Taps At One
Through the muggy air it came,
meandering through the sycamore
branches, rising above the maple
and the oak, the sound of a lone bugler
paying his respects, playing
for a man who may have been
someone's father, just as someone
played for my father, at the end
of the service, before they lowered
him into the ground.
*
Can't write about this today. That's
all I can write.
Molly and I were going through her
obedience training routine at the track when
I heard the bugle, the song. Taps.
It's on the bookmark the funeral home
gave all of us. Dad's face and obit on one
side, the words to Taps on the other.
The cemetery is SSW of the track. There is
a path from the track to the cemetery
which Molly and I take when we decide
we need to walk some hills, or when people
show up at the track and I don't want Molly
all over them. I thought about taking it
today, until I heard the bugle.
*
Wilco put on an excellent show last night.
This was my youngest son's first concert.
He has the bug now, I can tell you, and I am
glad. What would life be without music?
It is still so difficult for me to drive into
Louisville now. Louisville is a city I've always
loved--so much to do and see. But I can't go there,
can't even be on 65 N without thinking
of that night, the night my father was flown
to the hospital there, the night I drove my mom
and youngest brother there not knowing if Dad
was even still alive or would make it until
we got there, without thinking
of how terrible the whole end of his life was--
the nightmarish and unethical treatment
he received in the hands of those who are
supposed to be healers, the days and nights
of him talking out of his head and pointing
at things that didn't exist, the not knowing day
to day if he was going to make it, and if he made
it, would he ever be the same, the way his
eyes looked--desperate & terrifed but glassed
over.
I just get a knot in my stomach and this feeling
of dread the minute my car gets off the parkway
and heads northbound on 65.
Maybe in time, that won't happen, but there
are some things that never really go away--some
feelings, some bodily reponses to a prior trauma.
So, it was hard, but it was good to go see my brother,
his girlfriend, and their children.
It was good to be back on Bardstown Rd., good to spend
a little time in EarXTacy--a store I once spent hours in.
Bought some Mighty Mighty Bosstones and some Elvis
Costello. Going to see Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan
(together) in Bloomington on the 21st of October.
It was good to be at Slugger Field with my son and his
friend, enjoying the music and the mood.
*
The Ken Burns series about WWII veterans
starts tomorrow night. I am going to watch it
and hope I can get through it without
getting too emotional.
2 comments:
From time to time, I have cause to drive past the hospital where my father died. I never feel anything when I see it. It's the church across the street from the hospital with the huge round blue stained glass window that stared and stared at me like an eye as I sat in the waiting room that will trip me up a little if I allow myself to acknowledge its presence.
It's a huge old beautiful church. My godmother and I dragged my mother there for a vespers service on the second day of my father's dying in hopes that she might find some comfort there. She's catholic through and through, so catholic that when she was a kid she attended church on all of the holy days.
We left halfway through the service. I can't recall why but she wasn't feeling it.
I, of course, remember sitting there wishing fervently that I would feel the presence of god, that I would rediscover my faith in this moment in which I really needed it (after having abandoned the catholic church and my belief in god when I was 19), but I felt nothing.
I don't know if I've ever felt more alone and lonely in my life than during the days my father was dying.
I wanted to feel god.
And I didn't.
So taps sets you off?
Me, it's the sound of an ambulance siren.
I beat the ambulance to the hospital by 20 minutes thanks to my roommate's crazy driving that morning.
I was sitting there in the er waiting room when they wheeled my father in. I remember thinking that it was the end of the world. And this just weeks after 9/11 when I told my father on the phone that it seemed like the towers falling and the attack on the pentagon WERE the end of the world and he said calmly:
It's not the end of the world, Laurel.
It just feels like it.
Ah, gee. I'm a little weepy.
Better go exercise so I don't start crying.
(you and your dog walking the hills makes me think of Kenyon and her dog)
It's Taps, and it's the sound of a siren, and it's a life flight helicopter flying over me, and it's the phone ringing at 11 p.m.
It's the inability to make pinwheel sandwiches again (you know the kind--flat bread slathered with herbed cream cheese, spinach, ham, and grated gruyere or monterey jack)...I was in the middle of making one for a luncheon we were having at work the next day when my brother called to tell me Dad was gone and to come to the hospital...
It's the tears that invariably, and quite predictably, come to my eyes any time I cross paths with an older gentleman who can no longer walk without shuffling or who has white hair and glasses and wears levis and a button-up shirt, or who has on a blue cap that may say USS Yorktown on the bill, or who drives a little burgundy car, or who is slowly pushing his cart in the grocery filling it with potatoes, carrots, peanut butter, crackers, a six back of Bud,
or who is bending over in his garden pulling weeds, or who is sitting on his porch on the swing or who is going down the walk to pick up the morning paper or who is smiling at his wife or who is paying the farmer at the Farmer's Market for some peaches and tomaotes and green beans or who is sitting under the shelter at the city park waiting for the burgers to finish on the grill...
you see, it is so many things and it is every day and it is everywhere and I get the feeling it will always be...
It seems there are many things that trigger the pain and the grief, over and over again...
*
I have never really wanted to live in the country, but I would really love it if we had a little piece of wooded property with a stream or two running through it so Molly and I could take really good walks out there in the country.
I live in a rural area, but I live in town, so I generally drive us somewhere for our walk--usually the cemetery or the track.
She's doing better each day.
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