Too many deaths lately; too close

 

 

                Not two hours after I mailed a “Thinking of You” card telling him how much I appreciated him, I found out that Frank “Corky” Chenault had died. “Mr. Chenault,” younger than I, was my principal at Eastside Junior High during the 1980s. His and Linda Jo’s grandson and my granddaughter are in the same grade and we saw each other at school events, the most recent being the 6^th grade’s choir concert in mid-December.

                Just a week earlier, Jean Adams, musician extraordinaire, died at age 90. Jean and I had lots of experiences together—MacDowell Music Club and the Saline County Choral Society for two. I accompanied her flutist daughter Judy on the piano for many of Judy’s local performances.

                On January 9, a beloved United Methodist minister and journalist, Dr. John S. Workman of Conway, died. He was religion editor at the Arkansas Gazette. I inherited his books, Fireflies in a Fruit Jar, and Open Windows. The latter was a gift to my mother from her Sunday School class in 1988. Each member had signed it. All but the teacher have now died.

                But there’s more. I read the daily paper top half first with the bottom folded under. The second column of the day’s obituaries began this way: “Corning; from Hendrix College in Conway; and from Duke University Divinity School in 1962. He pastored churches in the former North Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church and in Missouri… Lynn crafted mountain dulcimers….”

                I keened and wailed longer than ever I’d done. He was another of my early “boyfriends.” Lynn McSpadden of Mountain View had died at age 76.

                When I was a senior at Hendrix and he was a junior, I was in love with him. If he’d asked me, I would’ve married him in a heartbeat. But he was smarter than that and it didn’t happen.

                Later, when friend Pat Guthrie and I made a trip to the Folk Center in Mountain View, we saw Lynn in his dulcimer shop. Since I taught folk music to middle grade students, I purchased one of his lap or mountain dulcimers—whether at that time or later, I forget—which I still have.

                The saddest part about this was a paragraph in the obit that his wife, Mary Catherine, or one of his children added. “If you do not smoke, or use tobacco in any form, don’t start. If you are already a smoker, QUIT NOW! Emphysema is a miserable disease.”

                During the early 1990s, when my friends and I visited the local VFW regularly, I met a woman named Margaret, whose body was invaded by cancer. She eventually died. I wrote a Butterfly pattern poem for her. I am updating it and reprinting it here in memory of the four saints I mourn today.

 

FOR CORKY, JEAN, JOHN and LYNN

Four lambs have passed through death’s bright door;

They will not feed again before

They visit God,

Whose shepherd’s rod

Has pulled them gently from this side

Of pain into God’s healing tide.

 

                Feelings of sympathy too strong for words go out to the Chenault, Adams, Workman and McSpadden families. May the strength of faith and the love of friends bless and keep them all. Amen.

A fantasy on the first anniversary of Mom’s death

by Pat Laster

 “Come in here, Mom,” I said, as she swept into the house where she’d lived for 64 years. She glided to a stop. Looking around the living room, her lips thinned, eyes clouded, brow furrowed. Upturned palms panned this area of the family home––now mine. I half expected her to say, as she had during the last days, ‘What are you doing here?’

I pushed a swivel chair under her so she could view the entire room. “We sold your sofa. None of your heirs needed it. This one’s mine, remember?”

Mom cast one arm toward her piano that was still where she left it. Mine stood beside it. “Carolyn doesn’t have room for it in her house.”

Slowly, she surveyed the rest of the room, shaking her head.

“No one needed the cabinet stereo, so I gave it to my friend Dot. Your hospice nurse wanted the macramé plant hanger from that corner. Doesn’t your pink recliner look good there?”

Mom lifted her hand toward the sunroom that I had turned into an office. She held my arm, rose from the chair and moved toward the bright area. At the double doorframe, I turned a rocking chair around and eased her down. She shivered; I shawled her shoulders with one of her throws.

She studied the room. Nothing stood where it previously had. The only familiar piece was Granddad Noah’s handmade library table.

She spotted her African violets. For years, the stunted blue-flowered plants merely existed in plastic yellow pots set on spiraling ledges of a wrought-iron stand. I’d repotted them into ceramic containers and sunk two more into blue pottery jardinières.

With regular care and plant food, the violets had thrived; the blooms were profuse. Mom motioned to one and held out her hands. I took it down and let her hold it on her lap. For the first time, she smiled.

We continued the slow journey through the house. In the dining room, she finally relaxed. Her massive china cabinet still stood in its place. She didn’t seem to notice that the oak buffet was on another wall, and that my china hutch was in that space. As if she had just come in with the newspaper, she sat down at the table—as cluttered now as it was then, albeit with different items—reached for the unfinished crossword and the ubiquitous pen, and went to work—an eerie scene of dejavu.

After lunch, where we watched the birds in the birdbath and beautyberry bush, and before viewing other changes, Mom agreed to a nap.

The bathroom wall heater still warmed. A flea-market picture frame held a picture of her and her mother. She seemed pleased.

After she lay down, I placed a pillow under her knees, then added blankets until she motioned to stop.

Later, we walked into the bedroom where Dad endured his final illness. It now served as my sitting room. The hide-a-bed sofa was the only thing she recognized. Her face twisted; she shuddered and turned away.

She led me to the room beyond the kitchen which was her sitting room. When she noticed her houseplants, her eyes sparkled for an instant, but faded like a firework.

Suddenly, Mom tugged at my arm, and then skimmed unaided across the hardwood to the front door. She scrabbled at the hardware like a pet wanting out.

I opened it, and before I could kiss her, she was gone.     #                                    © 2012, Pat Laster