death

Mr. Bradley and the Old Floozies

mr_bradleyRepost:

Mr. Bradley died!! Mr. Bradley died!!

This was unbelievable! I had seen people get shot on “Gunsmoke,” but I’d never known anyone who had actually died. I knew I was supposed to cry when someone died but I couldn’t manage it. First of all, Mr. Bradley was an old grouch. He wore khaki pants and shirt and an old gray felt hat with oil stains around the hat band. He was really selfish. He had built us a chicken house. When I went out later to Continue reading →

You Never Know

Battered shoes

Many years ago, I was on an hospital elevator with a minister I knew.  A somber man got on with us.  He looked straight ahead, deep in thought. Attempting to make conversation, the minister said, “Smile, it can’t be that bad.”

The man’s expression never changed.  In a low voice he remarked, “My son just died.”

The minister and I were both shocked.  As he stammered an apology, all three of us burst in to tears.  We hugged the man, offered shocked condolences, and offered to make phone calls for him.  The minister got off and went with him.

I’ve never forgotten, and suspect neither of them has either.  You just never know what a person is dealing with.

Boo Hoo to You, Too

Bah!

I wrote this in response to Trish’s post yesterday on Ten Years a Single on Mom about crying about a broken washing machine.  I’ve done worse.

Here’s the whole sorry story.  Daddy had died after sudden illness days before.  I was a mess, but making a great effort to keep my emotions in check, knowing my mother was in Continue reading →

The Sad Saga of the Beakless, Tailless, Gizzard-bobbing, One-leg Hopping chicken

Repost of an earlier post.

Being a farm kid is not for sissies and cowards. The dark side of the chicken experience is slaughtering, plucking, cleaning, and preparing chickens for the pot.  I watched as Mother transformed into a slobbering beast as she towered over the caged chickens, snagging her victim by the leg with a twisted coat-hanger, ringing its neck and releasing it for its last run.  We crowded by, horribly thrilled by what we knew was coming.  It was scarier than ”The Night of the Living Dead”,  as the chicken flapping its wings, Continue reading →

Death of a Mean Girl (from Kathleen’s Memoirs of the 1930s)

Vernell Mullins and Jessie Hollins cornered me as I headed out of the schoolhouse after school one terrible day, cutting me off from the troop exiting the building.  Backing me against me against the wall, they bent over and got right in my face. “We’re gonna pull your pants down and look at your tile.” (They pronounced it tile, but I know now they had to have meant tail) I was terrorized.  They must have been at least sixteen.  To have been singled out by them for such a horrific and shameful threat changed my life.  It had never occurred to me before that I had any such thing to fear from them or anyone else. We were so modest at our house that we didn’t even refer to our private parts or answer from the outhouse.  Thankfully, they had accosted me in a public place.  I could hear their vicious laughter as I fled.  My shame overwhelmed me.  I obsessed over it but would have never told Mama, feeling I had somehow deserved it.  I was quiet the rest of the day at home, dreading another such attack tomorrow.

The next day and every day thereafter, I gave them a wide berth, taking care never to get caught alone anywhere.  I felt like prey, about to be run down any time.  Coming in from school one afternoon, I got a biscuit and glass of milk as always, along with Mama’s usual admonition to change out of my school clothes and hang up my dress before I went out to play.  Mama was having coffee with Miz Reagan when I came back through.  “Oh did you hear the terrible news?” asked Miz Reagan.  “Vernell Mullins died today.  Her kidneys just shut down and she died!  They thought she just had the flu……a young person like her.  Isn’t that just the saddest thing?”

I was ecstatic!  After the fear I’d been living with the past couple of weeks, news of Vernell’s death was a blessed relief.  Then and there, I started praying for Jessie’s death, watching her hopefully for signs of developing illness over the next few days.  Even eighty years later, knowing Vernell’s death was not a judgment from God, in one little six-year-old corner of my heart, I can still remember the macabre joy with which I received the news.

Laughter and Life

parents wedding pic             Bill and Kathleen Holdaway Swain on their wedding day, June 29, 1946

Why I Would Rather Try To Find The Funny Than The Meaning Of Life

http://yadadarcyyada.com/2015/01/10/having-the-last-laugh/

http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/

I have continued to think of Pegoleg’s post  and Yadadarcyyaday posts yesterday. Laughter has saved me in some of the most stressful situations of my life.  It is cathartic.  On the way to my father’s funeral, my mother was sitting between me and my husband.  Of course, it was a somber time.  I was anxious to be of support to her, mindful of her grief and all the problems loss of a Continue reading →

Farewell to Domino

DominoPark Patrol.  That was Domino’s job. A beautiful black and white Akita, Domino patrolled the streets of his Highland neighborhood and Columbia Park for nearly eight years.  He made his appointed rounds four times a day, rain or shine, accompanied by his assistants, John and Carissa.  Everyone in the neighborhood knew Domino by name, though his Continue reading →

Stolen Fruitcake: Weird but True!

My grandma died December 16, 1964.  I was devastated.  She was always accepting of me and seemed not to notice my faults.  She had mailed her Christmas gifts to us the morning of the evening of her death.  The box arrived two or three days after her funeral.  It was a macabre feeling, being anxious to find out what she’d sent, knowing she was in Continue reading →

Jolly Funeral Policy

Agents selling funeral policies were a fixture in the rural South.  Our budget was too tight for such luxuries as funeral policies, so Mother tried hard to make sure we didn’t die.  Myrtle Harper sold policies for Jolly Funeral Home and Watkins products for the home.  She was a nosy do-gooder who carried sunshine from house to house, dispensing information about people’s financial situations (Betty Jones was three months behind on her six policies but thought she might be able to get the money from her Mama, now that her daddy had drunk himself to death and Mama wasn’t stretched quite so tight), their health(It’s a good thing, Bonnie Mercer bought that nice policy on her new baby.  She might need it if the baby didn’t start looking better.) and social issues.(Bertha Willis had another black eye and “No wonder Phil Parker ran around with everything in a skirt.  Lucy kept a filthy house and her cooking wasn’t fit for the hogs.”)

Even though Mother had repeatedly refused to purchase funeral policies,  Mother  occasionally bought Watkins Vanilla or Anti Pain Oil for her headaches, so Myrtle kept optimistically coming by every time she was in the neighborhood.  She inspected each new baby hopefully to see if it might look puny enough to tempt Mother into buying a new policy.  When Connie and Marilyn were toddlers, they sat playing in the shade of a huge oak tree as Mother and Myrtle drank tea and Myrtle planned her latest insurance campaign.  “Just look at those two little girls playing there.  If you bought a policy for them right now, I could get them both a four hundred policy for just a dollar a month.  If you wait till they’re thirteen, it would cost you at least a thousand dollars to bury them.”

Mother studied her babies thoughtfully.  “Well, I guess we’d better bury them now.  I wouldn’t want to miss out on a good deal.” Myrtle never even knew she was being strung along.