Although, I mostly remember him as the Conductor on Thomas the Tank Engine. Rip George.
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Archive for the 'death' Category
A: It is sometimes hard to tell if they are dead or alive.
When I was a kid my brother and I had a pet turtle like the one to the left. It lived in a tank on my dresser in a shallow bowl in the bedroom we shared. We took turns feeding it. I don’t remember what it ate. Probably turtle chow.
Anyway, at one point I noticed that it liked to hang out on a particular rock. It always seemed to be there, no matter what time of day. I feared the worst, but when I brought up the turtle’s rock favoritism with my mom she said it was probably hibernating or at least slowing down since it was winter. After a few weeks the turtle bowl began to stink, my mom and brother agreed that the turtle was dead, especially after they noticed it’s eyes were missing. We may have had a funeral for it or maybe we just flushed it down the toilet. All I remember is thinking that a dead thing had been in my room for a month.
Ok, flash forward about 40 years. My daughter has been asking us for a bonsai tree for a few years and we happened to be at the National Arboretum during their annual bonsai festival and sale. We bought her a Fukien Tea Tree that was just about to bloom. The woman that sold it to us said it needed to be constantly moist and in full sun.
Well, we’re not so good with easy plants — after all we killed a perfectly healthy and huge jade tree and a 6 foot tall cactus simply by letting them be outside for a while.
So, remembering that, Clare tried to remember to keep the soil moist. I tried to remember to put the tree in full sun. But we have cats that think that all plants in the house are a tasty new snack, so we also had to remember to put the tree somewhere the cats couldn’t reach.
Then there was the day that we left it in the south facing window for 8 hours. It gets really hot in the south facing window. Especially when someone lowers the shade on the other side of the plant.
So you decide. Is the Fukien Tea Tree on the right, above dead or is there still hope? (the left is a photo taken shortly after we bought it.)
Aren’t you proud I didn’t comment on the name of the tree?
As much as I love my brother and look forward to communicating with him whenever we can, I’ve come to dread phone calls from him because his calls usually relay bad news. He’s become the unofficial voice of my mom, especially when bad things happen.
For years, having a phone call from my brother meant that my dad was, once again, in the hospital because he’d fallen. However the last couple of bad news calls were announcements of a death. In March he called to tell me Larry had died. Today he called to tell me my mother’s youngest brother, “Bud”, was gone.
My first memory of my Uncle Walter “Bud” Green is hazy and possibly simply based on a black and white snapshot. I was maybe 3 years old and my Uncles Bud and Dick were watching me play in a kiddie pool. I must not have had a swimsuit with me because I was wearing a man’s white teeshirt. One of my uncles holds me over the kiddie pool and my feet come together in a sort of prayer: “No, don’t put me in the cold water!”
After that the memories mostly involve my cousin, Pam — Uncle Bud’s daughter, in the forefront, but Uncle Bud is there too. Sometimes my parents would leave my brother and me with my Aunt Shirley and Uncle Bud when they went out. Then there were the Christmas Eves at Uncle Bud and Aunt Shirley’s house.
I remember being in Chetek with Pam and her family — without my own family. I remember Uncle Bud stopping over to my parents house early one morning. I was getting ready to go somewhere — school perhaps and had made myself a cup of tea. I was at least 16, probably 18. Anyway, Uncle Bud was surprised I was drinking tea — thinking it was a grown up drink and I wasn’t yet grown up? I’m not sure.
My grandma told me stories about how Uncle Bud would get into all sorts of situations when he was a kid — from being born breech to getting so stuck in his undershirt when he twisted it all around she had to cut him out of it.
In later years, after I’d moved away from Elgin, I saw my Uncle only a few times. I heard about his health issues and how bravely he was dealing with the diabetes, the loss of his legs and his other surgeries.
The last time I saw him was a year or so after he lost both his legs. He was cheerful and optimistic and still had the boyish quality I remembered from my own youth.
One thing about my Uncle — he said it like it was. You always knew where you stood with him. He didn’t play games. If I was being bratty — he told me so. If I’d done something he was proud of, he told me that too.
If more people were brave enough to be like my Uncle Bud, in sickness and in health, this world would be much the better.
So long Uncle Bud.
I remember my first visit to Northern Illinois University. I was an incoming Junior, transferring from a local community college. I still didn’t drive and was expected to go to orientation. My mom drove me the 45 miles to school for the orientation, I think she brought my grandmother along. I don’t know what they did while I attended orientation, but afterwards we ate lunch at Kings Restaurant in Sycamore. That was the year the decomposed body of the girl was found on farmland in the area and the restaurant had a drawing of what she might have looked like. The restaurant had the drawing by the cash register. I remember not being able to eat much lunch, thinking about that dead girl.
