Death in a small town

Posted on 6:38 AM by jr cline | 0 comments

The day One knew would come is here.

The call comes at 2:30 am. Confused, One dresses and rushes to One’s parent’s home to find mother standing by father’s bedside. He isn’t there anymore. One’s mind imagines he takes a breath once in a while. No, it is illusion.
A family member and the minister arrive before the ambulance.
Finally an ambulance gets there.

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The paramedics walk casually to the bedside and do their test.
They call the coroner.
Two police cars arrive from a town nearby. They ask questions. There is massive confusion over which police jurisdiction it is. Other police are called. Seems none of them want to do the paper work.
The coroner arrives and asks questions. Turns out the coroner and the deceased are friends. The coroner is also the funeral home director.
Different police arrive followed by two vehicles from the funeral home, a truck and a van.
It is 3:30 am and the funeral home guy is in a suit. They ask more questions.
Forms are filled out and signed.
The deceased is carried away and the family is left at the house with more forms to fill out.
Burial insurance policies have to be gathered.
Clothing for the burial must be selected.
Which suit should we use? Which tie? Should we clean the suit? Shoes and socks are optional.
Who has the sermon the deceased wanted shared at his funeral?
What to do with his extensive library?

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Where is his wallet?
His favorite chair sits hauntingly empty.

Empty Chair

The children go through the papers pulling out the burial and life insurance policies. They each assume different, oddly familiar roles: the roles of childhood.
Who does what and who calls who is almost instinctual?
The new widow wanders the house dazed and confused moving small objects from place to place attempting to create order in her broken world.
But it is too soon.
Someone goes around turning off lights and shutting doors. Someone goes around turning on lights. The daughter mindlessly sorts things on the end table by his chair.

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Outside in the darkness, the children huddle silently separately together with their grief.
Someone goes for food which is eaten without interest.
Emails are sent to distant family.
Condolence emails begin to come within hours. News spreads fast in a small town.
Time passes slowly as they wait until 2 pm to make the funeral arrangements. More choices and decisions have to be made by people who can barely think in this surrealistic haze.
How long can you watch the weather channel without going crazy? Seems it is about an hour and a half. Then on to closed captioned news talk shows. Why can’t we turn up the sound? No one seems to have an answer or the ability to do that.

The funeral home director is quite pleasant and helpful.

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After many, many questions and lots of decisions about times and places it is time to select a casket.

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The door opened to the casket showroom. There is a wide selection to look at, each costing more than the one before. Money is discussed. Finally, a casket, cards, guest book, and program are selected. The price is settled on. How odd to haggle over these things.

Two hours later they return to the widow’s house. One of the children brings over more food. Dinner and conversation until 8 and then everyone returns to their respective homes except the daughter who spends the night there.

Day 2 Coffee, soda, and sandwiches

Today was a day of hanging out together as a family, lots of naps, conversation, reminiscing, feeble attempts at frivolity, and snacking.

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There are long discussions about insurance, bills, and then there is the great Bible search. The Bible is still missing. The widow wants to hold it. It is the deceased oldest and favorite Bible. Family and friends come and go. A friend brings food for dinner and everyone wolfs it down. It is a long, sad day. The youngest son stays the night with his mom so she won’t be alone.

Day 3 Coffee, soda, tea, and a covered dish lunch

Today begins with the two sons gathered at mom’s. Mom is still sleeping. She always sleeps late. After about an hour she wakes up and starts moving around. She has a banana for breakfast. They chat about this and that. A life insurance company calls about arranging payment. That will take at least a week to settle they say. The younger son listens in on the conversation to protect his mother.

Lunch is provided one dish at a time by the widow’s Sunday school class. The cars come and go each with a story, smile, condolence, and reminder of the family's loss. Intermingled with them, the rest of the family trickles in. They gather for lunch. The food is really good. How will we ever get all this in the fridge? Who sent all this food? We must send thank you cards. Who brought the bean casserole? What about the 7 Layer Salad and the pecan pies? The questions, answers, and guessing go on until each is listed and assigned to someone. Flowers arrive. Laughter. It’s from one of the son’s ex-wife. Who told her? She read it in the newspaper.

Grieving pest extermination. Let the mouse in the house so we can kill it with these nifty, high-tech, mouse traps.

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The family disperses to change clothes for the viewing. Here, take this food home with you. There isn’t room in the fridge for it. Will you take some of the Bibles for tonight? When does it start five or five thirty? Five. OK.

At the funeral home

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Two of the bereaved stand outside smoking, avoiding what is to come. Finally they go inside

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and enter the parlor.

Look at all the pretty flowers.

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Funeral flowers 1

These are from your friends. They sure are. It was so nice of them to send flowers.
There is the veteran’s flag from his time in the Navy.

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Individually and by twos and threes they view the body commenting on how the deceased appears. He looks so good. No he doesn’t, he looks dead.
Then they sit and stare at each other. After some discussion, the doors are opened admitting the world of comforters. Hugs, whispered kindness, handshakes, and memories are shared for hours. The minister arrives and moves through the family sharing his worn and practiced words of kindness. Humor is an unwelcome guest. One family member can’t help but try. He is weary of the accepted rituals. The minister tells him to try and behave in the service at the church tomorrow.
At last the friends of the family disperse and the family once more returns to their separate homes to prepare for the final event.

