Dance with Death, part iv

Dance with Death previous installments
Great-Gramma Emma continued to be an amazing source of love through food, she did it well. Even when she made horrible racist comments in front of and to my father, excepting him from her tirade (now, you know I'm not talkinboutchu, ed) somehow we forgave the sin of judgment. I loved her fiercely; in spite of or because of those perfect examples of her human frailty I don't know.
The Christmas before Grampa Harm died, she declared he was welcome to dinner in her home. He lived just around the corner, you see, and it was silly to have had him in her home all those years and now to keep him at bay, home alone on Jesus' birthday. He was coming and Gramma Bunnie and Grampa Bud (her new husband)could decide themselves if they were coming or not, they were grownups afterall. Maybe she somehow sensed it was her last chance to do so.
I turned extra sweet on her after that incredibly brave act of kindness, I wondered what else she had to offer.
It was all too soon, a mere 11 months after Grampa, when she was admitted to the hospital after a heart attack. A promise to visit, oh yes, it came again. We don't have to lie this year, you can get right off the elevator, just as soon as she's stable...
80+ year old women don't always stabilize, she didn't. Daddy walked in the door that night, the night before the day of my visit, with open rivers of tears flowing down his face. I knew his favorite old racist lady was gone. And, again, I got nothin.
I was so angry, the tears like acid in my eyes, I remember nothing of the services.
Nothing but that burning gut sensation of there's got to be a better way.
Because this way fucking sucks.
I didn't wanna dance anymore.

Dance with Death, part iii

One day I'm in junior high, thinking about singing group tryouts and other 13-year-old thoughts, when the principal comes to the door, Arnie Bauer. I'll never forget him, such a sweet, sweet man. He gently led me to the hallway and explained that my grandfather had suffered a stroke and I was needed to care for my young cousins so Aunt Donna could be with her father, the aforementioned Grampa Harm Tilstra. My mom had instructed him to put me on the city bus, though he felt it was enough of an emergency to drive me himself, in his very own car. He comforted me on that ride, the first time I'd ever heard sincere platitudes. It was great comfort and it shifted, once again, the rhythm of my Dance with Death.
Grampa'd been to lunch with Aunt Darla at the senior center, when he had a stroke. They got him to the hospital and hooked up all their thingies and did all their little procedures... The first couple of days were blurred by the juggling of younger cousins. The feeling of being shut out of the whole process eventually came to a head. I demanded they break the rules, fudge my age (under 14s were not allowed off the elevator in those days & I looked 12!), whatever needed to be done so I could see my Grampa!! Tomorrow they said, tomorrow. Ah, I was so relieved, I would see with my own eyes, hear with my own ears, hug with my own arms!!
When I got home, it was too late.
He'd died.
I got nothin. A peek through the lavender tulle revealed too much make up on his dead-and-never-been-make-upped upper lip. And his hair was laying down on his head, instead of flopped over one ear, waiting to be pushed back up and over by his pinky-missing-hand. They'd probably buttoned both sides of his always-one-side-flappin union suit. Next time, they said, next time. I didn't believe them. I don't think Joanna did either; this funeral just done ruined her 3rd birthday, so she locked herself in the car. Smart kid.

The next Thanksgiving we spent with Gramma Bunnie and Grampa Bud; it was traditionally Grampa Harm's holiday, as he had usually been unwelcome at the Christmas festivities at his former mother-in-law's home. We all missed him, big and heavy and hurtin'. Then Gramma started crying. I did *not* understand; nor would I have wanted to at that point. I wanted to be selfish with my grief, sharing it only with those who loved him. She couldn't have loved him, she left him years ago and shut him out of her life. Little did I know, I would someday come to acutely understand what it means to mourn the father of (most of) your children.

Dance with Death, part ii

Gramma Bunnie, the ironically nicknamed ex-wife of the aforementioned Grampa Harm and mother to my mother, had a little brother named Uncle Lydell. He's our family's encyclopaedic entry for Asshole.
We'd spend nearly every Sunday of my young life in their mother's home, Gramma Emma, in a tiny town 18 miles away. There were two kinds of Sundays at Gramma Emma's house: Drunk and Angry or Happy and Peaceful; the happy/peaceful version usually included homemade cake and scoops of icecream from the deep freeze in it's own dedicated room. It's easy to guess my favorite kind of day. The positive food reinforcement didn't work though. Uncle Lydell still showed up. He was still angry. He was still medicating his pain with a lot of alcohol. And he didn't much care who knew he was upset, he needed to GET IT OUT!!! So he did.
On those days, I don't remember what it was that got the man so freaking upset, though I was glad to know it wasn't me (one less pissed-at-you-adult was a freaking sacred gift in my world). I'd just sit under Great-Gramma's sideboard and play with the molded plastic train piggy bank, discolored and smelly coloring books, broken crayon chunks, and a few other ancient toys we kept stashed there, just for these moments.
Lots of crying on those days, always the women; the men didn't step in and stop anything until the end, when they convinced him to go have a smoke and calm down.
It still wouldn't be safe to come out for a while, the weeping women would sometimes grab you up into their suffocating busoms, smelling like tears and misery, and it was just plain confusing; so unless I really needed to pee (and I could dart from my vantage point) I stayed put.
For hours.

