Chemo Camp Finale — Letters from Home
Nov. 17, 2020
I have been thinking about y’all a lot lately. Who, you say? Y’all. All y’all, as we love saying in my Neck of the woods. Do you see that stack of cards there? (more than 250 of them) The flowers? The little gifts? These things have filled my soul these past 18 months as I found myself captured in Chemo Camp.
So I have been thinking about all y’all who got me through it. Re-reading your notes and seeing your faces as I did, thinking of the emails, too, and your visits (way back when those where allowed), the food (Lord, have mercy, the FOOD!) the walks and the phone calls and the quiet moments when we sat in silence and you let me cry as I tried to take it all in. Your laughter. Your donations to Susan G. Komen and the Walk for the Cure. Your telling me I looked beautiful without my hair (though we all know I didn’t) — and now when you tell me you like my new “look”. Every single one of these things that you did for me has made my life so rich while I waited for camp to be over.
November 12, 2019
I didn’t save any letter my parents had time to write when I went to camp when I was 9. I wish I had (maybe my mother has saved the no doubt thousands of letters I wrote to her in the three short days I stayed, though if she has, she has not revealed this.) I’m sure if I had save those letters from home they would have been much like yours: We love you, you can do this, think of all the friends you’ll make and how much fun you’ll have (well, maybe not that last idea for chemo camp.)
When I thought I was going home from camp last November and then found out a week later that my mother was not, in fact, coming to pick me up, and that I would be staying for a whole ‘nother YEAR — you stayed right there with me, sending cards, calling, walking, assuring me that I could stay as long as was necessary, and then I could go home. (No more meals, but alas, I had packed on the casserole pounds in the previous year and girded with such sustenance, I soldiered on through more camp activities.)
Like target shooting.
I remember my daughter did this at her week-long camp and could easily hit the mark, so much so that when she CHOSE to become a camp counselor while in college, (she must have gotten that DNA somewhere else) the camp assigned her this post. My daughter and I have never been the kind of twinsy mother/daughter team some people think of. I spent years teaching her how not to be like me, so I consider this choice as making me, finally, a champion.
And then I became the target shooter, with only one goal in mind: Get rid of the damn cancer.
And guess what I did? I GOT RID OF IT, with the guiding lights of my doctors and the nurses at the Rex Cancer Center, who finally LET ME GO HOME last Tuesday. All by myself.
Though my old pal Tim and my nurse Hope (who hugged me, despite all the rules) wished me well, I drove away, with only the shadow of a tear in my eye.
“She’s grown,” I could hear my mother say. “You have handled yourself admirably,” my brother actually texted.
That part, “admirably,” he quoted what my father might have said, if he were to have reluctantly shoved me off to cancer camp. He is right, Daddy would have said that, but I honestly don’t quite understand.
A friend of mine who had cancer just before me has said often “cancer can’t wait.” (It’s a tagline for a local organization raising money to cure every kind of cancer affecting women, not just breast.) And this is so very true. Sorting through all my cards the other day, I found an email I wrote to my Bible study on May 15, 2019, the day I got the news. I was to lead it the next day, and I told them, so niavely, that a cancer diagnosis would not disrupt the dozens of plans I had for my life in the year to come.
How wrong I was. A cancer diagnosis does NOT wait. Within minutes of learning you have it, you turn you life over to those caring for you and though you ask a thousand and more questions, not one of them is “when?” because the answer is always: “right now.”
One of the few things I remember about real camp is the swimming test. Everybody had to take it, no matter what. I remember looking at the murky river water with the tadpoles swimming in it and asking, “when?” and they said pretty much: “Now”. And I had only two choices: dive in and get it over with, or wade in and swim from one point to the next, as best I could. No bravery. Just truth.
The same is true for Chemo Camp.
On the first round, I dove, head first, not knowing much about what it would do to me (though they did tell me as honestly as they could.) The second time, I waded in, testing the waters a bit, though I knew I’d eventually I’d have to make that dive. And I did.
But despite what some have written me, I am no hero.
My doctor is a hero. She has done the hard work of puzzle master, her fine mind taking my own curious circumstances — three kinds of breast cancer — to task, until she found the exact cocktail combination to cure me. Did you get that? CURE ME. Which she did.
My nurses are heroes. They greeted me and all the other cancer patients as if we were the only one in the room, day after day, caring for us when some get our walking papers, and when some don’t ever. They are gracious and loving and champions for all.
And then they let me go. Tuesday a week ago. Just like that.
I was a puddle. Honestly. After a quiet day in the chemo room I was looking for the marching band. A raised pom pom or two. But when that did not arrive, I looked to Hope, who had nursed me on my darkest day, probably, when I was the most homesick I had ever been in my adult world.
“I wish I could hug you,” I told her. “I will never forget your kindness to me.”
“You are gettin’ it!” she said, breaking all the rules of COVID and giving me a hug I had not had from anyone except my husband in too many months. It was tight. And we sobbed. And I felt healed.
Back at home, family had filled my kitchen with pink. Two dozen roses, one dozen from my birth family and mother, and the other from my family by my daughter’s marriage. “Welcome home from camp,” their card said. Tickled me pink.
When you have cancer and get through treatment, you pick your ‘cancervesary’ as a way to remember it. Could be the day you are diagnosed or the day you felt healed or the day, through surgery, when cancer took leave of your body. That day, the day cancer took leave of me, was one year ago today.
So I take today to celebrate. And on this day before Thanksgiving, to be thankful to God for all of you.
I also want to honor all those who have gone before me in this camp. Who carved their initials on the scaffolding and in the bathrooms and on the the sheetrock that holds so many of these camps in place. I don’t know your names, but all ya’ll have come before me and I thank you for your service and your commitment to allowing doctors to study the disease in you, so that I might live. I honor hundreds of thousands of you, some of whom aren’t here any more, but so many of us are here and leaving our cancer days behind because of you.
I will not forget that.
Now back to the pile sitting in the picture at the beginning of this post. Thank you all for your letters and your love and for not letting go of me when I was taking the swim test at camp. I survived because of you, too, and I’m forever grateful that you cheered me on as I made it, finally, to the other side.
Much love,
Sooze
keep the sparkle
i called my mother yesterday. it was her wedding anniversary, the third one since my father died, and i'd forgotten to send her a card or a flower. we get busy in our lives, i know, and as i thought about the note or the flower, i realized that the one thing she wanted i couldn't give her. my voice would have to do.
note: i know, i know... i'm terrible at keeping this thing up. but i finally found a story yesterday when i wasn't event looking. so there.
i called my mother yesterday. it was her wedding anniversary, the third one since my father died, and i'd forgotten to send her a card or a flower. we get busy in our lives, i know, and as i thought about the note or the flower, i realized that the one thing she wanted i couldn't give her. my voice would have to do.
how are you? i asked.
'tired,' she said.
from what?
'i washed the windows today,' she said.
windows?
my mother is 88 years old. she lives in a beautiful home filled with windows that let the sun in, in the morning, where the moon casts a soft glow over the living room rug at night. and she does not like a dingy window — never has.
'
i thought i'd start with the front bedroom window and just go along, one or two at a time, she told me. 'but you know me.'
don't i. i have a lifetime of knowing the woman who would remake my bed if it didn't suit her, whose linen closet i used to stand and admire for its geometric organization, the same woman who scoured the whole house spring and fall so when we came home from school you could
feel
the sparkle.
18 windows, she said. and she just kept going along until she had cleaned practically every window in the house, almost by accident. (her sunroom is literally filled with windows. to be fair, one window is safely out of reach.)
18.
on a recent visit to her house i scanned her fridge for the latest comic, since there has been one there since my childhood. tacked close to one featuring a character not being able to hear was an article suggesting that a clean house for the elderly has a direct correlation to their mental and physical stability. as if she needed proof that all her years of home keeping was finally worth the work.
she used to say she never needed to exercise because she vacuumed every day and that was plenty. and it was.
my mother's house is ever ready for company: flowers on the kitchen table, beds made up with soft sheets, pillows piled high and towels hung, waiting. even my son says it's the most comfortable house he's ever slept in. i don't know about you, but i will hope my imagined grandchildren will feel the same about mine.
do you know what day it is? i asked her before hanging up.
'yes,' she said. 'keeping the windows kept my mind busy.'
busy with memory, surely, of the years she and my father sparkled— and there were almost 61 of those.
my mother no doubt slept hard last night, as we like to say where i come from, climbing between her own soft sheets, knowing her hands had touched every pane in that house and left it gleaming.
a lot has happened since my father has been gone. grandchildren married. great-grandchildren born and too many hoped for lost. we could have used his wisdom in the time since, which at times seem like years and others like just days. i'm sure it feels like that in every loss.
but my mother, as always, provides perspective. there still is a bit of sparkle left, even in my father's absence. for one full day she polished her windows to a spit shine, no doubt remembering as she washed each pane, the life she spent with my father, remembering their sparkle in the sheen.
