Death never comes suddenly, except to the very young. As Tolstoy has written, among the poor, simple, and uneducated, daily life is filled with suffering and hardship, life and death, so that often when one's time comes, death is an old and familiar presence. I know now that even though Mama had not wanted to die in a hospital, among strangers and machines, she followed the tradition of her people in recognizing the meaning of living and dying, in insisting in her goodbyes on tying up loose ends, and in submitting, insofar as modern medicine would allow, to going quietly, peacefully in the end. The doctor told me she died of cardiac arrest; I know she had died from a worn out heart and years of having seen death close at hand. Mama read the Bible in the early evening hours, Ecclesiastes in particular, so she knew well the notion of "a time to be born and a time to die." Death, thus, promised her completion, a cycle rounding itself out and pronouncing meaning upon her life at last. It was the hard but necessary end that she had observed in so many near and dear to her heart.
On this particular day, a heat had settled down over the hills, and Mama was in the kitchen, standing over some blackberry jelly she was stirring. We kids looked forward to the next morning, knowing we would be permitted to eat the froth she dipped off today spread on our biscuits. This had been a hard morning for Mama, and we knew enough to stay out from under foot. Sweat beaded, then riveted from her face; she would take a corner of her apron and mop the perspiration from her brow and out of her eyes. Laboring as she was, she didn't see her mama and daddy come walking up the gravel road. Normally, we kids would have run out to meet Gramma and Gramps, but today, we hesitated. Gramma was leaning heavily on Gramps, and an unusual weariness accompanied their plodding, shuffling gait. Finally, I broke away and ran into the house announcing, "Mama, mama, here come Gramma and Grampa." Mama looked up from the stove and out through the window that opened in the direction of the road. Alarm swept over her face. Hastily, she pulled the dishpan of jelly off the stove, carrying it over to the meal chest and setting it down on some hot pads. There was no way to regulate the stove except by the amount of wood one put into it. Free of the jelly, she ran through the house and out onto the porch, banging the screen door, a thing she never did. I looked at Angie and Reba, realizing we all sensed something was wrong.
Getting Gramma into the house, Mama helped her over to the couch, seeing to it she was lying down. Then, hurrying into the kitchen, she pulled a washrag from a cabinet drawer, wet it in a wash pan on the water stand which held two buckets of freshly carried spring water. Stricken, Gramp's face shadowed as he watched Mama place the washcloth on Gramma's head, over a purple, angry knot that had risen there, blood oozing from under the damp, limp hair. Little by little, the story got told. Grampa slammed Gramma over the head with a stick of stove wood, or so Gramma told them haltingly; Grampa said he didn't remember doing it but that he must have. He had been crying as he half-carried Gramma up the road, telling her over and over he was sorry and that he didn't mean to do it. Mama had been afraid something like this would happen for some time now. We had heard her talk to Daddy about how her daddy must have hardened arteries, that he was doing and saying strange things, that he saw women in the barn. Daddy told Mama he already had more than he could handle. It was only natural that Mama later lamented, "Oh, if I'd a brung ya t' live here, this wouldn't 'ave happened." She never did quite forgive herself, or our daddy. Daddy wasn't hard, just practical.
Gramma remained pale and weak most of the rest of that day, but by the next morning, she was up and helping Mama wash the breakfast dishes. They stood at the kitchen stove together, Mama washing, and Gramma lifting the still sudsy dishes from the rinse water and placing them in the drain pan. Looking at them together there, I didn't understand why I felt I was somehow seeing myself in my mother, myself as I would look years later. The dishes would stay there until needed for dinner; then they would be lifted directly from the pan and placed on the table. Finishing, Mama and Gramma squeezed the dishrags and hung them behind the stove.
While Mama was cooking dinner that day, they heard Gramma complained of a headache, but as days passed, life returned to normal-except Gramps slept in the living room while their Gramma slept with us girls in the backroom. The door between the two rooms was locked, and the only way we could get to Mama and Daddy was across the front porch stretching across the two lengths. Daddy said he wasn't afraid of Gramps during the day when he could see what he was doing, but he didn't trust him when he got up at night. "Y' jest never know what's going through that man's head."
