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.

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unbind him, and let him go

april finally got here. though on sunday, march seemed to tug hard at winter, come monday the sun came out and by tuesday, there was no foolin', none at all, because the birds woke up with cackling spirits, singing so loud about this new warmth that on our morning walk, we almost asked them to tone it down. 

but we didn't. 

everyone around me —neighbors, family, co-workers, birds, dogs, even strangers on the street looked up at the blue sky and said, well, thank heaven it's april. finally. 

now we take our meals outside and drive home with the windows down, drinking in the warm air deep and quick because soon the pollen will kick in and we'll have to shut the windows again.

april. a good month for me historically. the month of birthdays: my mother's— a birthday shared by a dear, lifelong friend and a godchild — a day that always meant Mama'd get a new azalea for the yard from her children and a bouquet of yellow roses from my father. april meant meeting Lydia on the back road to ride our bikes to school in the bright morning. it meant spring cleaning, when i'd come home from school to find my hair brush and comb soaking in ammonia in the bathroom sink and all my winter clothes put away, my spring dresses hanging crisp and pressed in my closet.

April in college: i was tapped on my mother's birthday to edit the school literary magazine. (it was the best birthday present i gave her, ever.) my first child began life one april day. it's the month of my grandfather's birthday.

last year April took on a different meaning for me. a sadness that it's taken me just about a year to shake. but i can feel myself unbinding, if only a little bit.

my siblings and i have traded emails today. routine things when you're dealing with estates and mothers and whatnot. when i looked at the calendar, i could not help thinking of this same day last year, when our lives took a tumble (my mother a literal one, breaking her femur in Daddy's hospital room.) i wrote about it here and here.

i'm blessed to have the mother i do. in this year we have all marveled, because she is all about April. Just watching her deal — with my father's illness and death, her broken leg and weeks in a wheel chair. in the weeks after Daddy died, when i visited her, each day brought progress. she got up out of the wheelchair. walked with a walker, then a cane. caring for herself. climbing stairs. set up a new home, drove herself, engaged life again. 

so we are celebrating with a party, not a birthday party (though it will be on her birthday), but a spring celebration. we've invited her friends from home to visit, to share a little lunch and see her new house. now when we talk on the phone, planning, her voice is bright, expectant, unbound.

i started a new Bible study this week. I am not one for sitting down quietly and talking out loud about God, but there you have it. there is a long-standing joke that Episcopalians don't actually read the Bible. but i have found when two or there of us gather we actually do know the Bible pretty well. our Book of Common Prayer is filled with it, as is our Hymnal. 

my friends and i met in the early morning before work and spent a few minutes with Lazarus, which is the gospel for Sunday, and well, we found that apparently, there is a lot in our lives to resurrect. 

by the end of the hour, we were all weepy — just like Jesus in the story — considering the hope offered in this ancient tale. we each had different reactions to it, but the Lazarus story reminded me of that holy day last April when we gathered around my father to say goodbye. only i don't think i did, fully. 

but it's time. 

yes, april finally got here, and it seems to me now, the whole month is all about unbinding —  everything from peonies to people, opening up, letting the light in after a winter that seemed to offer little. 

in the past few days i have been thinking of little except my father. the tone of his voice, his grin, all the times i have wanted to call him up and ask him something medical. my family will gather on Easter Day to remember him on the anniversary of his death. we'll picnic at a place he loved to visit and maybe even have a few candied orange slices for dessert. 

it will be a good day, a bright day, and what better day than Easter, to end our year of grieving, to unbind him — and ourselves — and finally let him go?



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.

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we'll always have paris (hold on, it's a long one)

my high school french teacher was an eager young woman who ran around the room pointing at things, shouting 'kes kur say?' 

we played along, shouting back at her in our best eastern north carolina accents that i'm sure a frenchman would have found appalling. 

when she moved on and the new teacher came — a family friend i'd known all my life — he spoke 'real french,' the guttural kind, introduced us to Paris Match and actually expected us to read it, and taught us how to sing carols in french. my last year, i opted out, having enough credits to get me to college, not wanting to disappoint him with my poor pronunciation. (i think i disappointed him more for not taking his class, and that year i would not land a role in the senior play, which he directed. i was not even picked to be a stage hand.)  

in college, i took french again, could do a pretty decent translation, though in my third year, when i showed up to class and couldn't understand a word of what was spoken, i opted for calculus. (the outcome is an entirely different story that involved begging during the final exam...) back in those days, france was this place so far away from my life that i never imagined going there. who would want to visit a place where you couldn't speak the language?