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.
car talk
for a girl whose grandfather was a Ford dealer for more than 50 years, i should think more about cars. but i don't. a car to me has always been transportation, surely, but a means to and end? a status symbol? a love? not so much. and i have not ever really thought much about the car in story — like some people might write about the trans am they saved up for and drove as a teenager or the '65 mustang they painstakingly restored.
a car gets me down the road and home again and i always feel pretty blessed about that. but i don't often think otherwise about the meaning of the box with pistons and throttle, brakes (unless they don't work) or gas (unless i am out of it), and though i should think of the people who created this great machine that changed the world as we know it, i don't.
or at least i didn't.
until i go a new(er) car. two weeks ago.
i have had my fair share of cars, though there is not one picture of any of them. the first, a pale blue maverick i shared with my sister. no ac, no power anything: brakes, steering or windows. a static-y AM radio. my grandfather didn't trust any newfangled gadgets like FM or AC, and though more than once my mother chose those options on family cars, her new drive often showed up in his shop without them.
the Maverick took me many places, but i remember most driving down the back roads, windows down, headed to the beach for the very first time by myself. i think i was 16.
then there was the mustang — a blue 1975 4-speed my father let me pick out, not at all the collector's item as the '65 — that car moved with me to Carolina, to my first job in journalism. when my landlord found out i had a cat in my apartment, i threw her into a suitcase and into the back seat of the mustang and drove her home to my mother.
together the mustang and I moved all the way down to Georgia and into the-rest-of-my-life. we traded it for a harsh two-toned brown escort with an orange stripe down its side, a little car more suitable to carry the baby home from the hospital than the 4-speed upstart. that brown car was the only car i ever really hated.
then came mom cars. the wagons — a burgundy dodge and a white chevrolet, the dodge van with the fake wood on the side. the expedition that made me nauseous when i drove it out of the dealer lot it cost so much. then the jeep that took my children to college, the one i drove all around eastern North Carolina schlepping my first book.
and then the last car — a used lexus suv. daddy thought we were living beyond our raising buying a luxury car — even though by the time it joined the family it was already four years old.
but it's this car that for some reason got me to thinking about the story of it. and the stories of all the other cars in my life.
people write whole
. (my friend Jane has written a slew of short stories and every one of them features a car.) one of the only twilight zones of my memory was about a car that talked back to its driver (imagine that!). what about 'my mother the car', apparently labeled the
second-worst sitcom of all time
and who can forget Car 54 Where Are You?
i don't write about cars or name them or think about them or tell stories about them, really. but then we found a new car, and before we were headed to the dealer to pick it up, i found myself thinking about all the places the old one had taken me.
100,000 miles. that's how many we trekked together. and as i thought about those miles i actually took a picture of the odometer, and thought, Lord, you are going crazier in tiny increments every day. a few minutes later, we ticked across the 114,000 mark, and it felt like a milestone.
when my husband said he had someone coming to look at the car, i went crazier still. found myself pulling out a note card and writing — as if i were the car itself — to the faceless new owners to tell them what the car had meant to me. seriously.
I may look a little worn around the edges, the car wrote. I am 11 after all, (is that 33 in car years?) but i have been good to my family...
the buyer didn't show, and i tucked the car's carefully scripted letter in a safe place to wait for one who did.
100,000 miles.
to the gazebo where the Pea got engaged and to her wedding, with her gown draped across our laps. to the vet with the dog, when we had to put her down, then home with her ashes. to my son's college graduation. to his first house, the back filled with new house things from Target. to my niece's house to meet her new baby.
to my father's hospital bed too many times, the car doors and windows framing winter as it changed to spring, the steering wheel absorbing my many tears along the way.
that car took me away from my childhood home for the last time and to my mother's new house. to our favorite beach and our friends' favorite mountain respite. to the airport with the dog and to church and to the grocery store and back again on hundreds of regular days. we didn't cover a lot of the map, my old car and me, but we traveled far.
when we sold her last week, (did i really call her HER?) i forgot to put the note in the glove compartment, which is probably a good thing. no reason for the new owners to worry that they bought crazy along with a pretty good old car.
now i'm finally back in blue again. though it's three years old, my new drive still smells like the back of my Bigdaddy's neck ('new car' was his cologne of choice), and has two — TWO — manuals, a 300-pager for the sound system alone.
and this: it doesn't even have a key! what in the world would my grandfather say to that?
and so we're back on the road. i can't say where my new blue car will take me, but i know somewhere along the way, that's where the story will be.
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.
86
i've been carrying around some cargo in my car the past few days, waiting for today, when i could clear the clutter, if you can call it that, which i really can't. what some might consider clutter are remnants of my father — sports coats, dress shirts and pants —that used to hang in his closet.
we've been waiting for the time when my mother was ready to give them up. these were not his favorite things, but dress clothes he may have outgrown, both in fit and usefulness, that now hung in the guest room closet, dry cleaned and ready for something. perhaps some other body to inhabit them.
so that's what we decided, after we'd stuffed ourselves twice over the turkey and whatnot: to gather these few things up and pass them on.
i actually didn't mind my bodiless passengers. every time i opened the door to the back seat, i'd sniff them to see if they bore any traces of him, but they did not. i tried to remember when i'd last seen him wear that tweed blazer, the navy sports coat, the striped button down, the several pairs of khaki colored slacks, but i couldn't recall. it was right to give them away.
today is his birthday, 86 he would be. so it seemed the perfect day to donate these discarded pieces of his life to someone else to use. after lunch with my coworkers, i headed over to
, which recently has created
, a place where men participating in their program, which is focused on financial literacy, can shop for interview and career clothes. (though women have similar clothing programs all over the country, men's programs are rare, it seems.)
(Daddy went on only one interview in his life that he talked about, and that was for the job he eventually held for more than 50 years — caretaker of the people of my home town. (when he applied for a loan to start his practice, the farmers who ran the bank asked for collateral, and he gave them his career, though they were used to dealing in land and tractors, neither of which he had.)
he never wore a suit to work, saving them for church, funerals and weddings. he did wear a tie, but those were not part of my parcel.
i parked my car, gathering as many of his things as i could and headed to StepUp's front door, my heart pounding. i'd made arrangements to meet the volunteer director, and when i asked for her, handing over the first of Daddy's coats to someone at the front desk, i felt the tears coming. i'll go back and get more, i said, escaping. what was that about?
by the time i reached my car, the tears came on full force and i could not stop them, thinking only: i need to call my sister, she will understand this.
i gathered the last things and turned, finding the volunteer coordinator, a tall woman i had met briefly at my church, her arms open to me and to the burden i carried.
'i didn't think this would be so hard,' i said.
'i did,' she countered, 'which is why i want to give you a hug.'
we walked back with Daddy's clothes, and i found myself talking, probably too much.
'he was a physician,' i told her. 'many of his patients were poor.'
'what better place, then,' she said, 'than to share his clothes here.'
somebody soon will dress in my father's old navy blazer and his striped button down, his khaki slacks and head off into their own job interview. what they will have, if not land or tractor as collateral, is history — one of helping and healing.
such is what they need.
i wish i had thought to put a small card in each pocket—
'this blazer belonged to
Graham Vance
Byrum, Sr., raised in Sunbury, NC, father, grandfather, husband and physician. loved Wake Forest and circus peanuts. adored his wife. treasured his children & grandchildren. was tight with a penny and loved a pun. what you wear was donated on his 86th birthday. go for that job, and wear it well.'
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.
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.
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
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?
susanbyrumrountree.com 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.
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.
Dreams with Daddy
My father sits in a small metal side chair, the kind you find in a hospital room, a blank wall at his back. He wears his Sunday suit, the silver tie he saves for weddings. He crosses his legs, looks at his fingers like I have seen him do a thousand times. Silent, we wait together, for I know not what. I want to lean into him, and I wonder what he is thinking.
Daddy’s fingers are thin and nimble, the skin taut, the kind of hands a doctor needs for his work. I notice he is not biting his fingernails or the skin around them, something he has done most of his life. A tiny thing, but significant, it seems.
We wait together like we used to during my mother’s many surgeries. Broken hips — too many times to count — a knee. Her back. In those times I knew he was worried, so I tried to draw him through it with my chatter — about children, neighbors, work, anything but politics.
This is the first time in many months Daddy has not been lying in a hospital bed, with me trying to keep the one-sided conversation going. I’m talking to him, effusive in my glee at finding him all dressed up and sitting in the chair.
But here’s the thing: It’s a dream. My father died in April.
Right after Daddy died, I was hopeful he would visit me. I climbed in bed each night, wondering when it might be. I had dreamed of others in my life who had died. Why should Daddy be any different?
I was sure he was coming. It would just be a matter of time.
And he did come, swiftly, standing in the front hall of my childhood home in his Sunday suit, next to the mirror, his hair grayer than I remember. I hugged him, feeling such joy at the warmth of him, telling him I knew he would come, and then he melted away.
But he came again, this time sitting in that chair, in the shadows, while the world goes on around him. And that’s where he has been in a half-dozen dreams since. When I see him there I’m overcome with joy. I feel the knot in my throat, thinking I might cry, just watching him sit, in a room that is neither cold nor hot, so thrilled I am, happier than I have felt for a very long time.
And then the alarm startles, the dream fades, and I am back to day, feeling the ache of a world without Daddy in it.
I am a dreamer. Both night and day. Those who know me well know I often don’t hear the conversation, don’t even know anyone is talking to me. Not solely because I have lost some of my hearing, which I have, but rather I am lost in what I am thinking.
Daddy knew that about me. Once, when I was about 9, he called me a liar because I had no idea where my sister was. I didn’t. Had she told me? In my memory, I see her form sliding past me in the family room as she says something. I was lost in a book, until his words stung. Was I that? A liar? Is that all he thought of me? I spent years trying to prove otherwise.
We've been looking at the scriptures of Advent during my writing class at church. We're trying to find where we fit in the story of the virgin birth in the manger with the shepherds and all that.
Since I was a child, I’ve used my dreams to figure out the world.
The ages-old Christmas story takes on a new slant when I read about Joseph, who learns in a dream what he should do with his not-yet-wife-but-oh-so-pregnant betrothed.
