4-20-14, a personal tale

hey daddy.

sometimes it seems like it was just last thursday that i picked up the phone and there you were on the other end of the line, brightly talking and saying how you were doing pretty good and glad to be coming home. only it was not last thursday but a year from last thursday that we had that last phone conversation.

it was the next day, in fact, that we had our last face-to-face talk. you lay there in your bed in your most comfortable pajamas and told me quite emphatically that my hands were cold. i tried to warm them, and as the hours went by and everybody crowded by your side, it was a sweet, holy moment, all of us there with you.

sometimes it feels like yesterday and sometimes like 10 years and other times like the long year it has been, since you last spoke to me. for awhile there, after we lost you, i'd go back into my email and read your last written message to me, looking for more meaning in it than was already plain to see. by then you couldn't really write letters anymore... your thoughts were too jumbled, so i hold this one close, what you wrote to me about something i had posted on this blog.

'

One of your best...........from your favorite reader.....wth love.  gvbsr'  

+++

this weekend we have marked many things. meredith and james have been married for five years. FIVE. what a joy it is for them and for our family to see how happy they are together. she is still the city girl you proclaimed her to be at 3 months old. we doubt, sadly, she will ever leave it. but knowing they are so happy together softens that sadness. she and james will be a great couple, no matter where they are.

after supper last night we facetimed with pamela, mama and hooks, something you knew very little about last year, but we do a lot now. in fact, you may remember that you talked to hooks and meredith and maybe kendall, too, that last day on Facetime, which made them feel like they were there, in the room with you.

FaceTime keeps us connected though we are often states apart. i wish we'd had it in when i lived in georgia, so i could have seen your face when i talked to you. but i do have your letters.

our favorite facetime time now is with gracie, because she is always happy and waving. when you left us she was but a bit of a thing, and now she has teeth and is talking about what the dog-bird-cat can say. laura gray is growing up, too, and so much the big sister to vance, who seems like the happiest part of you, which is wonderful. cole of course, is the star of every family show, and he loves his little cousins so much.

today we were in our favorite town — the one you always said you wanted to leave, but in the end, where you chose to come back to. and we were there because of you, to celebrate Easter, and to remember where we were on 4-20-13.

no more perfect day than this, the day of Jesus' resurrection, to take a moment to ponder about your own.

we gathered in church with mama on the pew you shared with her for so long after we left home. (we filled three pews, thank you very much.) and afterward met up with you at the cemetery. kip brought the circus peanuts and i brought the orange slices, a communion of sorts with your offspring and your favorite treats. your children read at thing or two (gra even wrote a prayer in the best baptist tradition) and we did it (mostly) without tears. mama had a few, but on days like this, she is a sailboat without her tiller. 

though there are so many of us trying to direct her way, we are not the same as you there, holding onto her elbow as she crosses the street.

we have been crying a little bit, remembering the day last year, which is really ok because you cried a few times in your life, too. and our crying is because we miss your very being, and your being witness to all that won't stay still in our family... and there is a lot. 

sam & lindsay are getting married on saturday, and kip has become chief resident... he obviously is as smart, though more outgoing than you...  meredith and james have new jobs and promotions, kendall and matt have a new house, and jay and john both have great jobs in new cities. graham has built that shed to house the saw you gave him... oh, and he brought a special young woman to share this day with him today. (she helped him paint the shed, if that tells you something about her.)

we picnicked at your favorite place — the bird farm — introducing cole to a baby duck and gracie to a hundred parakeets in every color of the sky. cole petted the duckling, and gracie even tried to pull the tail of a parakeet when it landed on her stroller. a full flock of them landed on my arm and in my hair and tried to eat my shoes. 

our picnic was fried chicken from hardees and mama's potato salad, pamela's chocolate chip cookies and hooks's brownies. graham brought your favorite deviled eggs, and we talked about the fact that you would only eat the yolks. there are three left, the three you would have eaten if you'd been able to. sam brought the humor, and kip wore his gvb tie clip. all your boys were dashing today.

all your number ones were there, including jimmy, marti and rick (in no particular order) but we were missing meredith & james & lindsay, kendall, matt, laura gray & vance, jay and john, but they were all there with us really, just as you were.

at the end of our meal, mama stepped in to say what you would have... thanks for coming... and that looking around, there is STILL not an ugly one in the bunch. i honestly don't know how in the world that has happened.

on friday, we will be together again, to celebrate sam and lindsay and their marriage, and we can't wait for that. you will be happy to know that mama will be wearing beige, and PINK, and she will look beautiful in both. 

