memories of this trip are vague at best. They've been recreated through the photos taken along the way. If you're curious:
The journey out to Colorado.
Hays City and points west.
The old home town.
The mountains and Mesa Verde.
The family.
Written for season five of therealljidol. If you liked what I wrote, please vote for me when voting opens.