So how do I fit in this story? It feels presumptuous to think God is speaking to me in my dreams. Who am I to be that important? Yet Daddy's not the only person in my life who has died but who has come back in my dreams — my mother-in-law, my grandfather, a childhood friend who was not always so nice — and so, I wonder.
In early February, as Daddy lay fighting pneumonia in the hospital where he practiced medicine for 50 years, he told me he would not get better. “You’ll have to take care of your mother,” he said. I knew then would not survive this fight and that this was his directive to be followed. But how in the world would we manage?
In the months since his death, the days and decisions have been dizzying. A new home for my mother, a new town. Our home, an empty shell. And yet, there are days when I’ve almost forgotten he’s not still there, just on the other end of the phone when I call, sitting in his chair with the dog in his lap. Except the number we had my whole life doesn’t work anymore, and only my mother answers the new one.
I don’t want to live in a dream world. I want to be awake and alive. Occupy the now. But it feels like I am waiting for Daddy to say something, when he comes in my dreams. I suppose I am looking for specifics — Joseph certainly got them. Like what do to when Mama won’t take her medicine correctly. Or the intangible, like what heaven is all about. And has he found the dogs, like we asked him to when he was dying, and our grandparents?
I’m looking for comfort, too, that despite the fact that he is not with us anymore, all will be well.
The move was difficult. Watching my mother as her cherished things were boxed up and loaded into the truck proved heart-wrenching. The packers worked quickly, so we worked behind them, gathering up personal items from his desk, tossing some, keeping others. That first afternoon, we found something torn from a magazine in a small catch-all basket on his desk. It was a poem, no given author, that read in part:
You mustn’t tie yourself to me with tears. I gave you my love. You can only guess how much you gave me in happiness.... let your grief be comforted by trust . . . I won’t be far away, so if you need me, call and I will come. Though you can’t see or touch me, I’ll be near, and if you listen, you’ll hear my love around you, soft and clear.
We felt him there, at that moment and knew he had left the words for us to find, right when we needed them most.
So I will keep dreaming, in hopes the next time I need him, he'll show up again and this time be ready to talk.
+ + + + +
To read daily meditations during Advent from the writers of St. Michael's, visit
, and download These Holy Mysteries.
— Susan Byrum Rountree 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.
take me home, country road
i set out at dawn, driving down the country road away from the home i have known for 50 years.
the fog lay low against the cotton fields, stretched out like a soft blanket over a child almost ready to wake up.
that's what i wish it was, that fog, my own baby blanket draping right around me, whispering to me that it's not really wakeup time yet, that what i know to be true is not.
what beauty. the vast fields of cotton and soybeans — even tobacco — shrouded in a white pall that bore no sense of foreboding. just dawn about to happen. hope.
a mile on, and the sun spilled over the fields onto the side of a barn.
how must it feel, to stand at the edge of a field and watch the whole world that belonged to you wake up, the sun's first color shining red on your barn, knowing that your work ahead in that day mattered, was about more than what you had already put on that acre?
you know those moments, don't you, when you sense that your world will never pass quite this same way again?
this morning a few weeks ago was that. it felt like i was taking in everything. every. thing. the boy waiting by the side of the road for his school bus, checking his iPhone. the hawk perched on the wire looking down on the peanut field, right where i have seen him almost every time i have come this way in the last year or so. the fog. the flat fields sliding past by me one by one — soybeans, peanuts, tobacco, cotton, right ready to be picked.
i have been trying to write it all down for a month, each day sitting down in front of the blank page thinking: i must do this now. and then i don't. maybe i've been thinking that if i don't put it down it just wont happen.
and yet, come monday, we will be well into
what has until six months ago seemed an impossible thing.
we are leaving my childhood home.
moving its contents part and parcel to a new house that has been finely painted and polished, one that will take my mother closer to where she needs to be. one that my father never knew about. had never seen. in these few weeks we have gathered to pack and to ponder.
what looms, seems soon to me — not yet six months since Daddy died — is necessary. just because i am not yet ready to let loose of the walls that raised me up doesn't mean it's not the right thing. what matters is that Mama will be close to family, safe, where she can savor all the years that have rolled out before her like the fog over the fields did for me on that day a month ago now. yes. safe. but sad.
i remember when i first went to college, i was so bent on being away and not looking back on the road that had brought me to the city. but come fall break, i caught a ride with a friend and when we turned at the crossroad toward home, the twilight set in, and i rolled down the window, sticking my face into the country smells, all the peanut hay and the scent of newly-picked tobacco, the cotton bolls ripening and well, i couldn't wait to get there. home.
for years after i was married and living far away, whenever my husband and i drove out the driveway, i waved to my parents on their back porch perch and cried for 30 miles down the road. (and now, every single time i leave, just thinking about that memory.)
every single time i walk in the back door, i see the soft lights of the kitchen, and i feel myself settling in. home.
i can not imagine not knowing that anymore.
it was not supposed to be this way. my parents were going to live out their lives in this house, in this place — Daddy fairly well did — but things we had counted on just didn't come to be.
the night before i drove away from home a month ago, i slept in my old room, tossing, waking often, trying to remember the hundreds of childhood nights and days i spent there, becoming me. our winter-weighted coverlets came from Sears, and we loved them. in summer, Mama would rearrange the furniture and drape our beds with paper-thin covers — white, with blue ruffles and tiny blue flowers all over — and we would sleep with our heads at the foot of the bed just to put a new slant on things.
we found our baby clothes in an old attic trunk and dressed our dolls in them. i played 'school' behind the closed doors, with the chalkboard on the wall. barbies. spend-the-nights. tears. (a lot of those, my siblings would say.) winter nights after lights out, listening to cousin brucie on the transistor, memorizing the words to songs that would define my adolescence — jim croce. james taylor. gladys knight and her pips. the beatles.
Memories that come at night
Take me to another time
Back to a happier day....
i remember the day we moved in. i was 5, and i went home from kindergarten with ralph, our next-door-neighbor in our old house. we had hot dogs for lunch, the ones that swelled when you boiled them, not the red kind my mother cooked, and i couldn't eat them. later, my mother showed me my new room, one i would share with my sister til she was a teenager, with our matching closets and desks that Daddy built that looked like ladders on the sides. somewhere i have pictures.
ours is a story house, full of sounds and smells. the saturday nights when we'd sit at the foot of my mother's bed and watch her smooth her nylons over her legs, attach her pearl earrings to her ears for an evening out with Daddy. the phone ringing at all hours. days when we would climb the ladder to the attic, playing on rainy days when we couldn't go outside. sitting at the kitchen table as teenagers sharing a dinner of steak fondue. or in the living room, on the sofa with Daddy and his banjo, wanting bill bailey, whoever he was, to please come home. listening to my sister play Climb Every Mountain when she had hit a sour note on some other song. the time Daddy gave me honey and whiskey to cure my cough. or the day i was making potato stamps and sliced the tip of my finger nearly off. (you can still see the scar.) the soft click of the pulls on my parent's dresser drawer when we looked inside to marvel at our mother's jewelry. the crinkle of the newspaper as Daddy shined his shoes. it is both present and past tense, will always be that in memory.
the living room chimney Santa came down that never once held a fire. the family room window the tree fell through when the first tornado hit. (there were two, years apart) the dining room window where just last year the squirrel hid in the drapes after chewing out the mullions. the sand pile where the dogs are buried. the front porch where we take our family pictures. the incinerator, where we burned our Christmas wrapping paper and set the yard on fire.
opening the front door for my sister's first date with the man who would become my brother-in-law. closing it on the boy i would not marry.
these are just my stories. my brother and sister have their own. my mother has hers, too. some we have shared, some are private, some only the house holds close.
stories: the bricks and mortar of any family's life, much more, i hope we learn, than the underpinnings of the building we have called home for 50 years.
in an hour or so, my sister and i will set out down the road again toward home. we have business to discuss, lists to make to help this move be as easy on our mother as it can. but in the silence between our chatter lay all those stories, wrapping us up like a soft blanket in the early morning, warming us as we wait to breathe this new day in.
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.
one saturday with Daddy
the morning i was to be married, i woke up and heard my father crying, hidden behind the bedroom door.
i honestly thought he'd be happy to be rid of me, to have another man take my mercurial soul off his hands.
what will we do? i recall asking my mother, who was not crying at all.
he'll be fine, she said. don't worry.
overnight, Lydia and cohorts had thrown toilet paper high into the oak trees in the front yard, and i remember him coming by my room, asking me what i wanted to do about it. the reception was at home. and then, as i scurried around getting ready for my big moment, i looked out the window, and my father was swatting at the toilet paper with a rake. though he stood more than six feet, his efforts did little to pull the paper down.
by the time he walked me down the aisle he had dried his eyes, smiled a little, and though i don't remember what he said to me i felt certain, probably for the first time in my life, that Daddy would miss my presence.
a small combo played at the backyard reception, and though i had not yet danced with my new husband, Daddy and i stole a few moments away from the guests for a dance, both of us quietly sobbing this time.
no one was watching, and i don't even recall the song.
none of that matters now. because the feeling of that moment lingers, still.
