You Gotta Love Those Little Old People

I can’t wait until I am old enough to say just about anything and get away with it. Case in point was one of the office angels [volunteers in the church office] working the desk at my former place of employment. She got a little miffed when the new minister’s wife took over the prayer chain calls. It had been her service to her church for ages until the new preacher arrived. She was one of those silver haired Southern women who was prim and proper. . . until this happened. While answering the phones for me one day, she made the remark, “Well, I’m not too keen on the new preacher, and his wife is a pasty faced horned toad.” Whew! I wasn’t expecting that. Then there was the office angel who dropped something, and a clearly uttered, Southern-drawled “Oh Shit” rolled off her tongue.  It had that two syllable pronunciation we are so well known for - shee-it - the voice is higher on the first syllable and drops a tone on the second.

These memories came back to me the other day while visiting my mother in the nursing facility. There was a new lady walking in to the dining room for lunch. She chose a chair and started to sit down. A table-mate very loudly said, “That’s Jim’s chair. You can’t sit there. He calls Bingo from that chair. It’s Jim’s chair!” She shuffled off to another table, asked if a seat was assigned to someone and was invited to sit down. The three women sat at the table quietly for a moment, then one long-time resident leaned over to the newcomer and said, “Did you poop?” She responded with a no. “You pooped. You smell like you pooped!” The newcomer vehemently denied the accusation, but got up from her chair and left the room in a hurry. I don’t know if she was embarrassed or if business did, indeed, need to be addressed. No sooner had she cleared the room, her accuser announced, “She went to her room because she pooped!” She had this distinct emphasis she put on the word poop. It actually sounded like she took delight in the announcement.  It was downright comical.

I told my daughter my fears of getting old. You know how some people grow old gracefully and some don’t. I am afraid I will be the one the grandchildren will be arguing over “It’s your turn to take grandma shopping. I did it last time.” or I’ll be the one saying over and over, “What time is it? I want a jelly donut.” [from an old Saturday Night Live sketch] I told my daughter I wanted to go out early before I could be a burden. I said I was going to take up eating red meat three times a day, drinking, smoking, and cussing. She admonished me, “Now mom, you already drink and cuss.” I retorted back, “Well I’m going to do everything else!”

Closing the Door

I spent last weekend with my daughter and son-in-law. Tina and I did the usual - tried some great food at a restaurant they had scoped out previously, sat at the breakfast table and talked, did some shopping, and caught up on a few chick flicks.

Almost always our table conversations are quiet, low, sad and centered on a time in our lives that neither of us has closure over - my second marriage. My first marriage was to Tina's father. We were great friends and musician buddies. We did everything together, and we never fought. I guess we kind of out-grew each other. There is more to the picture than that, but when the end of it came, I was so tired of being the workhorse that I slept like a baby the first night he left. I should have been torn, hurt - anything - but I wasn't.

 I met my second husband in the Beaumont Community Band, a civic group of adults playing concert music for the public, nursing homes, church and community functions. We had a faction of friends who worked hard to put us together as a couple. It worked. I fell madly in love. I thought he was my soul mate. I lived and breathed him. He was good with my daughter, and his son soon became an integral part of my life. We struggled financially, but we were okay. The world thought we were the greatest family, the perfect couple. What the world didn't see was what I struggled to shield from everyone.

 We all have demons that drive us to do things we shouldn't. I guess his demons had more sway and influence over him than I did. I know now that my love wasn't enough for him to fight them away. He spiraled further and further out of control. After seven years of marriage I felt like I was in a storm. He never put the family first. He never made me feel like anything more than barely adequate. When the end came, I confronted him and told him that I could no longer handle the things he was doing that hurt me and endangered the children. I named them all; drugs, pornography, the sneaking off to get stoned on prescription drugs with us searching for him for hours, bailing him out of jail when he got arrested for shoplifting under the influence. You name it, it happened. His response to my anguished tirade was not "I'm sorry I did those things." "I'm sorry I hurt you." "I'm sorry I put the family in danger." It was, "I'm sorry you feel that way." The knife went into my heart all the way to the hilt and twisted. And this was the nicest, funniest guy you would ever meet. The world could not believe it when we separated in the midst of our eleventh year.

I waited by the phone. Willed it to ring. I prayed to hear the words, "Can we talk?" It didn't happen. My daughter became so distressed over me crying myself to sleep she crawled in bed with me and begged me to stop. My college-age daughter slept with me every night for the next several years. I was in utter despair.

As the years passed, I had a couple of relationships that were never serious. I married for convenience and loneliness - thinking I could make it work just because I was tired of being alone and struggling. Well, we all know that doesn't work, and it didn't.

So last weekend came around, and Tina and I do the same talk. It was as raw for us that Friday morning as it was sixteen years ago. We left the house, did some shopping, had a fun lunch and returned to the house to catch up on some movies.

If you have never seen "The Bridges of Madison County" I would like to give you some advice. Some movies are tissue movies. This is a bath-towel movie. It is a heart wrenching story about a young woman who came over from Italy as an army wife. She was bright and witty. All she knew was that she was going to America, the great land of America where everyone had everything and did everything. She was not prepared for landing in the mid-west cornfields with daily grinding chores and no prospects in life other than to raise two children. No prospects that was, until a chance meeting with a photo-journalist that happened while her family was away for four days. He needed directions to the bridges the magazine sent him to photograph. She showed him the way and accompanied him for the shoots. It was love at first sight for her. You knew they were soul mates. He begged her to leave and go with him. She packed her bags, but they both knew she was not going to go. She faced the agonizing decision to stay for her family because it was the good and proper thing to do. As he was leaving town, his truck was stopped at in intersection in front of their vehicle. Through the rain you could see him reach into the glove box for something which he suspended on the rear view mirror. It was the religious medallion she had given to him, engraved with her initial. Her hand gripped the door handle as tightly as it could. As she sobbed, her hand let go of the handle. You could almost hear her heart shatter.

Years rocked along. She stayed at her husband's side as he died of an illness in their older years. The kids married and moved on. When she was finally alone and free she tried to locate the photo-journalist, but it was to no avail. She gave up on her soul mate. Months later, a box was delivered to her from a lawyer who handled the photo-journalist's final affairs. As she pulled out the items, the viewer's heart tightens with each one as they surfaced from the box; his camera, her medallion, a book he published titled Four Days featuring the bridges he photographed and the images he recorded of her, the container with his ashes and his request that they be scattered at a specific bridge. He was gone, but she knew he had loved her all those years. Upon her death her children discovered the treasures in the cedar chest, including her diaries chronicling the four days and the years that followed. She left instructions to be cremated with her ashes scattered at the same bridge her beloved requested for himself. At first her children were against it, upset about the affair that unfolded in the diaries - until they came to a greater understanding of love and relationships as they continued to read. The futility of love lost was the real tragedy of the story.

I realized that, after sixteen years of a broken heart, it was time to close the door on a chapter of my life that is mostly a hollow room reverberating with the echoes of something that could have been wonderful. We all have things in our lives, both terrible and beautiful, that mold us, but we should be able to love each other - both because of them and in spite of them. Alas, I guess it doesn't work for everyone.

The movie had such an impact on me I could not sleep. I found myself sitting at my daughter's kitchen table at three in the morning. On the back of a magazine I penned these words:

What once burned with passion is reduced to ashes imprisoned in a chamber of my heart. I'll pour them out into the winds and let them float upon a distant breeze. Perhaps it will take them far, far away to a bridge in Madison County. And I will know that I have found peace at last.