About three weeks later, I sat up in bed, wondering what had awakened me. Gramma's breathed slowly, rhythmically, in heavy sleep beside me. My eyes adjusting, I realized the room wasn't dark as it normally should be this late at night, and I thought maybe it's closer to morning than I realized. The dogs were barking outside, as if someone were approaching the house. My sisters were sleeping in the other bed across the room. Though scared, I got up and eased over to the door, feeling the flimsy protection of just a latch between me and the night. An eerie, dancing light bathed the clearing around the house; the dogs in the middle of the road bayed upward at what looked like the sun, only bigger and dimmer, just above the tree tops. The orb shimmered as I watched closely; it got smaller all the time. Scared and puzzled, thinking to myself I didn't dare set foot outside that door to make the trip across the porch to the screen leading into the living room at the other end, I stood rooted to my spot. Mama, I knew, would be sleeping in a room at the back of the house. Before Gramma came, Mama had slept more often than not in bed with me; a light sleeper, even on the nights when she tried to sleep with Daddy, his snoring would finally send her to the back room. On many nights, I lay awake, listening to Mama's breathing, becoming afraid when it stopped, moving a foot gently into her until its even measure restored itself. I didn't tell Mama this, but she I'd become very afraid she would die. Finding will to move myself, I stole back over to Gramma and shook her. Normally easy to awaken, she failed to respond. Giving up, I padded stealthily back over to the door. What had been larger than the sun shimmered now smaller, casting off a reddish-orange hue. Still standing there trying to figure out "What th' devil?" I was startled when Angie's hand touched my shoulder, and I jumped visibly.
"Wh-what is it?" Angie whispered.
"I don't know," I whispered back hoarsely.
We stood there together, watching until whatever it was finally just disappeared completely. Angie later turned it into a UFO, saying the object, whatever it was, turned and just disappeared, zipped off into space.
Do ya wanna go tell Mama and Daddy?" Angie asked.
"Why?" I responded evenly, trying to sound braver than I felt. "It's gone now. We can tell them in the morning."
We crawled back in bed, pulling the covers tightly about us, but neither of us slept very well. I could hear Angie tossing the rest of the night. I lay beside Gramma, recalling stories I'd heard over the years. Mama'd told me about being out at the clothesline, taking down clothes, when a ball of light flew down at her. Getting to her, it had turned and gone back, but it had a streamer "like all t' colors of t' rainbow," Mama reported. Mama was superstitious, though she didn't call it superstition, just said, "God gives some people beliefs, and if they believe 'em strong enough, they come true."
Superstitions were a necessary part of mountain folks' lives, intertwined with our deepest religious beliefs. In fact, life in the hills couldn't be conceived without these uncanny hunches, feelings, premonitions, and strange happenings.
We kids had even begun to believe Mama when she told us, "Rooster's crowin' on t' steps. Means comp'ny's coming." Sure enough, we watched it happen time and time again. One of the old straggly roosters would come strutting up to the steps, crow a few times, mark the steps with a huge splashing splotch of mess, and leave. A few minutes to an hour or so later, we would be sitting on the porch talking to some kin, the billowing dust from their car still settling around them.
Mama had other beliefs she favored, too. Nobody brought a hoe or shovel into the house, for it meant death, as did the appearance of a lightning bug in the living room. We kids grew up not walking under ladders and sometimes threw salt over our shoulders. We also learned to end our declarations of intent with "God willin'," and we prayed religiously our own version of the child's prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep and pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take." I'd gone to bed on many nights wondering if I had a soul, what it would be like to have a soul out of my body. I'd watched small animals die, and as far as I could tell, the only thing that left was breath, and the body then became cold. I'd believed Mama though when she'd told me that praying was important and that God would hear. We'd also been taught to ask forgiveness for any wrongs done that day, and on some nights, I would walk myself back through the entire day, trying to remember what I'd done, what had been done to me, and sometimes, I'd just pray, "And forgive me for what I don't want to remember." I didn't always feel better after the prayers, and on many nights after I fell asleep, I'd worked through pain and guilt in my dreams, mixing the impulses of youth, wrong doings, and death.
Other family members saw other lights. My sisters tore into the house one night half scared to death, breathlessly telling the family about lights they'd seen out by the road. Our brother Chester before he died told of running all the way off the mountain one night, not stopping until he got to a cousin's, after he'd seen multi-colored balls of light darting around the sky in front of him. Mama told us his account nights later when we were sitting on the porch recounting the past. My curiosity always got aroused by these stories, although I didn't much believe in them. This night, though, left her not knowing what to think; I had definitely seen lights, and I had no explanation for them. I remembered, in the long hours before morning, how when a great aunt had died, somebody told the story of thumping sounds going all around the house-"Jest like somebody was walkin' 'round it with a stick, Mama'd said. That the aunt's body was laid out in a casket in the front room didn't make any of them at the wake any more comfortable. I slept fitfully, a shadow among the peopled shadows of my dreams, the invisible and formless formed; I only slowly awakened to the real bumpings around the next morning as Mama and Daddy stirred around in their usual routines. I told Mama about the dancing light; she listened tolerantly. When, a few minutes later, Angie came in repeating the same lines, Mama quickened. She gave our story even more consideration when Uncle Quint, who lived just below us, reported the whole hill as seeming to be "lit up like a Christmas tree sometime in the early morning hours."