10.10.1981
susanbyrumrountree.com 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.
reflex
daddy's doctor bag sat in the back floorboard of his Ford for as long as i remember. he'd take it out for house calls, or when one of us was sick, opening up the brown otoscope case, popping on one of the the bluish-green tips before pulling open my ear to peer in it to see if i had plugged a nickle in there somewhere that was clogging me up. then he'd pop off the tip, flick on the penlight and ask me to say 'ahh', me hoping i could open wide enough so he wouldn't have to use a tongue depressor.
it was like an appendage to him, that black bag that never quite stayed shut. when he worked in the office, he'd go from room to room, ink pens lining the top pocket of his white coat, stethoscope and prescription pad deep in the pocket at his hip.
on some days when Daddy was in the hospital over the winter, i would find myself in the cafeteria alone, waiting for him to to be bathed, to wake up, for the doctors to come by on rounds. on one of those days, i found myself trying to name everything that the black bag held, trying to hang on to this memory since i knew, honestly, that Daddy would never open that bag again and take anything out.
here is the list i made that day:
stethoscope
reflex hammer
prescription pad
blood pressure cuff
rubbing alcohol
Band-Aids
as i made my way down the short list, i could feel the cool metal of the stethoscope on my back as he listened to my heart when i was a girl. i saw myself sitting in the kitchen chair trying hard not to giggle — and to hold my knee still as stone as he tapped it with the reflex hammer.
i couldn't think of the name of that thing he used to look into my ears, but i could see it.
when i got back to his room, he was awake, and before long the speech therapist came in the room to place the speaking valve on his tracheostomy tube, to see how well he could tolerate it.
they had been doing this off and on, and on some days, usually when my brother or i was there, he was able to talk a little, his graveled voice not sounding much like his pre-hospital one.
daddy, i said that day, i was wondering: what all did you keep in your doctor's bag?
and in seconds he began the litany: stethoscope. reflex hammer. prescription pad. blood pressure cuff. thermometer. syringes. Penicillin usually. alcohol. ace bandages. tongue depressors. otoscope.
otoscope. that was what i couldn't remember. in all those weeks, though he seemed in and out of confusion at times, it took only a moment for him to rattle off the tools of his house call trade.
that day, my brother happened to swing by, and looking at him in his white coat i realized i'd never seen him with a doctor's bag of any kind. he was not Daddy's doctor, but even if he once or twice grabbed a stethoscope to listen to his chest, he took it from Daddy's bedside, not from one hanging around his neck.
to treat a patient these days, a doctor might grab sterilized gloves from one of the boxes on the wall, a syringe from a dispenser in the hall (well, usually the nurse does that), log into the room computer to print out a prescription. sometimes i wonder if all that is better than the laying on of hands my father required to do his daily work.
+ + +
the morning after Daddy died, i went to his car and climbed in the back seat to take in his smell. the rubbing alcohol was there, and i looked around the floor board for the bag, but it was not to be found. made sense, since Daddy hadn't practiced in a few years, that he would have taken it out. seems i recalled that for awhile, it sat on the old chair at the door of my room, where he now kept his office.
back in the house, i looked and it was not there.
a few days later, my sister and i stood in our attic, looking around. there, on the floor was an old doctor's bag, empty and worn from decades of travel, but it was not his most recent bag.
my mother has been looking for the bag for weeks. she has a purpose for it, but though she has been through every closet and looked in every drawer, she's been unable to find the one thing Daddy used every day of his career. it's troubling, like if she opened their closet one day to find his yellow sweater missing, or that someone had misplaced the letter opener that has always been on the desk of the secretary right where he left it the last time he opened a letter. these are the small things that mean much to each of us. especially is doctoring tools.
it was saturday afternoon, and we had gone through closets and sat on the phone to india for 58 minutes trying to get the computer to work, only to find out we couldn't. we had gone through papers and a scrap book i had never seen (that's another post), and my mother, who is back on her feet now, gave me a roll of quarters Daddy had been saving for me since 1968.
then she told me how she had looked for the bag but couldn't find it.
i knew of nothing else to do but begin the search. so we opened the closet in my room and began taking things out.
a portrait of my grandfather from the bank where he served on the board. a box filled with tax returns. old coat hangers, skirts, a robe. a box filled with photographs, still framed, that had come from my grandmother's house.
and from the clothes rack, a new vinyl satchel i had never seen.
i lifted it off the rack, pulled open the velcro and the tears pooled in my eyes. the brown case that holds his otoscope— scratched from his own fingers, so many years of opening — two stethoscopes, the reflex hammer, all well worn and placed there carefully by my father's own hands, hung up like carpenter's tools, a long life of repair finally complete.
those who know more about these things than i do tell me that grief is like this. you go for weeks thinking now i've gotten past the worst of it and have worn out the tears and can go on my daily life without thinking of it, and then one small thing presents itself and there you are, weeping quietly over some small memory from childhood that hits your reflexes like a soft hammer to the knee. no matter how hard you might try to fight it, your throat closes tightens and there you are. there. you. are.
to me, it is like the mercurial atlantic. how one day, the air is still and the sea slick as ice, waves barely breaking, tiny ribbons of foam lining the beach where water meets sand. a day later, swells rise and fall but waves don't break, foamy tides climb up the sand, rip tides form, pulling just below the surface. and then you wake the next day and the sea roils, waves crash into each other long before they ever reach the beach, and you barely remember the calm, ice-slick day, from all the roaring.
susanbyrumrountree.com 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.
summer sentence
it is on the third day
that the words come back,
letters long absent
from your page,
but as you figure out how
not to spill the water
as you pour it into the
rented kitchen's coffeepot,
there they are,
stretching ahead of you
like line to a new boat,
and you grab hold
of that line
and hold on
because you know
what's coming
finally coming,
so you think twice
about the pink sunrise
you saw just a bit
ago
as you scramble the eggs
and scratch the grandog's nose
butter your toast
and serve up breakfast
for your kids who
are almost never
under the same roof
anymore,
and you think
some more
as you
butter yourself up
for a stretch out
in front of the ocean,
when you
will crack open
that new book
because you've already
read two
in the past days
as you listened
to the ocean
talk to you
for the first time
in many, many months,
you catch yourself thinking again
that you are
relieved
that the first book
is done because
you feared
so for the woman
and the boy
in that story,
and you found yourself
weeping at the end
of the second one
because you could
imagine how the man
and his wife, and
the girl
all felt
at the end of that one,
and yes,
you think still more
as you listen
to the churning
of that blue ocean
and watch
the pink-tutued baby
next door dabble
in the saltwater puddle
at her feet
and remember when
the daughter sitting
by you
with a book
in her hand
was just that size,
doing just that thing,
dabbling,
trying to
carry
a small bit of wave
in her tiny hands,
when you first brought
her to this beach...
so you take
a short walk
in and out
of other people's vision,
those
lining to beach
propped under
a kaleidoscope
of umbrellas
watching
the gulls,
the tattooed
girls,
lanky
boys
skimming
the surf
with their boards
and you wonder how they
can keep from
falling,
and you peer to see
what other folks are reading
on iPads and phones and
in actual books,
like the weathered woman
sitting where the seafoam
laps at her feet
who is in the final pages
of a good book about dogs,
so you walk on
and find yourself beneath
the pier,
and at once you recall
your
grandfather's
knotty
fingers
cutting blood worms
with an old knife
on the splintered pier bench
then plying
the bloody bits
onto a hook
for you
to cast
over the side,
and you think
how many times you
watched the water
and felt the tug
not knowing whether it
was fish
or foam
but you pulled it in
surprised
at
seaweed
or silver fish
biting,
and as you think
of those times
all those years ago
you remember
your father's thin
tanned fingers as he
stood on the pier
and slid his serrated
scaler on the surface
of the fish,
the fingers of his other hand
holding tightly to the
surprised
mouth and fins
of the spot
or bream
as scales flew
in every direction,
and you think of that summer
when he grew a beard
and you didn't like
that at all
or how that year,
the beach didn't
seem to soothe him
like it always did,
and on your way back
you look out over
the sea and the foam
and think of
how many times
you
walked this beach
with your dad
and how this
is your first
time, really,
without him
being here for
even a day or two,
when you are
and there you
are, making new
prints in the
moist sand
without him
by your side,
and as you make your way
back
you
wonder who
that girl was
so long ago who
that her daddy
loved so, so much,
then you spy your children
sitting there
by the sea,
your son's fresh beard
irritating you
just about as much
as your daddy's did,
and you
think how
many more stories
there will be
to tell of this place
even though
daddy can't
sink his
narrow
toes
in this
sand
anymore.
as 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.
of happy hearts and glorious things
as a child i used to sit on the living room floor, slide out the bottom drawer of my parents' secretary until the brass pulls clicked softly against the wood. inside the drawer were treasures — baby books for my siblings and me, old photograph albums showing my brother, sister and me as babies, and a creamed-colored book with gold-leafed edging that contained evidence of my family's beginnings.
it was my favorite — my parents' wedding album — and i would spend hours studying the photographs of the day my parents pledged their troth to each other. my mother, striking in her ballet-length crinoline, my father handsome in his white dinner jacket. they stood with their back to the camera in the center aisle of a church the likes i had never seen. large stone columns stood sentry as my brim-hatted grandmothers, my dapper grandfather and dozens of family and friends gathered around them.
they looked like teenagers, holding each other's hands as the young rector gave God's blessing over their union. (within 10 years, this same man would become bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina. would confirm my brother, my sister and me some years later in our home church.)
i studied the sepia images — the lights hung from the ceiling, the carved fretwork over the pulpit, the stained glass windows, stone floors and marble altar, those stone arches standing watch, protecting them from what lay outside the walls. and as i studied, i wondered what it might be like to sit in a church as grand as that.
when i was 32, the sepia photograph faded into my reality, and i came to stand myself in the stone aisle of
, feel the grasp of those arches and knew i was home. my husband and i had just moved our young family to winston-salem from atlanta, where though we attended church most every Sunday, it never felt quite right.