Day 4: Funeral , chicken, biscuits, and pink stuff

Agenda:
Leave for the church: 9:30
Church at 9:45 to view the body
Service at 11:00
Lunch at high noon – provided by the church (where will we put all the food they are going to send home?)
Drive to cemetery at 2:00
Grave side service at 3:00
Gather at mom’s to eat supper: 5:00

The family had a long day today.

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At the service, the minister awkwardly stumbles over his almost comforting words. Songs are sung by a friend of the deceased.

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The church is really full with friends and family coming from miles around. It is odd to feel so alone in the midst of all those caring people.

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The food provided by the church is delicious and plentiful. Based on what people do to help, it seems food and flowers are considered the cure for grief. One’s favorite food for grief is there. One eats the pink fluffy mystery food he has turned to before in times of sorrow. Seems it is always there to comfort him in times such as this.

The hearse waits outside.

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It is a warm, sunny, fall day when the small group gathers by the grave to hear the minister’s final words.

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The death relatives who magical reappear for funerals appear once more.

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It is just the family now. The words are said. The casket lowered. The deceased has finally been laid to rest in a town an hour’s drive away. The family has had a plot there for many years. They drive away to gather again at the widow’s home for supper.
One and his son stop for a beer on the way to dinner at mom’s.

Tilted Kilt

A song loop plays in One’s head,
“Put the keg on my coffin
And think of me every so often
Have a loser's day parade for all my friends
Drink up life like a river
‘til the pizza man delivers
Smile and know I loved ya ‘til the end.” ~ Chris Trapper

The other family members aren’t there. It violates their religious beliefs.

Back at mom's there is more eating, memories, sorting papers, and laughter One returns to his house spiritually and emotionally drained. There is another thing left to do before sleep. An obligation must be fulfilled. One strikes out again. Two hours later, at his house again, One finally gives himself to the void of his old friend, dreamless sleep. Maybe it will last more than a few hours tonight.

Day 5: What happens now

One spends the gray, rainy morning sitting around in a haze of cigarette smoke. His thoughts rove the landscape of his mind in useless wandering seeking a peaceful place to rest, a reassuring voice, a shoulder to cry on. Time flows by slowly when waiting. The two four-legged house guests lay on the sofa and stare at the parrot in his cage.
One’s sister calls. She wants to know where the deceased’s billfold is. It is right where we put it. She forgot.
More waiting.
Finally, the waiting can end and things begin to happen. Off to mom’s for lunch and sorting through bills. All is fun and going great. Things are getting organized and done. Then there is the big family wrecking fight. So sad. So useless. What a waste of love.

Day 6…: Rebuilding lives without friend, husband, father, grandfather

Sadly, the rebuilding had to wait. Mom died two weeks later.

Gratitude Journal for the week ending Jan. 3

Posted on 5:36 PM by jr cline | 0 comments

12/28/09

Friends
My children
A nice winter day
Concrete blocks
A friendly bank

12/29/09

My son came to visit for a while
Garbage trucks
A sunny day
Red beans and rice
Not having take things to my brother's wife

12/30/09

Warmer temperatures
I accomplished a lot at my parent's former home
Talking to my daughter and two excellent friends on the phone
Fireworks
Delicious butterbeans

12/31/09

The man who shot off the fireworks
The lady who made the soup and cornbread
My friends who share their time with me  :-) 
2009 is coming to an end
Tripods

01/01/10

Great friends
My godson
Turnip greens, blackeyed peas, and cornbread
Love
Cozy houses on cold winter nights

01/03/10

Cars that run
Sausage, eggs, hashbrowns, and biscuits
A heater!
Equanimity
'Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity'

Life's journey is sometimes scary

Posted on 6:50 PM by jr cline | 0 comments


No matter how clear the signage or how bright the light, journeying alone sometimes leads to panic.



I love trees

Posted on 1:53 PM by jr cline | 0 comments

"For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness."
— Hermann Hesse

Just trying to understand

Posted on 8:16 AM by jr cline | 0 comments

I’ve often wondered why so many people my age are boring.

Most the people I met my age seem completely foreign to me and I am sure I seem foreign to them as well.
I read a blog today that shed a lot of light on that for me. The blog said some people keep expanding and improving themselves as they age while the vast majority of people settle for comfort and safety. As they ‘settle’ into their comfort zone they become progressively ‘dumber’ and less flexible.

There is more to life than seeking comfort. There are mountains to climb.

The day after Christmas

Posted on 6:22 AM by jr cline | 0 comments

I've spent some time this morning thinking about compassion, loving kindness, joy, and equanimity.  Mostly I've been thinking about equanimity.  I have no conclusions to share though.  Still thinking.   

12 22 09

Posted on 6:05 AM by jr cline | 0 comments

To understand God you don't have to believe in religions.
Religions are for those who can not communicate with God. ~ Darshan Chande

Gratitude journal for the week ending 12 27 09

Posted on 1:36 PM by jr cline | 0 comments

12 21 09

A good job
Good health
A nice parrot
The heat pump works
Two weeks of vacation

12 27 09

Freedom of action and thought
Money to buy food
A beautiful, warm, winter day
Time for introspection
A phone call from a friend