Mama died in her sleep a year and four days ago. June 24 is the date. I had not cried except when I was lying on the couch with the flu this spring and heard Bocelli singing Amazing Grace in front of the Vatican. The weeping was over when the music stopped, and I returned to my coughing, headache, and sore joints.
I knew the trip to Granville’s Heritage Days on Memorial Day weekend would come near to killing me. Tears welled up when I opened the invitation to the annual memorial service for all the people who were attached to Granville in some way. All these people passed away since the last Heritage Days service. She was fourth on the list, Ethel Blair, just below Barlow, Barrett, and Birdwell. There was also a handwritten note in the bottom corner announcing that a brick would be dedicated in Mom’s honor on the museum’s Memory Lane.
It hit me that Mom was no longer real. She had spun herself into a memory. Had she floated away from my reality? I was about to face the place where Mom and Dad served a community in their older years. Dad was the pastor there, and Mom played the piano.
Since last June, grief hasn’t been hidden, but we’ve been trying to sell our beloved Compound On the Ravine, a place that requires a particular buyer with a situation similar to ours.
We bought a new home, The Cottage, and the moving and the paring down proved unmerciful. We fell for the idea of an estate sale, a disastrous experience that left us with more of a mess than we started with. One friend and I emptied garages that could fit six, maybe eight, vehicles.
The upkeep of The Compound has taken a lot of time and energy. We contracted Covid, then the flu came for a long seven-day visit. In winter, spring, and summer, we’ve made almost daily trips to The Compound. It hasn’t sold yet. Besides that, we have been trying to make The Cottage our new home.
Grief is adaptable. If it couldn’t move in with me, it would devastate others around me. While I was busy with Mom’s last days, my cousin Reba lost her husband Lewis. What a sweet couple. My Aunt Bessie died March 23, nine months to the day after Mom. Her kids say she just wasn’t the same after Mom died. Ethel and Bessie talked every Saturday, sometimes for two or three hours. My cousin Brenda Gail died within a month. Her mother was Aunt Elois, my dad’s oldest sister, long gone now. My writing group friend Debbie’s sister passed away in Alabama, and just a few days later, Bonnie, another of our group of 5 Ladies in Writing, suddenly lost her husband. I’d visited her at the St. Thomas Hospital cafeteria just days before. After that, the husband of my dear ex-sister-in-law Vickie in Montana surrendered abruptly to just-discovered cancer.
And then, one day, about two weeks into May, the servicemen came to check out our HVAC at The Cottage, just as they had always done at The Compound twice a year. George finished before his partner and was leaning against the white truck when I came out the front door. I don’t remember where I was going nor who came with George that day.
George might be sixty or maybe a little over. I said, “How’re you doing, George?”
He said, “Fine,” and quickly added, “Probably as fine as I’ll ever get.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Well, I lost my wife in a car accident a month ago.”
“Oh, George, I am so sorry,” I said.
“It was a one-car accident,” he said. “Day before her birthday. She’d gone to get her toes done. It was her birthday present. I guess she just lost control of the car. She would have been home in less than ten minutes.”
“Where did that happen?” I asked.
“Tater Peeler Road, out from Lebanon. Kinda out in the country is where we live.”
“I know Tater Peeler Road. I lived in Lebanon for several years. And we had a farm before that in Norene.”
“Well, we was close neighbors. I’m towards the end of the road there at Cedars of Lebanon. She was a wonderful person, always helping somebody. She loved flowers, gardening, you know. She had back surgery one time. We went to the grocery store, couldn’t have been more than a week after, and she was waiting in the car for me to get everything. I got in the car and she saw this elderly couple having trouble loading their groceries, and she got out of that car and went and helped them. Always doing something like that. Yeah, she was getting her toes done. She loved to dress up and keep herself pretty. Loved jewelry. I was always getting her some jewelry of some kind.”
I smiled and he went on. “I don’t stay at the house. I go there to sleep and then I get up and go to work. Put myself on call every weekend so I work every day.”
“So you eat out?”I asked. “You just don’t want to be there.”
He shook his head. “Naw. She was a good cook. Sometimes we ate out. It was always for something special.”
The other serviceman came around the corner of the house.
George lifted his ballcap and put it back on. “I guess we’re ready to go,” he said.
“George, I’ll remember you in my prayers. What was your wife’s name?”
“Diane. Her name was Diane.”
I was so moved that I wanted to see a photo. I looked at the obituaries for Lebanon, Tennessee, and found a picture. I imagined what it was like for George to lose his Diane.
***
Spring hit and there have been several lookers at our old house and a few offers, but no sale. The gardens grew at both homes, but I took a break to make that trip to Granville for the memorial service and the dedication of the brick. Dave remained at home with Dixie, and my friend D went with me.
We had plenty of time but arrived in Granville with only a few minutes to spare before the brick dedication. D dropped me off and went to find a parking spot. The dedication was brief. I walked down the street to Granville United Methodist Church, and, instead of taking the steep steps to the double doors, I made my way up the ramp on the side of the church through the pastor’s office to the choir room and restrooms.
I sat on the end of the pew with the large aisle from the choir room. There was the familiar cube of tissues. I knew I’d need them. A woman from the middle of the seat leaned over to tell me she had family coming to sit there.
No bother. I moved forward to the center aisle seat on the second pew, checked for Kleenex, and grabbed a handful.
Something swirled in the center of my body. It spread to the very edge of my neck, shoulders, and legs. All that I could relate to were arms and legs. The twisting in my middle had created a large hole, empty except for the rotating air. I started to cry. Not just a little, but sobbing, and holding two or three tissues to my mouth.
D will be here soon, I thought, but as the pastor started the service, I sat alone in that respectful silence and felt the stark nothingness of grief. I must have walked on someone else’s wobbling legs to the altar and lit a candle when Mom’s name was called.
On the Ravine 