that first Sunday morning in Winston, we rose, not questioning where we would go. we set out early — getting to church in atlanta took 45 minutes — and arrived for the 9 o'clock service before the early service had even let out. our five-minute commute left us time to head back home, grab some coffee and start over again, and we marveled at our good fortune. on our return trip, we still arrived early enough to take the kids to Sunday School and the nursery, so the two of us could sit for an hour in peace.
uncertain of this new pace and space, we walked into the back of the church and there it was, the picture i had studied all those years ago. the place where my parents got their start, where i first became a twinkle in God's eye. and that's when home hit me.
that first day, the teacher in my 5-year-old's sunday school class invited us out for hot dogs. in the weeks after, we joined the young families supper club, even hosting it at our house. so easy it seemed to make friends, when in atlanta i struggled to make two close friends in four years.
but here, i wrote essays on my mornings at home, took the dog to show and tell at preschool, walked the baby with my next door neighbor whose son was the same age as mine. it was on the way to st. paul's that one day i found myself singing alone in the car: oh i feel so very happy in my heart, because i was.
we would be there only 18 months.
the day we found out we would have to move, i came early for preschool pickup, walking into the darkened nave so i could spend a few quiet moments under those stone arches. i found my pew, kneeled, begged out loud for things to be different, for God to let us stay... we had just really gotten started in this place where it seemed so easy to
be
. i cried a bit...might have even screamed in the empty space, but i can't truthfully admit that now.
the arches didn't seem to hear.
we moved, started a new life, found a new church that has become more of a home to me than St. Paul's ever was. my daughter barely remembers her time here, and my son not at all.
but still.
///
ten days ago, we were in town for a family wedding. finding ourselves with an idle hour or so, i asked my mother if she'd like to go to her old church. it would be her first trip there in 61 years (61 years and two weeks, she reminded me.) so we drove up the meandering hill toward the church, and i almost lost my way.
'it's that way,' she said, pointing, never minding that she was 24 years old when she last made this trip.
the stone bell tower stood right where we'd left it, and i hoped that a June saturday meant the doors would be open, though when we checked they were locked. we took a picture of her in front of the bell tower anyway, talked about that day so long ago in her life, then slowly made our way to the car.
just then i spied a man, keys jangling from his belt, slip out the side door. i approached, asking if there was any way we could get inside, and he pointed to the door he would happily unlock for us.
'take your time,' he said, slipping away quickly as we walked into the narthex. mama edged her walker onto the stone floor of the nave and stood, taking it all in.
at just that moment, the organ shouted through the stone, "Glorious things of thee are spoken," and i couldn't help it, the tears just came. i watched mama, her own eyes wet, but her mouth forming a smile.
///
my husband and i have a habit when we visit churches of slipping into a pew to say prayers for our family. from the corner of my eye, i saw him edge into a pew in the front. (didn't he remember that we always sat in the back?). i didn't want to leave mama, so i motioned to her to move down the aisle toward the pulpit.
she shook her head no, held onto the frame of her walker, listening.
"glorious things of thee are spoken/Zion city of our God; he whose word cannot be broken/formed thee of his own abode; on the Rock of Ages founded, what can shake thy sure repose? with salvation's walls surrounded, thou may'est smile at all they foes."
as i listened, i thought about all my mother had seen of this world from her last day in this church — her wedding day — to this one, the day her grandson would be married. i imagined what she might be thinking of that life well lived, the heartache she must be feeling without my father by her side this time. my family began on this particular rock, and God had formed it as he saw fit, and in my thinking, though Daddy isn't with us physically anymore, the fit was just right.
there is a line later in the hymn that says:
safe they feed upon the manna, which he gives them when they pray.
my family has prayed plenty, has seen plenty of manna in its time, and on this day both my mother and i felt full to bursting with it.
'i'm ready to go,' she said, just as the organist ended hymn 522 and moved on to another. as my husband helped mama, i walked up the aisle to about the fifth row on the right and took to my knees. i asked for blessings on my nephew's new marriage, just as God had given my parents so many blessing they'd begun to feel first in this place. i asked for guidance, for blessings on my children and gave special thanks for my family gathered to celebrate, when for so many weeks we have felt so little joy. and i thanked God for this moment with my mother, etched forever in my mind like the stone arches of this beautiful church that was built the year my parents were born.
'tis his love his people raises over self to reign as kings: and as priests his solemn praises each for a thank offering brings.'
glorious things indeed. amen.
susanbyrumrountree.com 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.
a toast to a happier time
a year ago today, my entire family gathered in the great room of a rented beach cottage to make a toast. to the day, 60 years before, when what would become our family took root. on this, my parents' 61st wedding anniversary, i say thanks to God that we had that time together, however fleeting. it's been a bittersweet week, remembering where i was when i took the pictures posted here. thinking of the quiet chats my father and i had each day, when he climbed the two flights of stairs to see what we were up to. strolling together down the rickety pier behind the cottages to see if any fish might be biting. sharing a meal and talking about his life. just watching him watch his grands and great-grands. marvels to me.
my parents' dance is over, sadly, but today i just want to be happy that they took that first dance together long ago.
Save the last dance
They met in the hallways of Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem in the fall of 1951. Not long after, the skinny young man in the white coat asked the wavy-haired Florida girl if she would like to go to a med school dance with him.
Two weeks later, he asked her a bigger question: Will you marry me? And on June 14 the next year, she did.
And the day after that? He graduated from Bowman Gray School of Medicine. All the family was coming anyway, so what better time to get married than the day before you become a doctor?
My mother often said Daddy didn't want to go to Louisville (the location of his internship) alone. So she went with him, and two weeks shy of their first wedding anniversary, my brother joined them in their little apartment with the Murphy bed in the wall.
In those early years, the young Byrums would not often be together. Mama moved with my brother to live with my grandparents, whom she had really only met a couple of times. Daddy joined the Navy, spending his days in the cramped infirmary of a destroyer, tending to the medical needs of other young men his age. He has a certificate from that time that says he crossed the Arctic Circle.
When he came home, they moved to Newport, Rhode Island, then back with my grandparents. Daddy left again, and while they were living apart, my sister was born, the story of her birth a favorite of my grandfather, who drove my in-labor by the hospital entrance because the February fog was so dense.
When my father left the Navy, they looked around for a place to settle down and found a spot just an hour from my grandparents. Within a year, they had a house and another baby — me — Daddy tending to the needs of patients who would come to him for the rest of his career —more than 50 years.
I wrote about them last year
Little has changed except they are moving a little slower, but I marvel at the fact that my parents continue to grow closer today as each day passes.
This week we have gathered — 23 of us (with two pending) — to celebrate the fact of them and their 60 years together, and that what seems to us to have been a hasty decision back in 1951 has turned into a pretty remarkable life.
Each day someone new has arrived to join our celebration. Grandchildren. Spouses. Great-grands. Earlier in the week, we even gathered in a nearby gazebo to toast the newest union-to-be, all of us weeping after my nephew proposed to his girlfriend. What a joyful moment for us all.
Mama has enjoyed sharing the story of how she met my dad with each new face. Daddy checks his watch and asks who is coming next. By this afternoon, we will all be in place, and we have a few special things planned for them to mark this day in our family history.
Last night, Daddy stood before supper and thanked us all for coming, and for being who we are. He said he was proud how we are living our lives, and though he and my mother could not take credit, they would like to.
Well.
"There was more I wanted to say but I have forgotten!" he said then, tempering the tears that had formed at the corners of all of our eyes with the subtle humor he is known for. I watched Mama sitting in the chair behind him, looking up at him, her blue eyes sparkling.
"Would you like to go to the dance?" he asked those years ago. My mother has never felt she was very good at dancing, but when my father took her in his arms that fateful night, somehow she stayed in step. For 60 years. Imagine.
Happy Anniversary B&Pop B. May the dance continue.
©susan byrum rountree, june 14, 2012.
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.
of dogs and dads
one morning in late january, just after daybreak, i strapped on my good boots under my nightgown, grabbed my coat and took the dog out. it was a brisk morning, and the dog's paws crunched on the icy driveway and yard behind my childhood home, and i figured i could, with a treat in my pocket, keep the dog from traipsing too far afield without his leash. it was the country, after all.
nose to the ground, he plotted his track across the same yard where my siblings and i had worn a circular path years before as we drove my daddy's ford around and through the wiregrass, trying to learn how to drive, the same stretch where my brother and his friends practiced the perfect dunk shot. the dog peed and pondered, trotted and thought, until i saw the hairs on his back stand on end.
the dog is part yellow lab, but it was the beagle in him that shouted at that moment, a long howl toward dogs in the acre next door. so here i was, in my fancy boots and gown crunching through the yard after him — past the old well where i used to sit when i contemplated running away from home — hoping these strange dogs would not bite me or him and would let us go our own way.
when i was a child, dogs roamed the whole town. no leashes. no dog fights that i can recall. we knew all the dogs (and the few cats) by name and personality, my favorite (other than our own dogs) being margie, the st. bernard who plodded all over our neighborhood with not one single enemy, dog nor man.
our dog Trouble was more than once found running through the halls of our elementary school, the doors of which were always open in warm weather. i remember looking up in the middle of my class, seeing a streak of copper running past the door. Trouble, looking for one of the three of us, at a time in our family when it was important for us to be together. i think he stole someone's lunch before most likely my brother caught him and called the woman who was looking out for us while my parents were away, to take him home. i picture addie now, in her blue VW bug, Trouble's red-tipped tail wagging through the window as they headed home.
the downside of all this freedom was the fact that we lost at least three dogs to the highway in front of our house.
but on this crisp morning some 40 years later, i'm chasing my suburban dog in my nightclothes through the crunchy grass into the yard of neighbors i don't know.
the three canines dance around each other, taking to trees and bushes to mark their spots. i of course am whisper screaming, come! cheese! (our emergency word!) now! (it is, after all, just shy of 7 a.m.) and not once does he turn his head.
after one last sigh onto a bush, he trots back into my parents' yard, past the remnants of my old sand pile where we buried the ashes of Bogey the beloved first dog i owned as an adult.
