DISTRACTIONS

Distraction: a thing that prevents one from giving full attention to the main focus. Diversion.

The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth,--

The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.

     Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

People go about life, and Earth continues to spin regardless, notwithstanding, and nevertheless. 

Dickinson. Distractions ease the moment, and the memory of them lasts a lifetime. Irrelevant, nonsensical details. My mother was out on an errand when I arrived home after school Thursday, January 23, 1947. The maid called me into the kitchen and asked, “Did you know your grandmother died today?” It was a crushing shock that brought on wracking sobs. When my mother sped up the driveway in our blue 1942 Chevrolet Fleetline Aerosedan 

a few minutes later, she was upset because, knowing my closeness to Mom, she had told the maid not to tell me. Though odd and, especially, irrelevant, distractions divert, protect, shield. That is the first of that long weekend.

The funeral was at Wilson Funeral Home, then located on McKenzie Avenue across the street from the court house. Family sat in a side room and I couldn’t see who else was there until they came up to Mom’s open casket directly in front of us. St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church rector, the Reverend George Elton Sauls, officiated. Afterward, we drove to Pensacola, and followed Wilson’s white 1941 Buick hearse slowly westward along Belmont through the charming old arched gatehouse. E.G., my father’s sister Evalyn, had flown home immediately from Washington, DC and had borrowed our car for the funeral drive to Pensacola with aunts, cousin Ann, and Pop, my grandfather. My mother, father and I went in the dark green 1941 Plymouth Special Deluxe sedan with “suicide doors” that my parents had borrowed from my mother’s brother Charles for the day. Ruth, from Pensacola, drove her own car, a black 1941 Plymouth business coupe.

After the graveside service, family dispersed within Pensacola, E.G., Pop, Ruth, Marguerite and Ann to my Aunt Ruth’s house on Mallory; my mother, father and I to my Gentry grandparents‘ house on E. Strong, where my mother grew up. When we arrived, my grandmother was frying chicken for our supper. On the drive home to Panama City I was in the back seat alone and listened as my parents discussed inviting Pop and Ann to live with us, to me an exciting prospect. Monday morning I was back at Cove School, sixth grade. Friday, January 24 had been my sister’s ninth birthday: did we have a celebration? Can’t remember.

My sharpest memory of that long weekend is of strangers, other people, cars passing by on the street, children laughing and playing, people walking by blithely as though nothing had happened, as though Mom had not died, oblivious to my overwhelming sadness. It was my first experience of the death of someone close and dear, my introduction to the huge, painful lump of grief that swells in upper chest and throat and will not go away, and stays for weeks and weeks and seemingly forever; and of the obliviousness of creation around me. It was part of my maturing into human life as it is and was meant to be. 

This is in my mind as I read Rev. Ray’s Facebook postings about Madison Hair, and agonize with David Smith’s family about the tragic death of niece and cousin Carly over the weekend, and now with the Husfelt and Maclean families about Drew and Allison’s fatal accident that claimed Drew’s life yesterday. 

As we grieve so terribly, all around us life goes on oblivious to our anguish, as though nothing had happened. Madison’s parents and Carly’s parents and Allison and the Maclean and Husfelt families will experience, painfully, sometimes incredulously, that the world keeps turning, children keep playing, adults still go to work, cars and trucks speed past, planes fly overhead, news, weather and even cartoons are still on TV. In time, very soon, it will seem as if everyone else has forgotten, because people are laughing, talking about going to the beach, looking forward to the weekend, off on summer vacation, thankful that TS Debby was no worse here, wondering if there will be a hurricane, and life goes on. 

That life goes on may be the only balm. The sunrise after the storm may be the shield that keeps us going until our own time; and the sunset, as RevRay says, a promise for tomorrow.

TW+
Upper picture: down front at my house.
Lower picture by the Rev. Ray Wishart: thanks, Ray for all you are and all you do.