Two funerals are scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday, January 5. One death was expected, the other not. The expected funeral is that of Betty Stiles, my daughter-in-law's grandmother. Mrs. Stiles was 84 and had lived a long and loving life. Part of that life included helping to raise Heather after Heather's parents divorced. As Mrs. Stiles slipped the surly bonds of earth, Heather was there, holding her hand. My son informed me of the death and requested that flowers be sent in the colors of red and white, which he knew to be her favorite colors. Flowers were ordered, and aside from my having met the lady a couple of times, I have no sense of grief. Of course I feel bad for Heather's sake. This is a big loss for her.
The other funeral is of my first cousin, Larry Powell. Another cousin informed me of this unexpected death. Larry was the younger son of my Aunt Ellen, my mother's next-to-youngest sister. Aunt Ellen had lost two baby girls at birth and then had two sons. Her older son was disabled somehow--I seem to remember talk of kidneys or something--but what I remember about the boy (Kenny?) was his odd behavior. Very OCD. Almost autistic in ways. Larry, in contrast, was the "healthy" one, the "normal" one. However, like far too many of my relatives, he was a lifelong alcoholic. He fell asleep at the kitchen table of another cousin on New Year's Eve. That cousin found him dead on the floor the next morning. Supposedly the cause of death is possibly heart attack, blood clot, or liver failure. Larry was around 50 years old. Surely they have done an autopsy? I can't find anything in the online information for the Houston area that relates, not even an obituary.
Something I read in Sue Grafton's latest, T Is for Trespass, reminded me of so many members of my family. The protagonist, Kinsey Millhone, is talking about rescuing other people: "In my experience, the urge to rescue generates aggravation for the poor would-be heroine without any discernible effect on the person in need of help. You can't save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don't appreciate your interfering with the drama they've created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don't want to change" (80). I agree with her, but only partially. It seems to me that if all a person has ever known has been one kind of life, then that person can't escape that life unless there is a strong outside force. For some people, that force is a spouse who refuses to become part of the downward swirl. For me, that force was my spouse and my education. Unlike my siblings, I always had my head in a book. In those books I found salvation, or at least the hope of it. Books presented worlds that were much, much different from what I knew as "real life." Not all of those worlds were better--after all, literature isn't about making life pretty and sanitary--but in most books, change occurs. Do you have any idea how much hope there is in the simple idea that change can occur? I often felt locked into my world, and it was a desperate, dismal, suffocating feeling. To learn that I could escape, be different, live different--wow. That, dear reader, is what a miracle truly is.
Alas, I have to keep returning to the life I want to escape. When I go "home" to see relatives in Louisiana, I have the same feeling as if I were walking around the crumbling edge of a high cliff. One misstep, and I'm back in the abyss. If I could, I'd simply abandon them all, but I can't. I've always despised people who abandon their families. That's why I've always tried so hard to help mine. But--as Grafton points out--they aren't going to change. I think they want to, but they don't know how. They don't have the vision or the energy to change. I prefer to believe that they do want to change because I cannot imagine how anyone could bear to live as they do unless they couldn't see any other way. My relatives, like so many, believe that life on earth is horrible, miserable, hopeless, and that the only escape is death, with heaven waiting for them. (Maybe in heaven, the angels do all the housework, so there are no piles of garbage or dried poop to deal with.) Personally, I have no belief in an afterlife, so I'd rather not live with the filth in the only life I'm guaranteed to have.
That said, I'm going to go shopping for a new pillow for Esteemed Spouse. Dr. S.
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