Bogey's favorite place besides at home with us was in my parents' back yard. rumor has it that he even fathered a puppy or two in his spry years when visiting. ever the country girl, i let him roam a little then, holed up as he was in our small city yard. my mother, in between dogs at the time, snagged the shaggy, collie-colored pup from her neighbor and love him quickly and completely. Shag sometimes came to visit his suspected father, though the two never quite acknowledged each other. Shag was an escape artist, wriggling out of our fence more than once when he visited, and not too many months went by before mama lost him to the highway, too.
then Bogey died, and the only place i could think of with any permanence was my childhood back yard. and so we went, the
Book of Common Prayer
in tow, to say goodbye to him. i thought at first my father might see a ceremony over the dog's ashes a bit ridiculous, and i was surprised when he joined us in the yard, weeping, even, over this good dog he had grown to love, too.
(as an aside, a few days after Bogey died, i sat down in the early morning hours and wrote a goodbye to him. i sat on that story for a few months, then with pounding heart sent it off to an editor at the N &O, a stranger to me but based on his columns i knew he liked dogs. 'who wants to read a story about a dead dog?' my husband growled. (this was 10 years before Marley and Me... even i didn't know if anybody would.
would become my first published story in a dozen years, and for weeks afterward, letters came to the mailbox at the street, the writers telling me how much my story, and their dogs) had meant to them. 10 years later, Marley made history. such is my luck.)
we are that way about dogs in my family. just love them something nutty and think everybody should. and between us we've had a lot of them: Chester. Lassie. Sir Walter Raleigh. Trouble. (Zorro & Remus, the lone cats.) Macon & Moe, Deacon and Mr. Biggles, Gypsy & Molly... well Molly not so much. Shag. Bogey & Socks. Now LRR & Bailey, Scrappy & Ruby. even my friend's dog, Sookie, i love her, too.
my sister-in-law reminded me the other day that while she and my brother were on their honeymoon, my sister and i found an Irish setter to give them for their wedding present. they pulled up in the driveway with a u-haul carrying all their wedding gifts from Delaware, and we placed a copper-colored puddle in their laps. it seemed like the most natural thing to give them a dog. no matter that my brother was in medical school and my sister-in-law was working... every respectable married couple needed a dog. and there was none more perfect than one who looked just like Trouble. they named her Macon. and what a good dog she was.
the next year my sister married, and she got a chihuahua named Moe (whom the cleaning lady always called Mo-ah!). Moe lived to be pretty old himself, lost an eye and had a hip replacement, the vet frantically calling my sister when she was visiting north carolina, saying the dog would die without the surgery. she had no choice but to keep that dog going. years later, she now has two.
my parents' latest dog Ruby — a regal king charles cavalier — stole my father's heart as soon as she arrived all the way from iowa, free for the taking. Ruby rarely left Daddy's lap in the past couple of years, and on the rare day when he could talk in the hospital, he always asked about her. in his absence, she sits by his pillow on the bed.
+++
bogey, socks & LRR... as seen by artist
LRR our third dog in 31+ years, inherited like so many from a college son who couldn't take care of him anymore. we still had dog #2, Socks — a gender-confused collie mix with chronic health issues — when LRR came to live with us, my mother's day gift of '08. his presence forced Socks to live to 14, hard-headed as she was she would NOT give up her spot as queen of the house. Puppy used to grab hold of her feathery tail as she walked into the kitchen, and she would drag him across the floor, which he thought was great fun. not so for the big dog.
now Little Ronald Reagan — i call him Pop Pop, because we called him Puppy for too long and his given name, just does not suit — rules the house. i adore him, despite the fact that he ate shoes and deck furniture and water hoses before i discovered doggie day care. though he should be, he is no fan of water, probably because he fell off the back of the sailboat one early spring day when the Skipper was at the helm and i was home, but he loves to sail.
and he escapes, much like on that winter morning at home a few months back, taking himself for a walk to his girlfriend's house down the street, usually when my husband is not quite watching.
the other day i visited the doctor and learned my blood pressure was high, when in late january, it had been normal. the slow climb likely began february 6 and continued to climb for those 75 hospital days and my mother's fall and then Daddy's homecoming. nothing else has been normal. why should my blood pressure be?
i came into the house that evening, and my husband had a directive:
'you need to sit down with the dog,' he
said
, and i knew immediately he was right. in all these weeks i have been running...to work, to hospitals, to grocery stores, to home, to my parents' home and back again, trying to take care of so much when pretty much everything within my grasp is out of my control, in all this time, i have had little time for my pup. worried he would have to spend too much time alone, i dropped him at day care on my way out toward whatever the day held, bringing him home, both of us bone tired, restlessly resting until we were at it again.
in this past month, i have been trying to replace what was our new normal with just normal, and some days it works. we have finally gotten back to our Friday walks, to days like today when he sits at my feet as i write.
on other days, it's harder. i'm sad. i'm worried. i have fleeting moments when i don't think about what's happened to our family in the past few months and feel guilty for it. i have had trouble concentrating on anything, especially writing. am trying hard to remember every single thing my father ever taught me, and too often my memory fails.
but he and my mother taught me to love a dog. and what a gift that has all been in my life.
susanbyrumrountree.com 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.
a cure for dreams
lydia and i have been getting into mischief since we made onion soup from the wild onions in her front yard when we were five and promptly forgot about it. it was spring, and the sun beat down on the bucket of onions, water and sand until it was ripely rotten. the smell lasted for days.
we sent love letters (she did, i was just her accomplice) to the boys next door, bathing our mouths in her mother's lipstick, planting kisses all over the envelopes, then we ran through the bushes to put them in the box.
we did something else that same year that i can't confess, even now, because my mother reads this blog and would not approve.
we'd slip into the darkened Dixie Theatre with too much popcorn and drink in our hands and get the giggles. once we (she, really) spilled half her drink down someone's back in the row in front of us.
one day when we walked home from town, Miss Hooker, an elderly woman who took care of her mother, ran out of her house toward us and shouted: help me! mother is dead!
i will not say that we rushed into the house, but we did go in, rubbing the old woman's legs until she moaned and we knew that she was indeed NOT dead. i remember calling daddy that day, asking if we had done the right thing.
'as far as i can tell you did,' he said. years later, when miss hooker visited my daddy's office, she looked fondly into my eyes.
things like this always happened to lydia and me. i have used some of it for fodder in my fiction, and i will tell you that each episode makes for a good story.
as lydia and i grew older, we built huts out of wheat straw gathered from the field next to her house. we slipped on our rain boots and crept into the dark woods that by night were inhabited by millions of grackles and starlings swirling above our heads. by day we stomped through knee-high bird droppings, just because we wanted to see for ourselves what the whole bird story was all about. writing about it in fiction, i made it night, though it was pretty scary to go there by day.
when we were in junior high school, we got into decoupage and antiquing furniture in her playhouse, not knowing that we were ahead of our time. we sneaked scuppernong wine her grandfather made from the attic. we set up a beauty parlor on her side porch and i actually let her give me a perm, promising i wouldn't take the curlers out for 24 hours. hours!
on to high school and boys and once, when we stood talking in her back yard as a storm loomed miles away, we watched (and felt and heard) as a beam of lightning shot down and struck the chimney of her house, sending bricks flying toward us. years later when we were together and a thunderstorm approached, i don't know who headed for the car first. we have not liked to be together in storms since.
in college, lydia lived right across the hall from me our first year, down the hall the second, and she was like my sister. applauding me when i did well, putting me in my place when i disappointed her.
when daddy died, almost the first person i heard from was lydia. 'i'm coming,' she said, 'and i'm staying, even if i have to put up a straw hut in the back yard.' and i knew she would do just that.
at the visitation, she came through the back door, telling the folks in the kitchen that she had never used the front door and would not start at that moment. she worked through the room, visiting with people she had known her whole life, and when all the visitors left, she took over the kitchen, pulling out homemade sweet potato ham biscuits (made just that morning), passing them out to all the grands, saying something under her breath like: lydia is gonna take care of things.
the next day, after we buried daddy's ashes, lydia called my cell. 'let's take a ride,' she said, and i said of course, sure. she picked me up, and we drove around the old hood, trying to name who lived where, though neither of us has lived there for more than 35 years.
put two country girls together who have not been in the country for awhile, and they will surely take a ride, out, toward the fields, the open air. i knew where we were headed, a few miles out of town to the country club where our daddies had played golf for so many years. this trip was for lydia, i thought, to see a place her father had helped build.
as we drove into the club, i saw some men fishing on the edge of the pond and there it was in my head, the picture of the huge bass i'd caught with a cane pole, lydia next to me, so heavy that fish was that the two of us had to drag it across the ground up toward the woods. we had no net. we were maybe 13.
