“You remember when I had to catch the school bus in the rain, so Ma put bread bags over my shoes and made me wear a trash bag like a poncho,” my cousin asked.
I laughed and turned back to where my grandmother lay in her coffin.
Ma died three weeks ago.
Here we sat, at the funeral home, waiting for the pastor to begin the eulogy we had written.
A couple of nights before the funeral, my mom, sister, aunts, a cousin, and I got together to share the stories about my grandmother that would make up her eulogy. I typed it all up and printed it for the pastor.
That wasn’t necessary, of course. The pastor would have done a fine job. But we are a family well-versed in death and its rituals. We knew what we wanted and what we didn’t want. And we didn’t want a eulogy plucked out of the bible, all about our heavenly father and the life hereafter. We wanted it to be about Edna Mae.
Her story is our story, after all.
Six children, eight grandchildren, twelve great-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren.
She was the headwater. She made our lives possible in a biological sense but she was also our caretaker and the family nucleus. We grew up in a small town with grandma just across the tracks. Forget nannies, daycares, or preschools. Ma was our babysitter, an extension of our mothers, the center of the family mandala.
At any given moment, there were 2-5 grandkids at her house and a jumble of family members stopping by.
Now that she is gone, I feel that my mom, sister, and I are in a tiny pod, ejected from the mothership and free-floating in space. We’re looking out small circular windows and watching my aunts, uncles, cousins, and their children, as their pods float off in opposite directions.
—-
When you are intertwined with a person, the funeral is only partially for the deceased. It is mostly for you, the survivors, to help you grieve. It is your formal goodbye.
And we would say goodbye with our stories because we are a family of storytellers.
What do other families talk about when they are together? Current events? Politics? The economy? Business? Future plans?
I can’t imagine.
We always go to the archives.
“You remember that time Angie ran over my cat twice?”
Cue story.
“You remember when Ma convinced Anna that Alice Cooper was at her house?”
You do? Well, you’re going to hear it again, anyway.
“Did I tell you kids about your grandpa getting struck by lightning?”
When we aren’t gossiping, our moments together are spent remembering. We aren’t worried that we’re living in the past because today will eventually make it there and work its way into our tales. The present always finds us, just later on.
My grandma was often quiet, serious, and stoic. She didn’t tell her stories the way my aunts and uncles did, at the kitchen table with everyone crowded around, hanging on for a ridiculous climax and a big laugh.
It was usually when you were alone with her.
After my grandpa died, my sister and I stayed the night at Ma’s house more often. My sister would fall asleep almost immediately, but I would stay awake as Ma would tell me about the life that she had lived and the things she had seen and done.
Her life was my bedtime story. I listened intently, staring at the ceiling in the dark, occasionally asking a question. But often, I was afraid to speak or even breathe for fear I would call her back to the present, snapping her out of her memory. I needed to know how the story would end. I didn’t want to leave these walks through the odd world that was the past, with my grandmother, as I never knew her.
I wondered if she thought I was asleep, and she told her memories to the darkness, unaware that I was hanging on every word.
Now that I am older, some of her stories feel like a fever dream and I am not sure if I remember them correctly or ever heard them at all, as many of them were never repeated.
Born in Kentucky in 1934, Edna was one of 13 children. Her mother had gotten married when she was 13 years old. She said that her father ‘wasn’t no good’; a bootlegger, making good money when so many had so little. But none of it went to the family, so they suffered, impoverished and hungry.
She told me stories about living in an abandoned boxcar along the railroad tracks with one bed between them all. She told me about working as a child, picking cotton, and cleaning the floors of a brothel. She told me about losing siblings when they were only children.
One year shy of her high school graduation, she dropped out to be a wife. When my grandpa was stationed in Northeast France in the 50s, my grandma stayed in the U.S. with her firstborn. Pa tried to get her to go with him, but she didn’t dare. She used to say to me, “Can you imagine me getting on an airplane with a baby?”
My grandpa, who had left school in grade school, didn’t know how to read or write. The first time Ma received a letter from him, it didn’t make any sense. She said, “I sat down and cried”. But he quickly learned so they could communicate. On his return, he took my grandma a bottle of French perfume that she never used because there was never an occasion “special enough”. It evaporated. The empty bottle still sat on her dresser 50 years later.
When I was in college, I began to record my grandma talking about the past: her story, our family’s story, and that of our town, and region. I wanted to document it. I wanted to create an oral history that not only my family could enjoy, but one that would paint a picture of the last 80 years in the Missouri Bootheel.
But like so many things, I abandoned it. The project is unfinished and Ma is gone. The only thing I have to show for the attempt is about 3-4 hours of my grandma’s voice saved on Google Drive.
Even if you’ll never finish a project like this one either, start it anyway… Ask the people you care about everything that you can. And record it.
—-
Now we tell my grandmother’s stories for her.
Beginning with her eulogy just three weeks ago.
As we all sat around, sharing our memories, what stood out was that despite my grandmother’s seriousness and stoicism…despite her Pentecostal piousness and the hardships she had lived through…despite being old-fashioned and a firm disciplinarian…despite being frugal and painfully honest…
She was funny.
Sure, like most grandmas she was generous and loving. But she also played pranks on us. She teased us. She made fun of the neighbors. She was the queen of nicknames. Over the years, she dubbed some of the folks around town Freaky Frank, the Dreamer, Visa, Buffalo Butt, Big Tits, Wooly Boogers, and Burr Head, to name a few. Never to their face of course, always behind their backs, in the comfort of her home.
She had a whistle that she kept by the phone for telemarketers. When they called, she would pick up the whistle and blow it in their ear.
Her antique expressions that must have come straight off a southern farm killed us. Once, I came in from playing outside and my face was dirty. When I walked into the kitchen she said, “You look like you been suckin’ on the ol’ sow.”
My mom’s favorite prank was on April Fools Day, before school. My grandma told her kids (my mom, aunts, and uncles) that the city was going to shut off the water, so they were going to get out of school early. The kids went around telling their friends and by the end of the day, the whole school, including the teachers, had heard the rumor. Everyone was looking forward to it! But as the day went on, nothing happened. When the kids got home, they were pissed because what gives? The school screwed up. But Edna grinned and said, “April Fools”
At a yard sale, when a man was trying to haggle her down on some toy cars, she told him that if he really needed the extra 25 cents, he probably shouldn’t be spending anything.
She just didn’t care what people thought of her.
And she was smart. She used to do our taxes. When she took my aunt to get her GED, she decided to take the test and get hers, too, for the hell of it. She passed.
Everyone in the funeral home laughed and cried all the way through our eulogy.
We filed out, buzzing…
“She always told me not to trust the police.”
“Well, she told me, “Before you date somebody ‘round here, come tell me to make sure you’re not kin to ‘em.”
“You remember when she gave us gloves for Christmas and we were disappointed until someone found out she had shoved money in all the fingers?”
She told us stories her whole life: in the kitchen, seated around her in the living room, in the darkness before drifting off to sleep.
We held her hands and told her stories at her bedside the three days she needed to transition into the next life. We told them at her funeral. And we tell them, still.
Subscribe or suck on the ol’ sow