I don’t remember much about the orientation, except we did a lot of walking.
NIU has a nice campus and is, or was, basically in the middle of a cornfield. There was nothing but fields of corn and farms for miles around, and there, rising high in the sky (compared to corn) was the Student Union, I think. I recall there was also a pond and once a year students would gather near the pond for a “smoke out” and openly smoke marijuana.
I remember winters at NIU. Walking from one building to another building were some of the coldest experiences I have ever had. The cold wind would sweep across the flat land and nearly knock me down.
I never felt a real kinship with the place because I was not a resident. I lived at home and got rides with various folks, paying them gas money in exchange for a lift to school. After graduating, I rarely returned to campus. I went back a few times while my boyfriend was working on his Masters degree, once to see a play, I think — The Elephant Man. A few years ago we drove around campus to show our kids where we went to college. I remember we took a photo of the grotesque in front of Altgeld hall. Clare liked that.
After moving away from the Midwest very few people I’d talk to knew of the school.
Today that’s changed. Today a gunman killed 6 students, including himself and wounded 15 others in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University. Today, and for a while, people will have heard of the school that sat in the middle of a cornfield.
Heading off to Elgin tomorrow afternoon. Parents again - but this time it is my husband’s family.
My mother-in-law passed away last night. My husband was there - he got to say his goodbyes - although he feels like it was more important that he was there in September when his mom was more lucid. She’d been “out of it” for a while. I’m glad he got to spend time with her then and that he was there last night. I’m also glad that my children saw her last when she was standing and able to give us all hugs goodbye. I really didn’t expect that hug to be the last one - I thought she’d be around for a while yet.
On this side of 50, I think about death a lot more than I did before. Not in a frightened way, just in a matter of fact kind of way, although I’d rather not think about it at all. It is amazing - and probably good - that young people don’t realize how short life really is - it is a rather depressing thought.
The kids and I spent the day getting ready for our trip. Andrew, who will be a pallbearer, wanted a black (as opposed to navy) suit for the funeral. He also needed shoes - he’d grown a couple of sizes from the last dress shoes we bought (two years ago).
We’re staying in a motel this trip. I felt it would be easier on everyone. My family would have the space and privacy to get ready for the ceremonies. We’d also be able to be together - something that was not easily done during the summer. It will be a little odd, staying in a motel in my hometown, but it is for the best.
I’ve been to a fair number of funerals and memorial services - sometimes person officiating knew the departed well, as in the case of the mother of a boy on Andrew’s wrestling team. She was a youth leader and taught religious school at the synagogue. More often, however, the person officiating only knew the departed in passing if at all.
I know for a fact that the minister who officiated at my grandfather’s funeral didn’t know my grandfather. He might have met him, but I doubt it. But even though he didn’t know my grandfather he did a good job of talking about his life - and even compared his mortal body to an envelope for the soul. Since my grandfather worked in the post office it was a fitting analogy.
Sometimes, however, the minister is way off as in the most recent memorial service I attended.
The service took place at a multi-denominational house of worship - it looked more like a small rec center than a church. I think the setting was chosen because it was very accessible - the departed was wheelchair bound as were several of her friends. Given the setting, I didn’t expect a very religious sermon.
I was mistaken - it was heavily religious - full of talk of heaven and Jesus. That’s not a bad thing at a memorial service. The minister, I suppose, was trying to comfort the folks who’d lost a loved one. He did mention her wheelchair, saying he was pretty sure there were no wheelchairs in Heaven, along with no pain nor suffering. He also, however, seemed to want to pull more folks into the fold of Christianity by offering positive visions of Heaven - still not a bad thing. He got on a roll, however, talking about how desirable heaven (and therefore Christianity) was. It was about this time he should have turned the service over to the family who was waiting to tell their stories of their loved one. But no, he went on to tell more stories to tell about the goodness of God, Heaven and Christ.
What amazed me however, was not his religious zeal - after all, he is a man of God; it’s to be expected. No, what made me shake my head in surprise and shock was the lobster story.
He’d been talking about how people who are not Christians don’t know what they’re missing. Then he said that when he was a child he would not touch lobster. He said that his father and other people kept telling him he didn’t know what he was missing. Finally, when he was a teenager he tasted lobster and loved it. He really didn’t know what he was missing.
Then he said something about how death is something we dread, fear and don’t want to think about, but like him and lobster, we just don’t know what we are missing.
I think I know what he was getting at - a “try it you’ll like it” approach to Christianity. But it came out wrong - on two levels:
- Death is nothing to aspire to - it is a fact of life and an inevitability.
- The departed was a vegan.
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