Lydia drove around the clubhouse, noted the wood fence post her father's business was known for years ago, still standing guard against the putting green. on we went, down the hill toward the tennis courts where she had tossed her first serve — this was still her trip, mind you... i never played tennis — toward the club house.
lydia plays golf, is married to a pro, so again we were doing this for her. her mother died just last year, her father a few years before, but they lived away from our town for years. and while the week for me had been catching up with folks i'd known much of my life, lydia didn't have that chance when her parents died. i was more than happy to share our grieving.
humm... she said. i'm thinking maybe i'd like an ice cold beer.
so we sauntered into the pro shop and she told me to put my money away. it was quiet, only a golfer or two on #9 next to the shop, another on #10 teeing off with his son. she asked the pro for two cold ones, and i asked his name. suddenly, i felt a tightness near my eyes and throat and said this: my father was dr. byrum.
'was?' he asked. 'i had no idea.' and then he told me that daddy always came into the shop, golf shoes in hand, and sat right in that chair there — and he pointed to it — to change his shoes. same thing every time. 'i knew he was sick,' he said. 'hadn't seen him in awhile.'
then we talked about how lydia's daddy used to bring her through a back gate on weekend afternoons when the course was under construction, how daddy use to bring me out, too, so we could watch it all being built. the pro showed us a aerial photo of the course being built, then talked about the hundreds of oaks felled during hurricane irene almost two years ago. then this:
'why don't you girls take a cart and go for a ride.'
back outside, lydia hopped right in the driver's side and i took my place beside her.
we wove down the path toward the front nine and drove down that first fairway. and then i realized it. yes, this was her trip, but it was mine, too, for when daddy was not in the office or hospital or home, he was here, walking up the #3 par 3, across the little bridge and over the small pond to the green. i had done that very thing with him myself as a girl.
daddy didn't have much time off, but if he couldn't get to Nags Head to look out over the ocean to clear his head, he was here, swinging the ball, knocking it in, walking. thinking.
we looked out over the course and sipped our beer and made a toast to our fathers, cutting across one fairway after another, until we were back in place, both of us healed, a bit, from our short time with our daddies again.
'lydia knows just the cure,' she said as we drove down the back roads toward home.
i don't see lydia often, and i miss her. miss the mischief, the giggles in the night over a spilled coca-cola or a secret wish shared only with each other.
years have put life and distance between us. but on this day, we were at it again, our lives whole for a few minutes, despite all we have lost.
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.
Friday with Daddy
daddy never went through the front door of our house.
always through the back, by the carport and into the utility room where he might scale a fish (much to my mother's chagrin) where the dog sat and scratched at the door during our supper, where he stitched up a rabbit my sister found injured in the yard. where one morning when he was in his 40s he collapsed into my mother, sobbing because his friend had died at home while reading the paper in his wing chair and daddy had to pronounce him dead.
the front door was reserved for prom dates and the rare trick-or-treater, for strangers stopping by.
but when daddy came home on last friday — april 19 — they brought him through the front door.
he came home the same way he left town way back in february, in a giant transport filled with fancy machines, a blue tulip-like flower emblazoned on the side.
we had made the decision to bring him home two days before, my family and his hospital team crowded around his bed. he'd been asking to go home for more than a month, to leave behind the machines and tubes and take his rest in his bed at home. pat, my father's pa, carefully listed off the options for a man who could no longer breathe completely on his own. a long-term care hospital. palliative care or Hospice.
when i heard the word 'home' i looked to my mother, praying she would choose that option. in a wheelchair herself, she would be going home herself the next day, to 24-hour caregivers my sister would meet later in the day. my brother leaned into mama, asking quietly: what do you want to do?
'home,' she said. 'let's take him home.'
a week ago now, the transport team pulled up in front of our house drew him out into the crisp spring air. and i was waiting.
'you're home daddy!' i shouted, and he looked around. home, his wish finally granted. i stood there— my family waiting just inside the front door — watching him look around at the sky. they wheeled him into our front hall where the Christmas tree stood in december,
down the hall he had walked so many times in the middle of the night in his pajamas toward the back door and a patient waiting. down the hall, toward the linen closet, that when i was five i was convinced held a witch. they wheeled him to his room, to a bed he had last slept in on february 5, the room he had shared with my mother for 50 years.
it felt like a long ride to me, down our hall. across the creaky floorboard that gave my brother's Christmas morning crawl away. past my childhood room. a mile it seemed, as they shifted the gurney to make room for this 6-foot-two man, squeezing him through the door into a room softened by carpet and soothing blue.
daddy brought with him a host of people. the Hospice doctor and two nurses. a respiratory therapist, Pat, who had been caring for him all these weeks. a priest who's liberal views challenged daddy's conservative ones, but in his years as their
minister, the two had become good friends.
the team to settled him, and my mother's caregivers helped her into place beside him. it was mid-afternoon.
by the time we gathered next to him, daddy wore his familiar pajamas, sat propped against his favorite pillow, talked to us. i took hold of his hand, and he said something i couldn't grasp... what, daddy?
he looked straight at me and said: your hands are COLD! he wanted chocolate milk, but we had only vanilla ice cream. i spooned it carefully into his mouth, he swallowed, not seeming to care that we could not grant his original wish.
the day before he came home, daddy talked to all of his grandchildren on the phone. somehow, after all these weeks of quiet, he had much to say. it was a miracle, really. i talked to him, too, as did my mother and sister, all of us overjoyed at hearing his voice again.
last thursday was her first day home as well, after her fall. we had fixed her crab cakes — the best meal she had ever eaten! — and watched as she pulled herself up on her bed, straighten out that broken leg, beginning the first steps toward her recovery.
+++
when we gathered everybody around in the room, daddy said: we didn't plan for all these people.' for daddy, it has always been about the plan. each day i visited him in the hospital, he would ask: plan. toward the end, when we had no idea, i'd shrug my shoulders — one of his exercises — and say, 'who knows? that's the plan.' which seemed to satisfy him.
this time we had one. we all joined the priest for last rites from the good ol'
Book of Common Prayer
. and then daddy thanked everyone for coming. thanked them, which is so what my father would do. later on, he FaceTimed with my daughter and my niece. strange, that, this 84-year-old dying man saying when asked by his granddaughters how he felt, he said:'pretty good.'
++++
i will tell you that it's something, when your siblings gather round your dying father.
my brother, a physician, is good with those who are critically ill. i have watched him with my father all these weeks. he leans in, speaks softly, but loud enough to jostle daddy awake when need be. this day was no different. i can't imagine how hard it is to be doctor, lawyer, indian chief, son, for he has been all these things since february, and again on this afternoon, our last friday with daddy.
my sister brought the dog in, picked her up and put her on the bed with daddy, knowing just how long he had waited to touch her head.
we spent the afternoon and evening gathered around my parents, telling stories and praying and singing.
After supper, i sat with him and read him the story of his life.
we kissed him goodnight, leaving he and my mother alone in the room.
she lay by his side the whole night, and ruby did for most of it.
and then, a call, footsteps in the hall, my sister running toward the room where i had tried to sleep a little.
it was over.
we surrounded his body, talking and crying, naming all the dogs he was now getting to see. our grandparents. his friends. so many who have made this journey before him.
and then we left the room, all of us, to wait for the next step.
in the wee hours, as we sat up and waited for the Hospice nurse and the funeral director to arrive in the pouring rain, we listened as mama told stories about him and their life together, their early years. Despite all the uncertainty and the trauma we've experienced these many weeks, what a treasure my father's last hours were to all of us.
dawn came, and we called all the children, made arrangements for them to join us in this new life without their Pop B. not one of us has wanted to go there, but at least we will travel together, his legacy to us that he was the magnet that drew us together, keeps drawing, even in his absence.
in the days since daddy died, we have heard a hundred stories from his patients and friends, many reflecting his wry humor, others his humble, caring nature.
'he was quiet, but he was
powerful,' the man, a patient, who has kept up our lawn when daddy no longer could told me yesterday. yes he was.
my father was a great man, so many have said to us in the past week. but aren't all our father's that?
"so with the sleight of his magician's hand, he will end the show,'
i wrote back in 1997.
and i don't know who will miss him more — his patients, or the doctor himself..." those very words caught in my throat as i read them to him one last time just a few hours before he died. words appropriate for retirement so many years ago, and, it turns out, for his last friday with us.
i can't imagine now how much i'll miss him. it still isn't real to me yet. but i am not alone, because i have a full family and a whole town gathered around me, and we are all holding each other up.
bye daddy. guess it was finally your time to hit the road. be careful. and have a safe and happy trip. sbr
ps: thank you to all who have called and visited, who have sent food, cards and facebook messages, who had loved my daddy at times it seems as much as i did. your generosity toward my family is overwhelming. maybe now daddy understands just how much he meant to all who knew him. susan
susanbyrumrountree.com 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.
guest blog: Pop B's pencils
a note from writemuch: my nephew John Jenkins wrote a post for this blog last summer, on the occasion of my parents' 60th anniversary. While Daddy was sick, John came to visit and stopped by the Scotland Neck house on his way to the hospital. Here, are the lessons he found in that short visit.
Pop B's Pencils
by John Jenkins
I stopped by Scotland Neck before the last time I saw Pop B at the hospital. It was just me, my mom, sister, niece and aunt writemuch. Sometime during lunch, I decided to walk around the house I've explored thousands of times since I was born. I am not sure why I decided to do this, but it sure helped.
I discovered something pretty funny. At least I thought it was funny. Right on top of Pop B's keyboard was a tiny pad of paper, and a pencil. On top of that pencil, like most pencils, was an eraser. Pink as a newborn, and so obviously unused, the eraser sat on top of the white pencil and looked more like a decoration than anything. That struck me as humorous at the time, but did not seem like an observation worth sharing. But then in every room I knew Pop B spent time in, I kept seeing these pencils.