Then Uncle Lydell met Karma. Though I bet if he described the situation for you himself, it's more like he met Karma-as-Kali, farm-style.
Deservedly so, my then 8-year-old-self decided and at 40, I still concur.
My inner child's version of the tale; for authenticity, I'm not verifying facts with the family, ymmv*:
Uncle Lydell was baling hay with a neighbor, when the neighbor was called away. Now, everyone knows that you're never to bale hay alone, it's way too dangerous. Lydell did it anyway. It was believed the twine meant to cinch the grass-cubes became tangled and, instead of turning off the machine to deal with it's malfunction, he reached into the running baler, the twine cinched his wrist, he was pulled into the machine and, consequently, his fat ass made the thing explode. They came to Aunt Mary with glasses-in-hand; glasses they found in the neighboring field.

I don't remember who told me, maybe I listened at the door while my mom retold the story for friends on the telephone. First thing I really remember is standing outside our green stucco house, outside the white picket fence, the sun shining on my face and I felt JOY! The next trip to Great-Gramma's was guaranteed to be a Happy and Peaceful one with Cake and Ice Cream Cones. I was getting too tall for the hidey-hole, anyway! I'd get to hear the windchimes over the voices, every.single.time. In that moment, I came to realize that Death could be a release, a happy, happy release. If not for the dead guy, for those who had to put up with him while alive.

Then I walked into the house.
Mom was crying. Gramma Bunnie was crying. People were sad. It made my skin crawl.
WHY? Feel what you really feel, for goodness sake people! We all hated the man, we're all glad he's gone, he'll never ruin another day at gramma's for us, why would that make you sad??!?!?!?!
Then I was just plain pissed. My parade was rained out by hypocritical tears and snotty nonsense. I didn't go to the funeral. I think Mom wanted to keep my giddiness at home. I kept my frustration and confusion to myself. To whom do you bring these feelings?
Again no one had anything to help me understand.
Alone, but for those niggling questions and a deep, burning desire to find different ways to do this whole death thing. There wasn't a lot to believe in, in my young life, but here I found faith, faith that I could move beyond what had been my experience, thus far. A faith that has proven unshakable.
____________________
*ymmv = your miles may vary

My Dance with Death, a foreword

It started as a comment on Melissa's blog, then expanded to it's own blogpost... as it lives in the draft file, this here tale grows and grows and grows. As I can only write it in chunks: chunks of emotion, of vocabulary, of memories, of time, so too will it be easier to read in chunks.
You are heretofore invited to participate in my first ever serial, err, serial something that just might turn into a real novel/memoir/book/ABC afterschool special/somethin, someday, though not today...

and so it begins:

Death, in my family's tradition, is the root of all hypocrisy; uh, not fair, mayhap Death merely casts away the shadows that hide our family's tradition of hypocrisy. At least, my first glimpse of hypocrisy came with my first taste of death. And death comes with an expensive lesson; every time. As Life partners with Death, so do I; in a Dance of Balance and Understanding.
I learned those first steps early in my life... perhaps from the very beginning, as I understand my mother's labor was sparked by the death of her grandparent. Born of Death, Bourne of Death, me.

My Dance with Death, part i

Living at Grampa Harm G Tilstra's house in Harrisburg (next door to the house where my parents lived when I was born) was one of my favorite times in my childhood. Though I was not yet 3 years old, I had incredible freedoms because I was small & quiet enough to play and wander (never crossing the RR tracks nor the highway, sans help) without calling the attention nor wrath of the gumpy guy who was sometimes a fun grampa.
Once, after I'd gathered up my little doll-playing friends on Grampa's porch, I reenacted what I'd seen him do earlier, out of their sight: I stood with my hands on my hips, my face into the wind and announced "Smells like rain" and sat back down. Sho'nuf, it began raining in earnest moments later and I cinched the title as coolest kid in town. For that unbeknownst-to-him assistance, I'll be forever grateful.
Burned into my memory, dinner around the table, Hank Williams Jr. or sumsuch on the radio (warming my little hands near it), out of one of those "ringed" tupperware bowls, soft pink, green or blue. I couldn't yet easily see over the top of the table from my chair, the decades of finger smudges on the lower cupboards kept me entertained visually while the adults rambled on and on. I distinctly remember asking several times for clarification on what we were eating. Chicken they said, every time. A baby's equivalent of chicken, my ass ran through my head, every time. I saw those rabbits. I fed those rabbits. I'd been scratched to kingdom come (said my grampa) by many of those rabbits. When not being used to move rabbit poop to the strawberries, Grampa let me use the wagon to drag stuff around town. We was intimate.
Then the day came. I returned from my wandering adventures and ran towards the hutches. Stopped short, I saw it hanging right there over the top of the garage door, the left door, waaaaay up there, looking waaaay down at my little stunned self, the face of my favorite bunny. His beautiful-though-lifeless black and white dotted shell now ready to be sold to become decoration, for sure, which I kinda understood. But this was my favorite one. Some kind of stiff, cold, old Dutch retort came my way, Grampa's version of that's life, kid and I was expected to hitch up my big girl panties and ride on outta there. No apologies, no explanations. Life.
At Chicken Dinner that night, I stretched and looked up at those faces and I knew something had changed, something had ended; I could no longer trust these people to tell me the truth.
I've never again been a fan of bunnies; nor adults who lie to kids.