BetterMost Community Blogs > Shakestheground's Rumblings

Shakesthegrounds Rumblings

<< < (36/1161) > >>

Shakesthecoffecan:
Souped up coffee is more like it.

Shakesthecoffecan:
What else will come down the pike?
I stood by your fathers grave and saw your name
On a bronze tablet, attached
to a piece of granite, usually sunken into the
ground it was so big, it must have been
disturbed when they dug his grave.
Propped up at the foot of the cross with no
consideration to you, the attic child,
would you not see it or would it just not matter
because you were you.

My cousin the undertaker.
If I had a ball bat sometimes I would hit
a home run when I hear him open his
mouth, spew forth his selfrighteousness, call
the name of your living brother, his wife,
their son and admonish them to live and
ignore you, sitting next to them, what in his
vocabulary he has nothing to say to the mentally
ill, the thin, gaut redneck dying for a cigarette.

I shake your hand and offer my condolences.
You are inhaling now, you are more
composed than anyone else there, you are of
this moment and last night when the rain
poured, you rose to smoke and ponder would you
have reason to bury your father this day. We are
two relics of the Nixon administration, we are
closer this day than when I see you in a parking
lot looking for your ride. They will take
you back to your home soon, and return to theirs,
to eat, and you to smoke, where there are no
hands to shake. And I will return to this place soon,
to continue my journey alone.



I wrote these words in September 2003 after attending the funeral of the father of my childhood friend, Darryl. The day to return is now at hand.

Darryl was my best friend in the 2nd grade. He and his older brother Kevin would come over to spend the night often, in the summer we would sleep in a pup tent in the back yard, telling dirty stories and giggling most of the night. Building forts in the woods and staging funerals for the mice his dog Frisky would kill.

On 16 September 1971 Darryl and Kevin did not come to school. The principal and my teacher spoke to me in the hall about their absence. I learned when I got home their divorced parents had fought and their mother took the two of them and fled, leaving another son with his father. I remember the date, because after that nothing was ever the same. No one ever replaced the best friend slot in my childhood.

Two years later they returned to the Roanoke area, and my friendship with the brothers renewed, especially in the summers, I would go stay a week with then in their mobile home (not a trailer they insisted). We swung from sapling trees, singing "Fly Robin, Fly" and "Kung Fu Fightin'". We watched the Miss Universe pagent. Kevin, at the age of 13, stayed indoors and listened to his extensive collection of Doris Day albums, you guessed it, he was the gay one.

We lost contact in high school. In college I contacted them both again, getting a letter from Darryl saying he had not been invited to his mothers wedding and one from Kevin, telling me about his best friend, who he thought the world of, and his anger at his father for not contiuing to finance his college education.

One year at spring break my mother told me Darryl's father had called, Darryl had been hospitalized "for his nerves" and wanted me to come see him. I did, but the very medicated person who starred at the TV, who was this? Where was my old friend? In time full disclosure came: Darryl had Schitzophrenia.

In the years that passed we would infrequently get together. He liked to drink beer. He became more and more socially isolated as the nicoteen stain on his hand grew. He told me of Kevin's decline, his DUIs, his dark basement apartment, his toupee. The drinking lead to diabetes. Kevin was found by his father one day in 1998, he had been dead several days. At the funeral Darryl held things up by telling me over and over his DUI was not his fault, the old lady had pulled out in front of him and he drank that six pack after ward to calm his nerves.

Their father's death took me by surprise. I went to the grave side service and saw Darryl's bronze headstone, ready and waiting, propped up against a cross, no consideration for him at all. He was sitting there on the front row in a clean shirt and dirty hair, he was itching to get away from these people and back to his trailer (not a mobile home) and let all those people pass from his line of sight. He later moved into his fathers house and called me to sale the trailer, which required a signature from his surviving brother that was not forth comming. Darryl was in many ways like a child in that he could not understand things, was not sure where to direct his flustration. One evening I came out of the movies and cut my phone on and was treated to a series of ever more angry messages from him. I cut it back off. The next day I tried to reason with the entity who had replaced my best friend. It was no use.

I would see Darryl walking down the road to the store where he bought his beer and cigarettes, matched step by step by his live-in girl friend, one of a series he met at a support group. About a month ago I saw him standing in his house, the windows convered iwth tim foil, hands on hips, looking down that road in the direction of the store. It seemed he was wanting to get the energy up to make the half mile walk. Part of me wanted to stop and give him a ride. A bigger part of me today wishes I had.

I opened the paper this morning to learn he had died yesterday. My cousin the undertake will have to deal with him after all. 

vkm91941:
Ahhhh, Truman your writing never fails to move me.  Loved the story about the old dog (I'm sucker for dogs) but this last about your friend, so sad, so poignant.

One of my brothers is manic depressive and I went to support groups with my Mom and his wife for a bit and what I learned is that when you care for someone with schizophrenia or any mind altering mental illness you count in days. If the illness is present you start counting in hours...'between 5 and 7 was calm ,then things were chaos until midnight, slept for an hour at 3am' .Life seems to slow down and each minute is weighted with a mixture of anxiety and hope.

As things improve you start counting in days, Monday was good,Tuesday ok,Wednesday good etc .Then you can start chalking off months.

January was a very good month.There was no sign of the illness at all and February has started well....  It's like constantly trying to go up the down escalator but NOT just for us the family and friends but for them the afflicted as well and they are doubly troubled because they see what it does to us too.

