Final Vinyl Days (16 page)

I was there. I heard that. Whatever happened to children stretched out in the sunshine with their bookbags tossed off to the side. I loved that kind of day—the sun so hot it made a red, wriggly movie right there on your own eyelids; it made those file drawers fly open, the crevices in my brain responding to that slow Southern sun and melting with memory. Sometimes it felt so good, it made me
have to pee, and sometimes if I was completely overwhelmed, I'd slip into the edge of the woods and pull down my underwear and lean there against a pine tree, my saddle shoes pretending to be the banks of the river—
Yellow River
by I. P. Freely,
Miniskirts
by Seymore Hiney. When you let your brain run, there are wonderful things to find. That's what I tell my children. Our old labrador, Trixie, a creature I brought into our marriage—one of the few creatures who cannot under any circumstances be taught to be aggressive—piddle-peed her whole puppyhood. She couldn't help it; it felt so good when she was happy. Even now when I take her out, right at six thirty, and she splays those lovely legs to pee, there is a look of complete relief and pleasure in her eyes. She knows what to be thankful for, and it is simple.

Children and dogs—we could all take a lesson. And that's what I was thinking, on those days right before my business started. Look, listen. See what the world can teach you. I filled myself up on the writing of Mr. Carl (“Young”) Jung, which my whole life I had heard in my head as
Joung
. I even once made up a skipping-rope rhyme for my daughter where I said, “Carl
Joung
eats junket on the jungle gym.” I figure he would forgive me this error. I got all into thinking of patterns and synchronicity and how at some great supreme level it all will
come together. Just follow the life and learn all that you can.

I kept thinking of my good friend Marjorie, an older woman who lived across the street. The children called her “the cake lady,” because she appeared at every school or church function bearing a gift of a cake in some shape or another. I knew she was failing when she appeared at the synagogue with a cake in the shape of a cross, purple icing draping the sides and a spray of frosted lilies in the center. I was there that day, as I have made it my business to visit a lot of different places. I asked, “But what difference does it make?” when I saw Marjorie there by the door with a look of complete bewilderment on her face. Apparently it
did
make a difference to some, not all, but enough that I drove Marjorie over to the Episcopal church, where it seemed she had earlier delivered a lovely Star of David, with strict instructions that the little silver balls were just for decor and not edible. That cake was still wrapped up and off in the tiny pine-scented kitchen. They loved the cross; they ate it up, and we ate the Star of David ourselves back at our house with Marjorie and her husband.

There are times when I have a wave of knowing, of seeing what is happening, and this was one of those times. Marjorie was sweaty with embarrassment but laughing about her mishap and James's joke about “you are what
you eat.” He asked what she would do for the Buddhists. The Muslims. She said then that she needed to bake herself a cake, but did not know how to shape senility. How do you shape forgetting? “You're the brain man,” she said, and I knew from the way James was looking at her and the subtle questions he asked, parceling them carefully, no more than one question per course, that there would be some very bad news. As we sat with coffee and the Star of David cake, I heard him suggest that she have a few tests
just to rule out anything
. Her husband went pale with knowledge, and Trixie sat by her side as if frozen. Even the Yorkies knew not to yap, though they certainly knew that in minutes all three would get to lick up the last of the star.

Babies and dogs see things we don't. They respond to spirits and waves of emotion that we don't sense. James, of course, says it's just that their thoughts are not complex and therefore they appear to be fixated and entertained by things that aren't there. This is where our paths diverge, where he tends to the mechanics, greases those file cabinet drawers, removes the little tiny piece that got itself wedged in and prevented the drawers from opening. That's what he did to Marjorie, and then I stepped in to watch and help her pull all that she could from her files. I wanted to help her make sense of her life and if possible sense of the world. And Marjorie did make sense. The last
conscious day of her life, I went over with some lunch, and she was there, sitting up in bed in a fine, yellow silk bedjacket that she'd bought for herself at Dillard's in Raleigh before going over to Durham for her first chemo. She told me she was writing out her service and would like very much for me to listen to it all and critique what she had done. She wanted the Beatitudes—blessed are those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. … And she wanted Psalm 30 about the joy that cometh in the morning. She wanted “We Gather Together” sung, because she loved Thanksgiving and all that it represented, even though she was grossly disappointed the one time she made it all the way up north to see Plymouth Rock, only to find it cracked and covered in graffiti. She believed in keeping the past pure, and she loved the last line:
He forgets not his own
. She said she'd come to believe that remembering was the greatest joy in life and without that power fully intact, it was easier to leave. “My plug has been pulled,” she said and laughed. And then she told me how she had known it was bad even before she was told. She had felt it deep inside.

“I just got up one morning, went to the market and started cooking turkeys and hams—I baked pecan pies and pineapple upside-down cakes. Holidays.” She sighed and leaned back on her pillow, turned away from me to
her wedding picture on the wall, two young figures in black and white. Talking food was what we often did but I realized this was not about the food at all. “I've got his holidays done for the next several years. I labeled them, made enough for him to have our children and their children join him.” She turned back to me then, her lip quivering as her hands fluttered in the air as if she were chasing little dust motes. “In every little container of giblet gravy, there is frozen a vial. I got these vials every time I ever bought saffron—like gold that spice, and I love it, tiny threads the color of the sun and the smell! Heaven. I saved the little bottles, and now there are messages there. I tell a joke. I give them my love. I tell them to hug and kiss one another and pretend that it is me.” When I left she was sleeping there beside her weeping husband, his hands clutching hers to keep her from flying away.