P
erfect looking pencils. They weren't the pencils I used throughout school, eraser worn at the top or sometimes even nonexistent. His pencils almost looked elegant in an odd way.
But now as I look back at that short visit to my grandfather's house, I think my pencil and eraser observation reflects Pop B more than anything else I could think of. He was so cautiously perfect in ever single way throughout his life. After 84 years, he had to know that he was never going to make a mistake drastic enough to use the other side of that pencil. But there the eraser sat—just in case. Pens— now those are for the reckless and mistake-prone people like myself. That's why my papers have always looked like a crazy, mistake-ridden mess. Marked up, crossed out and confused. Pop B wasn't any of those things. Ever. The notes he took on the songs he was learning on that keyboard weren't like that, his conversations weren't like that, his life wasn't like that. And that's rare. His notes were as eloquent as he was. Pop B was well spoken, easy to follow, helpful.
He had
no need for any of that flashy stuff. He didn't need to impress anyone with his presentation because his delivery, his accomplishments, his whole life really, spoke for itself. Navy veteran, beloved doctor, even more beloved father, grandpa and great-grandpa.
Another thing I noticed during that exploration of his home was his pictures. Of course he was in some, always seemingly nodding in approval of everything going on around him and everything he helped build. But what was on display most was his beautiful and headstrong wife, his uniquely gifted children, and his whole mess of grandchildren. This set up was also how Pop B seemed to live his life. Not once was it ever about him. Whether it was spreading health among Scotland Neck or spreading his Atticus Finch like knowledge to us grandkids, it was never about him. It was how what he learned and what he knew could help us every day.
And that brings us back to the pencils Pop B has left behind at the house. I know I won't be needing one, because Pop B's influence is certainly never going to be erased.
susanbyrumrountree.com 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.
masters at it.
daddy loves golf. is not very good at it, but years ago, when a group of men formed a small country club a few miles outside of town, we no longer had him at home for Sunday dinner.
i don't know if he had every played before the club started up, but he played most weekends when he was off. i am not athletic, so i never took it up, but i remember playing once with him, taking about 30 strokes to get to the hole, then putting what felt like a long way to me to to the hole on the green, and sinking it.
but what i remember more was sunday afternoons when he was home, and i watched golf with him.
daddy went to wake forest when arnold palmer was there. they didn't know each other, but when i was growing up, Arnold felt like family. he was one of us, a demon deacon, about the same age as daddy, and whoever was playing in a tournament that week, well, we were pulling for arnold. it was just right.
daddy and i last watched the masters together with any vengeance in 1980. i remember sitting in our family room during those final moments as seve ballesteros sank the putt that would win it for him, and i actually said to daddy: i wonder where i will be during next year's masters?
that master's for us was one more benchmark that another year had ended — the long winter over and new life just about to begin.
that spring, i was hoping for some sort of new life myself. i was searching — just a year out of college — for i didn't know what. after graduation, i'd found a job at a small daily newspaper, but as a photographer, not as the writer i longed to be. so when the job grew stale i pulled together my pitiful resume, typing it out on my trusted olivetti, sending it out blindly to the n&o, the atlanta paper, charlotte, anywhere to get myself out of eastern north carolina. i'm sure if i could find it now i would be embarrassed.
that summer of '80, i called (yes, people actually called other people in those days) the placement office at the j-school at carolina, asking if they had anything — i might even scrub floors to get out! — i could apply for.
oh, yes, said the woman on the other end of the line. a classmate of mine was working in augusta as a feature writer, and her department was looking to add a writer.
augusta. my mind thought back to that sunday afternoon in april when i'd watched the tournament with daddy and it felt like fate. the azaleas! the green lawns! the clubhouse! what fun!
i whipped out the olivetti and banged a new resume out, pulling together the very best clips i could find. (aka those with as few typos as possible) put a stamp on it, dropped in in the mail and prayed.
some days later, i got a call from the editor. could i come for an interview?
three weeks later, there i was, a working writer on my first assignment. wouldn't you know the husband of the woman i was interviewing for my story had once been an assistant football coach in my home town?
(a side note, though this i not part of the story: i met a rakish reporter my first night there. a year later we married, celebrating at a reception in my parents' back yard.)
that next spring i found myself standing in the clubhouse at the master's, and there they were, all of daddy's friends: arnold palmer in his hot pink golf shirt, gary player, jack nicklaus. even sam snead. all of them close enough for me to touch. my job that day was to report the color of this storied golf tournament, and all i could think of was the story i would tell daddy when i got to see him next.
that afternoon at sunset, i sat with my editor on the front lawn at augusta national, gin and tonic in hand soaking in the sunset on one very pinch-able day.
+++
when the hospital speech therapist first put the speaking valve on daddy's trach she asked him what he like to do now that he was retired.
'read. play golf.' he said.
'what kind of golfer are you?' she asked.
'not a very good one,' he said.
on saturday, daddy and i watched the masters together again for the first time in a very long time. as the old guard — player, palmer, nicklaus — teed off to open the tournament and new names took their places on the greens, i asked him if he remembered that day in 1980 when we watched balesteros don the green jacket. he shook his head, and so i reminded him, then shared my story of the 1981 clubhouse crowd once again.
'i think tom watson won that year,' i said and his eyes told me he didn't believe i could remember it right after all those years, so google answered the question for us.
on sunday, when adam scott sank his putt in the pouring rain to win this year's event, i was back at home, imagining daddy's eyes glued to that sudden death putt. it was among the most memorable tournaments in master's history, the pundits all said the next day, and it was indeed. but for very different reasons to me.
daddy's old clubs are collecting dust in the storage house that holds all of his tools and the blue wagon he used to tote the grandkids around in with the riding mower. though he has not played golf in a good long while and he has a newer set, these are the ones i remember.
tomorrow daddy comes home, a place he hasn't seen for 67 days.
i think about his homecoming, and in my mind, i can hear the crack of the wood against the ball, see it soar through the air toward a perfect line drive. hear the whir of the golf cart as he heads up the fairway to take that next shot toward the green.
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.
richochet, II
there is an apartment building in chelsea in NYC with a glass front (well, there are thousands), but a few years ago, the new york times magazine featured it in a photograph, which i can't find now. but in each backlit apartment in that small world, simultaneous living played out before the viewer's eyes. dancers practicing their steps. mothers feeding supper to anxious toddlers. a cellist leaning into her instrument. a lone woman watching tv. floor after floor, side-by-side, people lived out their lives unbeknownst to voyeurs, or to those who shared their walls.
i have been thinking about this for weeks, now, how on any given day at the same time of day, my children are doing one thing and i am doing another, far away from them, the walls between us never melting away. how when my son makes a phone call to a client in raleigh, my daughter walks the dog to doggie daycare on the upper west side in manhattan on her way to work, as my husband checks the drudge report for the morning headlines and i wipe up the kitchen before heading out to work.
parallel lives, it feels like. for this family who used to share the same space, once upon a time. now when we do, it's for usually for a few hours — on a church pew, around the kitchen table, opening presents on Christmas morning. a few hours. not nearly enough.
i will confess that until recently, i have not thought too much about the parallel life i had been living with my parents. every few nights i'd call home and find out about their days, and though i worried sometimes about them driving to and from the doctors office, or not having enough to do, i didn't picture them living life out in a lighted box next to my own lighted box.
in the past two months since daddy has been hospitalized, we have developed a new routine for our lives, all of us in our little lighted boxes. my brother works, my mother drives back and forth, my sister calls, comes home when she can. we have shared the lighted box at times, all of us converging in whatever glass-fronted room holds my father at that moment.
those back-lit boxes came back to me the other night, as i thought back to my wednesday, a week ago. how at lunch time, my husband came to my office to share a hot lunch of beef stew and green beans with me, while my mother sat in my father's hospital room talking to him, watching him breathe in and out. how my brother, at the same time, walked the corridors of the hospital to see patients as sick as my dad. how my sister, back in iowa was going through her day.
at 2 p.m., if you could hold up the glass box and look at our parallel lives, here is what you'd see: my brother talking on the phone with my mother. me sitting at my desk, sending emails, making lists for the rest of my day and another of what was in my father's doctor's bag years ago. my sister likely texting her daughter, who was on her third day back at work after the baby. we all stood in our separate boxes, miles apart.
the moment i learned mama had fallen, i felt the walls fade away and suddenly we all stood in the same room again. this family who once-upon-a-time sat at the kitchen table and shared fondu on saturday nights. who themselves shared the church pew on Sundays, who warmed the seats as my brother played basketball in the old high school gym, who once rode all the way to newport, rhode island in a tiny ford torino, just to see where my parents had once lived.
sharing the box these past weeks with my birth family has been something powerful, even in the middle of this very hard thing. in the box together, we make jokes, we pray, we look at old pictures, we cry. we laugh at the absurdity of what we face together, what my parents face.
this week, we have sort of retreated to our boxes again. my mother lies in a hospital room down long hallways and up elevators from my father. i'm back at work, as is my brother, and my sister moves between our parents, having her turn at trying to keep up with both of them, though neither is moving very far.
my sister-in-law told me the other day that i had to finish richochet, because it didn't end as most of my stories do. i have thought about that, too. but how to end a story that just doesn't have one yet? i wish i could invent something, but anything i dream up means i am just fooling myself.
and so i will just keep going in my own little lighted box, watching as the walls fade away every now and then when my family gathers. and i'll keep writing the un-endable story, until the words finally push me through.
susanbyrumrountree.com 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.