A day or two later, Gramma changed for the worse. Mama and Daddy rushed her to the hospital; the hospital sent her on to the bigger Vanderbilt in Nashville the same day. There, they diagnosed her as having a blood clot in the brain. Gramma never got any better but went into a coma and stayed like that until she died a couple of months later. We didn't see a lot of Mama for a while; she practically lived at the hospital, going to our older sister's just long enough to clean up and eat. What she said hurt most was "havin' to see her mama lying there day after day without knowin' whether she was feelin' or seein' anything. I wanted so bad jest t' have her open her eyes and speak." I experienced that helplessness when I stood by Mama's bed on that final day before she died. My heart strained within me, a dread possessing me in a sudden horror of desolation.
My sisters and I got new dresses to wear to Gramma's funeral. We had not seen a dead person before. Peering into the casket, I saw Gramma strangely poised and more powdered and rouged than I'd ever seen her in life. I stretched up over the casket and bent down to kiss Gramma's cheek, shocked by the deadness that met my lips. She felt like the clay we kids had mixed with cold spring water and shaped in our hands. Whatever was lying there, I knew in that moment was not my gramma. Somehow, Gramma had gone-and I didn't understand where or why. The same bewilderment and confusion engulfed me when I stood over Mama, looking down at her, dead. Mama'd always said, "A mama's the best friend a girl's got," and "losing a son and now Mama are t' two hardest things I've ever had t' do."
Mama was proud that she'd tried to do for her mama she could and that she didn't have any regret there. She told us girls, too, "Yo'r gramma went t' heaven," and we believed her without really understanding where or what heaven was. Mama read to us about mansions in heaven and streets of gold, and I knew all about Jacob's ladder and angels in clouds. What bothered me about heaven was that people had to die to get there, and that seemed wrong.
Mama worried about the upkeep of her mama's grave, going down and putting flowers on it, and telling us girls she hoped we wouldn't forget her grave when she died. An involuntary fear gripped my being and twisted until I groaned softly. Mama locked onto my eyes, and for a moment, we became one soul linked in grief and suffering. I learned the urgency of Mama's request when, some years later in Alabama, visiting relatives' graves, I carelessly remarked about an overgrown, weedy grave, "What difference does it make: They're dead." Mama turned her eyes on her in a sad, long drawn-out way that left me flushed thoroughly in my unworthiness. Mama changed, too, after Gramma's death; her eyes mirrored a deeper study, and she became religious about visiting the sick around them.
About a week before Mama died, I went back to Gramma's grave, not having been there in years. A pulling, yearning, a need to get something said between me and Mama brought me back; somehow, I believed what needed to get said might would better get said here at Gramma's grave. I'd just been to the hospital to see Mama after she had fallen and fractured her right hip and shoulder. Standing in that graveyard, the steepled white Baptist church at my back, the joyous chirping of nesting June birds in contrast to the grave stones and their bleached-out artificial roses, I bowed my head, hearing herself pledge aloud, "God, this one is between you and Mama. Whatever you decide, I'll try to accept." Mama quietly respoke that prayer again and in my mind as I tried to adjust to her death. She'd always preface the prayer, "Now, Laura, you said you'd accept whatever we decided..." and I'd remember I had, and my soul would for a moment rest.
After Gramma went to the hospital, Gramps grew listless, and he aged visibly, almost day by day. He'd peck at his food, grumble at us kids, and spend most of his time just shuffling around the yard. Daddy called it "puttering." After Mama died, I saw Daddy doing just that kind of puttering. He'd walk aimlessly around the house and find nothing really worth doing. What did bring him some pleasure was fishing and hunting with a brother, and he and Uncle Al would spend hours on the bank of Caney Bend, waiting for a float to bob. They didn't talk much, just sat there, each wrapped up in his past. Not finding my daddy's kind of retreat, Grampa just kept plodding around, refusing to stay in the house-even that winter. He would pull on a woolen cap, put on his ragged, flannel-lined denim jacket, and move out onto the porch and into the yard. Mama, watching him one day, remarked, "Yo're grampa's not gonna be here long." He died before the winter was over. Again, Mama stood by a bedside, grew tired but ignored her weariness. I stood by her side the day they buried Gramps. I felt her tremble, but looking into her eyes, I saw only a mist condensing and a determination to bear her grief etching itself in the lines of her face.
When Mama's time came to die, I found myself cast strangely in the child's role of having to watch a parent age, sicken, and die; I didn't find it any easier than Mama had. The only effective means I found for getting Mama out of the house and into the hospital was to say, "Now, Mama, what would you do if this was your mama?" The argument was one-sided, and I watched a shadow darken her mama's eyes. She went, almost meekly. "Guess I'll never see my home again," she told a neighbor who helped Angie load her into an ambulance for that final excruciating ride over the bumpy country roads taking her to the hospital where she died.
On that long ago night when I traveled from Georgia to stand at Mama's bedside, my eyes caught and lingered on the full moon. For a moment, I saw it shimmering; closing my eyes, I shook my head to clear my sight. Looking again, I saw just a moon-a very full and beautiful one that caught the pines and cast their long shadows onto the road before me. I heard again the whippoorwill cry, sensing a brushing of wings within the lucid dark.