The truth is that I have never admired anything quite so much in my entire life. At the time, my catering had taken a little slump. Instead of getting the good gigs like so-and-so's coming out as a debutante at the country club or so-and-so's getting married, I was basically doing meals-on-wheels for the elderly and shut-ins. Suits me. I have a husband and children waiting for me at the end of the day, and it's convenient to deal with people who go to
bed when the sun goes down. Anyway, not long after Marjorie died and I went to perhaps the loveliest funeral I'd ever attended, I was struck by how funerals need more participation, and more care taken to represent the deceased.

I knew from delivering special meals to the nursing home that they're all in there talking about what they do and do not want. This one wants to be facing east so she'll see the rising sun on Judgment Day, and this other one wants to be cremated and kept in a jar at her daughter's house (whether her daughter wants that or not). This one wants “Softly and Tenderly,” and that one wants “Lead on, O King Eternal.” This one wants socks on her feet (poor circulation/cold extremeties), and that one wants to wear as little as possible. She's a huge woman with damp, drooping skin who says she has sweated to death here on earth and would relish the thought of being naked under some cool dirt. Pin them down and you'll find they have ideas. Pin them down good and hard, and you'll likely discover that at some point in their lives they have let their minds wander into these very specific scenes, involving death, funeral, those left behind to grieve.

Marjorie and I had sat there in her bedroom on a normal Thursday afternoon while the rest of the world was working or shopping or carpooling, and read all of her
Scriptures, sung all of her songs. At the end, she said with great joy, “I feel like I was there.” She said it reminded her of being a child in her grandmother's country church, where the air smelled like the rusty pump water and the stables down the road. “It was so quiet out there,” she whispered, “you could hear silence for minutes at a time, the kind of silence that makes your ears buzz and ring in the distance. It might be your own blood you're hearing. It might even be a swarm of cancer cells building a hive, but what I've always believed is what my grandmother said: a ringing in the ears is the singing of spirits.” She said her half-deaf uncle said if that was so, he was the most blessed creature on earth, his dang ears had been ringing since he got too close to where some men were busting up a dam with dynamite.

“I can't believe I remembered that just now,” Marjorie said, and that's when it hit me. A funeral business. People can come and have it all planned out, maybe make a video and have it put aside for later, like the will. Those who have been given a pink slip due either to diagnosis or old age, can just go right ahead and have the service,
be there
. I tried the idea out on James who, patient though he has always been, looked at me like I might have lost my mind. But there are lots of folks who are that way, those who find death too depressing.

They like the idea that it might all go away. There are those who are scared to death of death and can't bear to talk about it. Well, obviously I am not one. The day after Marjorie's funeral, I dreamed I was dying. I had less than six months to live. In my dream I was mainly sad over the fact that I would not be there to oversee my daughter's and sons' graduations from high school and college, their weddings, the grandbabies. I was worried that their father might not indulge them in the fashion of the day, which is so important when you're young, that he might not surround them with animals who might sense and alert them to things in the air. The thought of missing all of that was bad, but aside from that sadness, there was a feeling of great satisfaction. In my dream I was looking at James and the kids who were all gathered around our striped dining table to observe the electricity James could get out of a wired potato (it was a memory picture—they were much younger in the dream than in reality), and what I was feeling was peace. I thought: I have accomplished more than I ever thought I would. I have lived a good life. When I woke up I wiggled up close to James, and even though I was still crying, I had never felt more alive in my whole life. It was like the way people come out of a revival after being saved, only I knew that this was the real thing, and it has not worn off, either.

People weren't so hepped up on the funeral business to begin with, but all it took was for them to attend one or two, and then as happens in every life event, they were wanting to outdo what had already been done. Lord, people do get carried away. Now, if I let them go hog wild without monitoring, then I could not live with myself. For example, I do not let them select and order their own invitations. I take care of that myself—it's clear and functionial, black print on nice white vellum: “It's a Funeral! RSVP,” and then I put who it is for and the time and place. Maybe pictures of hearts or balloons. It's what I think of as the pine-box method. Everybody gets the same treatment. From there, they can add whatever they please, but what I
do
require of all of the honored guests is a speech. This is where the memories come in, the real stuff. This is where they get to say all that they want to to the world they are leaving. I encourage them to think about what they want to leave. Are there enemies you need to clear the air with? James and I have always lived by that rule of not going to bed angry. Like you might still be a little hurt or carrying a grudge but you have to look the other one in the eyes and show that there is love there, there is forgiveness.

I think the reason James is so big on this rule is because sleep death runs in his family. This is not a real disease, of course, but something I named myself. The people
in James's family will just go to bed and never get up. It happened to both of his grandfathers, two uncles, and a cousin. Sleep death, like a grown up version of SIDS—it's on both sides. The poor man (though his intellectual scientific side rarely lets him admit it) goes to bed every night expecting not to wake up. I rib him about it. Of course, I have no right to make fun of him. I still get down on my knees every night and look under the bed for bogeymen—
real
bogeymen—I am much more afraid of the living than of the dead. James wonders what I'll do if I ever come face to face with one. I have had to do this ever since I learned that Charles Manson was all curled up into a kitchen cabinet when they found him. Imagine that—go after your box of Total or Froot Loops and find a filthy-headed, crazed murderer. I have always been prepared to see death. I think of it as my way of life.

In our town some have begun to call me the Mistress of Death, which makes me sound like some kind of horror show. My boys are now fourteen, and this is causing them (especially Jimmy) more grief than the bouts of acne he inherited from his father. Don't even ask what their sister thinks! Still, I cling to the knowledge that one day he will grow up and see me for what I am. An aid to the other side. A hand to hold. Now I don't want anybody thinking I am the female Kevorkian. I do not assist. There was an
occasion when my radar told me loud and clear that suicide was on the woman's brain, and I did look the other way. I looked the other way, the same way I do when one of my clients has to interrupt our planning to use a bed pan or cover her face with an oxygen mask or stumble to the bathroom to be sick.