Daddy, our family is growing and changing and that's exactly what a family is supposed to do. you and mama set us in motion all those years ago, and we have never really stopped. and of course, all the additions add so much color to our beige. 

today pamula read something you left for us to find in your desk, which talked about how whenever we really need you, you will be nearby. you were there today. we felt it.

i read parts of a letter you wrote to me in 1979, when you talked about how you would one day be someone's ancestor, and that your only hope of eternal life, really, was through your children and grandchildren.

well, i'd say you have it. that on this day of the resurrection of our Lord, you have yourself eternal life for sure, through not only what was promised by God to all of us, but through all of us gathered there, and those who couldn't be with us but who love you even though you are not physically here. 

i hope you can know, somehow, that we will, each one, as your descendants, do all that you have hoped for us. and we will do you proud.

sbr

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

a year

a year ago i sat at my desk doing i can't say what now. the phone rang: my sister. she had spent the past couple of weeks with my parents, and she was leaving town that morning to join her daughter and the new baby girl who had joined their family just two weeks before.

i picked up the phone, thinking that this would be the debrief: that conversation we all have with our siblings after one of us has spent more than a few days with the folks who gave life to us. as i punched the button on my phone i thought: wonder how it's gone? how will i pick up her slack?

then she said: well, here's the thing.

i would learn over the next few months that this was code. all was not right with our world. pay attention.

that day, the thing was this: my 84-year-old-father had woken with a fever, chills, and while we talked he was on his way to the tiny hospital where he had practiced medicine his whole career. and my sister was scared.

after our phone call, i left work, packed a bag and headed home. that afternoon, my sister, mother and i sat with Daddy, watching the nurses go in and out as he slept and started, in his yellow sweater and brown corduroy pants. he did take his shoes off, as i recall.

but his stay was to be temporary. we sent my sister on to her new granddaughter, confident that we would take Daddy home in a few hours, or at least the next day.

i remember i had a big interview for work the next day, and by late afternoon, i arranged to do that from my parents' kitchen table. Daddy didn't come home that night, and i woke early, driving through Hardees to bring coffee and biscuits to him.

i would end up throwing all that away.

the next day, which was long, ended with my father waving to me and my mother from the back of a giant medical transport that would take him to the medical center where he needed to be. i will not forget that moment, Daddy being wheeled into the lighted transport and lifted up, him waving to me as he had done a thousand times from the back porch of our house. a wave that said he would be back soon.

only he wasn't.

+++

we are in the healing stages now. the days when we don't think daily so much about my father's absence, as his presence in our lives. i think about that sweater and those pants, his hush puppies and the conversation i had with him that day, and though i am sad, i am not devastated. i think of the story in that day — the old crank bed, the fact that it fell with him in it, the nurse who said when i arrived that he would need a higher level of care — these are elements in a story — no longer bringing outrage to me, though they certainly did that day. there would be other moments in his months in the hospital, but now that he is no longer there, i think of other families, and what they face each day they drive into the parking lot of a hospital. i wonder if they get long-term parking permits, like we did.

healing: what a gift that is, to the grieving. that at some point we turn the page from how can this be? to what is. and we keep moving on.

so here is the thing: in this year, my mother has moved to a new house. my sister's grandbaby is a year old. the grandbaby born on my father's birthday (and named for him) is 14 months old. one nephew got married and another will in April. Two nephews have changed jobs. my son bought a house. my daughter moved up in her job. my brother and sister and i stayed the course. the dogs all hung in there.

and in small pieces, Daddy has been right there.














writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.