wouldn't you know though, that 25 years ago, my husband found himself working for a French company. and he would visit a dozen times —even spent our 15th wedding anniversary in Paris without me— but never once asked me to tag along. he spoke a little spanish but no french, and you would think he would have liked a helpmate who still knew how to conjugate a couple of verbs. but no. weary, he'd drag himself in from the flight back saying: you'd hate Paris. the people smell. it's just 'so French.' 

but by then i had stretched myself beyond the boundaries of my high school life enough to know i would like to at least make that determination myself. 

i eventually did visit Paris, traveling with him on a couple of trips, staying in a small hotel just off the charles de gaulle etoile with a dynamic view of the arch d'triomphe. i found out that i did love paris, smelly citizens et al, and those two trips are among my favorite memories. i promised myself that i'd return to the city of lights one day, trying to figure just how to afford it.

one day came a few weeks ago, when i left my husband to tend to the dog and boarded plane for a a week in my favorite city, this time with the girls.

we rented an apartment in the 9th arrondissement — Anne Boone, my best friend since 8th grade and two of her friends, who became mine in short order. and for a week, we lived like i imagine a lot of parisians do — beds low to the floor, small furniture, baguettes, cheese and jam for breakfast, and walking. lots of walking.

we timed our trip around a special event — the premier of an Agnes De Mille ballet produced by the Paris Opera Ballet, the oldest ballet company in the world. Anne Boone's friend Andy is the executive director of De Mille Productions, and the POB would be staging de Mille's Fall River Legend, a ballet about Lizzy Borden, of all people. we were set to attend on opening night at the Palais Garnier, the home of the POB. (Agnes' brilliance of course gave us Oklahoma!, Paint Your Wagon, Carousel and many others in iconic American theatre.)

a week before the trip, i picked up a novel i'd read about: three sisters who danced with the POB in the late 19th century. i knew nothing about the book, but thought it would serve as a worthy companion on the flight. once settled, i pulled it out of my carry-on, and at the same time Anne Boone revealed her book — The Painted Girls — the exact one i had chosen. as great friends, this happens to us from time to time.

the book would prove the perfect backdrop for our experience, as it is the fictionalized story of three real sisters who danced in the late 19th century with the POB. they lived in the very area where we stayed, and so as we walked the streets of paris, i began to recognize places mentioned and could picture them there.

my favorite museum in the world (so far) is the musee d'orsay. home of the great impressionists, you will find degas, monet, manet, renoir, cezanne and more. degas is famous for among many things, his depiction of the reality of parisian ballerinas at work. he used to hang out at the Opera Garnier and sketch the girls dancing there, trying to capture their pain and fatigue. the model for the La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze An is Marie, one of the sisters in the novel.

oh, how i love a good book, and this is great one, one that took me inside the POB, behind the scenes in a way i could not have imagined had i not read it. when Andy took us to the dress rehearsal for the de Mille ballet, we entered from the back door of the opera house and i could see where Marie might have entered herself. i saw the fatigue on the ballerina's faces — just as Degas did — though their beauty on stage hides it well. 

chagall ceiling

on opening night, i wrapped myself in a fringed silk shawl that had been my great-grandmother's and sat below a painting of Chagall. as the ballet played itself out before me, i imagined the thousands of people who had sat in my seat (or at least the area of my seat) in its 150-year history. the stories that had been told there. the magic that people had experienced there. (i didn't even mention that this is the setting of the Phantom of the Opera, and the box he is said to inhabit is high above the stage, to the left.)

the day before the ballet, we spent an afternoon with a guide at the Musee d'orsay, and for the second time in my life i looked at the face of la petite danseuse. on this visit, she was real to me, and i found myself wanting to sit with her for awhile, and take her in, but the crowds would not allow it.

+++

in our week in paris, we found ourselves trying to speak more french. to be understood, and the challenge was refreshing. we found ourselves reading signs in the metro, saying je voudrais as we asked for our meals, saying much more than merci when someone gave us what we asked.

 i think back almost 40 years ago to that first 'kes kur say?' (qu'est-ce que c'est?)  what is it? what was it about this place i never imagined visiting but now can't imagine not? hope to go again before too long, just to experience it again. qu'est-ce que c'est?

the best answer is this:  allez la-bas et vous comprendrez

ps: i took a few pics (400 or so) and here are a few.

stumbling in on a ballet practice

city of lights

artists Place du Tertre

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.

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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.

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