Shakesthecoffecan:
The day after learning of Darryl's death I received a call from his sister in law, asking me if I was not busy could I be a pall bearer. "If I'm not busy?" I thought. I told her sure, I was planning on attending the funeral any way. "I'll be happy to!" I said and then back pedaled on my cheerfulness, she knew what I ment.

When I told my 84 year old mother that he had died and I was going to be his pall bearer, she said she wanted to go and pay her respects to the family. This was odd for me, all part of keeping worlds seperate from one another to insure less friction, less confrontation. "He was the cutest little boy" she remembered "I'd love to see his mother again" and that cinched it for me. She had been part of this story, yes, she should come.

The sister in law had told me there would be a visitation and hour prior to taking his remains to the grave, where there would be a short graveside service. I got there a bit early, made some quiet inquiries, trying to get some answers. What I was able to learn was this: the last time anyone saw him alive was on Saturday the 5th, when he walked to the store for his daily ration of beer and cigarettes. The following day he talked to his mother on the phone, and then entered into what I call "the quiet" the point at which you are beyond your last human contact and your story is all conjecture. On Wednesday the 9th, a friend of his stopped by to check on him, got no answer. On the following Sunday, the 13th, his mom could not get him on the phone and asked his brother to check on him. He found him. There the details ceased to be forth comming. The casket was closed. There was no word on what caused his death. Just like his other brother, 8 years ago.

I told the surviving brother, a jolly guy of few words, I was sorry, about everything he had to go thru with Darryl, he said thanks. His mother seemed well composed, almost relived that the day she long knew she would see had arrived. She hugged me and showed me the spray on top of the blue steel casket, to the side sat his high school graduation photo, those big bow ties they put on us in 1981. I had never seen the picture, it was him in his fulfilled glory, the face I had memorized as a child, mature and strong, he was so handsome. Within two years the voices of demons would invade his head, may have already been there. Within two years of that photo being made he would loose a quater of his weight, his eyes would sink, his hands would become stained with nicoteen. I wanted so badly to grab the photo and kiss it right on the lips, something I would never have done to him.

Darryl's former girlfriend, who had not lived with him in some time, came solemly in, escorted by her mother. She too suffers from some undisclosed mental illness and was mournfully reserved. I spoke with her, as flatly as Kansas she told me how good a person he had been to her, how she would miss him. Had she still been living there things may be different today. I think that was weighing on her mind, but no one blamed her. There was nothing she could do. There was no blame here, only a river that could not be stopped. 

"...he was a a sweet boy" my mother told his, the hand clasp that women have, of a certain age anyway. She told of Darryl once saying he was going to build a flying machine so he could fly from Roanke to see me. I searched my memory for that, belive it is the first I have ever heard of such. It was real sweet.

I met two other pall bearers, a former neighbor and a buddy of his who had both befriended him. They were good people. One had discovered Darryl had gone for an extended period with out hot water and bought him a water heater and installed it for him. The other gave him rides 10 miles to the nearest supermarket to get the things he could not get at the Lucky 2, a store a mile from his trailer. (Uphill on the way back). The water heater man had checked on him the previous Wednesday and got no answer. He expressed a feeling of responcibility, which I felt was not nescessary. I told him if he didn't answer the door, it was probably too late. A small boom box was carried by, one of the men wondered aloud if they were going to play Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird, which I think most people in the south fear will one day happen at a funeral they attend.

So oddly then we were lined up and insted of marched into the chapel, to the front door, followed by the casket, heavy in me right hand, careful down the steps into the hearse.The family went out the side door to their cars. The sherriff's department guided us thru traffic, most people on the road still pull off to the side to let processions pass. We went right past the house I grew up in, the place where we kids had been kids, now sigular.

Under the canopy advertizing the funeral home was locally owned and operated we laid his casket and the family filed in. A lady minister, clad in purple petrochemical based material and perfect hair made her remarks, the boom box was cut on and from it unrecognizable chords emerged that she fashioned into song: "I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses.....".

We had sang. Something, I asked Darryl in my mind what it was I remembered us singing. A stiff breeze hit me in the face at once and it started to come back to me: riding on the back of my Daddy's truck, on summer evening, the three of us boys sang all one hundred verses of "A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall". It got to be a chant towards the end, which if you have never heard it goes: "no more to take down, none to pass around, there's no more bottles of beer on the wall." Moment of artless beauty in our seperate and difficult lives, let be, let be.

The service complete we laid out carnation buttoniers on his casket and filed out, I kissed his mother on her cheek and shook hands down the line. The former neighbor returned from his car with a confederate flag, a pack of cigaretts and a lighter. Darryl had said he would place those items in his friends grave when the time came because he was sure he would out live him. The flag, he always had one them on his wall, his African American former girl friend regarded it the same as she regarded the flowers on the grave, something colorful in a sad time. The red and white of a carnation twirling in her hands. "He was a good man" she said "I'm going to miss him".

I got back in my car and cut the air on. Over head two hawks, on their back and forth reconnisence in the sky over us. My mind in its search for meaning named one of them Kevin and the other one Darryl, who the first would lead home. I waved to them, thought it nice of them to come by and bid us farewell. The end of a long farewell that started nearly 35 years ago. I, in my little silver car not unlike a coffin itself, slowly mauvered away thru tears. Eager to consume a strong drink, I settled insted for an ice cream, as I still had another visitation to attend that evening, it comes in threes, you know.

Wayne:
Gosh Truman ... I'm sorry...   :(    Will be thinking of you.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page