Memories

Oh, the Horror…Happy Halloween

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“At three in the morning the blood runs slow and thick, and slumber is heavy. The soul either sleeps in blessed ignorance of such an hour or gazes about itself in utter despair. There is no middle ground.”

― Stephen King, ‘Salem’s Lot

It is the morning of Halloween, and I am awake. For some reason, threeish seems to be the hour that I awake. Sometimes I fall back to sleep but often I do not. This is an often I do not morning. Known as “the Witching Hour,” I certainly seem to be under a spell.

Three AM is referred to as the witching hour due to the belief that it is a time when supernatural forces, such as witches, demons, and ghosts, are at their most powerful. This association stems from the idea that witches cast their spells in the darkness of night when they can go undetected, and it is thought to be when the veil between life and death is at its weakest.

The phrase “witching hour” use began at least as early as 1762, when it appeared in Elizabeth Carolina Keene’s Miscellaneous Poems. It alludes to Hamlet’s line “Tis now the very witching time of night, When Churchyards yawne, and hell it selfe breakes out Contagion to this world.” Thank you, Wikipedia.

Further thanks to Swedish director, Ingamar Bergman. He coined the phrase “The Hour of the Wolf” due to his 1968 thriller with the same name. In his own words, the hour of the wolf is

“The hour between night and dawn … when most people die, sleep is deepest, nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their worst anguish, when ghosts and demons are most powerful. The hour of the wolf is also the hour when most babies are born.”

I don’t know why he included babies, I hope it is simply a fact, although Rosemary’s Baby came out in the same year. A movie based on the spawn of a human woman and the devil himself, I know some babies that cry like their father might have been Satan.

In the dim light of my computer screen, I wonder if I am haunted. There are certainly memories that haunt me. My old farmhouse creaks and moans when the wind is just right, sometime there is the patter of little mice feet or a shadow that I had not noticed before. All seem to make me feel haunted. I can see my puppies, asleep on the couch, twitching in their sleep as if they are chasing a dream involving rabbits or squirrels. Haunted? Probably.

I am unsure when I first became interested in horror. I remember reading Mary Shelly, Bram Stoker, and Edgar Allen Poe when I was in high school. Horror greats from another age along with black and white, midnight horror fests that included reruns of Boris Karloff as “the monster” and Bela Lugosi, not the first vampire character but certainly the coolest Count Dracula.

On the small screen there was Thriller’s “Pigeons from Hell”hosted by Karloff, The Twilight Zone with Rod Serling hosting Captain Kirk’s “Terror at 20000 Feet” and Alfred Hitchcock Present’s  “Lamb to the Slaughter.” I wonder if we taste like chicken.

In college I remember going to the old Ritz Theater in Newberry with a group of fraternity bros. The Oblong Box starring Vincent Price was playing.  A movie about premature burial and Voodoo, a scene of a hand reaching out of a casket is all I can remember. It may be blasphemy, but I was never a Vincent Price fan and had to research what the movie was about.

I may not know when I became a horror enthusiast, but I know when it became solidified, along with science fiction, as my go to genres. Whether on a printed page or on a screen, it is Stephen King.

I have told this story before and will probably tell it again. My first King book was “’Salem’s Lot.” A story about the infestation of small-town Maine by vampires. According to King’s own words, “it is Peyton Place meets Dracula.” Whatever it was, it scared me to death, scared to death in a good way.

I remember reading it late on an early spring Saturday night. I was alone, propped up on my bed, which itself is horror for an unattached young adult male. My windows were open to a welcoming breeze, the drapes fluttering occasionally.  A thunderstorm was rumbling in the distance.

As I read a passage that explained that vampires had to be invited into your home and were sneaky enough to hypnotize you into doing so, I heard a faint tapping on my second-floor apartment window.

“Tap, tap, tap!” I pause and listen. I heard it again. The same tap, tap, tap. There was no way I was going to walk over to that window. Instead, I did what any sane person would do. I left the light on and pulled the bed cover over my head.

The next morning, in the light of day, I found the tapping was caused by a tree limb that had grown too close to my window. Sure, that was it.

I have the newest remake of ‘Salem’s Lot ready to be watched. I have been saving it for this Halloween night. I hope it is at least as good as the late Seventies miniseries although it may be impossible for anyone to replace James Mason as the vampire’s main minion, Richard Straker. If it isn’t, I can reread the book. I still have my original copy.

However you celebrate Halloween, I hope you have a ghoulishly, good night. Here are happy “boos” to you.

If you like fiction, try Thunder Along the Copperhead. Not Gothic horror, it is a historical romance with plenty of history of the depression year of 1933. An almost destitute farm woman, a damaged World War One veteran who moonshines on the side are the primary characters. Please help a struggling author by downloading or purchasing it in paperback. Thanks, I know you will.

A Long, Hard Year

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“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
― Kahlil Gibran

I sat with a group of friends at a local café. It is usually a time of joy, sometimes when I need it the most. This was one of those times. It is March and I have begun to contemplate the past year since Linda left me.

My friend Val, the eighty-two-year-old teenager, asked how Linda and I met and cautioned, “If it is too hard to talk about….”

“Val, I never find it hard to talk about Linda,” I answered. It is never too painful to talk about her. It is the dark, quiet times when I am alone with my darkest memories that I find hard. A vibrant, loving woman reduced to an urn of ashes is what is hard. Still, I left our gathering smiling, my mood lightened, even if it was short lived.

I only share the good times when I talk about Linda. There were thirty-eight years of good times. Tales of our first meeting and the winding road that we traveled trying to acknowledge we were in love were the subjects of the day. The meeting on top of a football field’s press box or was it when she stood with an inflated pumpkin on her head? The trip from hell to Charleston with her then boyfriend, my roommate. A trip to a local dive, The Casablanca Lounge, that brought love more into focus. In that conversation with Val, I realized I had an anodyne for the deep darkness I have been feeling for the past twelve months.

I have an old photograph of Linda being Linda. I keep it close by to remind me of who Linda was…not what she became. Hands apart, she is sticking her tongue out. The photo is dark but not as dark as her curls, the dark curls I loved and remember most. This is Linda, the Linda I must remember. The Linda that still makes me smile.

I must also remember the Linda of the last year of her life. I have no choice. Even in the darkest moments there were pinpoints of light. No matter how weak she became, there was still a light that shined brighter than all others. She struggled with names and called everyone “Baby” and told them, “That’s alright, it’s okay” even when it wasn’t.

Still, the darkness encroaches along with the bitterness I feel. Life played such a terrible trick. From the joy of being told, “You are in complete remission,” to the stoke a scant week later. Four months later she was gone…four months that seemed like four lifetimes for all the wrong reasons.

Despite the photography, I don’t think I will ever get over the bitterness. Despite the wonderful memories, I find myself angry. Sometimes, I get angry at myself. I get angry at God. I could have done more. I could have held her more, danced with her more, kissed her more.

God could have not been such a hateful trickster. Why did you take her from me in such a painful manner?

Selfishly, I feel robbed. She is gone and I am left to act as if I am still alive.

The lyrics of an old tune popped in my head, “Don’t it always seem to go. That you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” I always knew what I had, and it made her loss even greater. There is a hole in my heart I never want to heal.

Even with bitterness there is room for joy. Life without Linda is a two-sided coin. Bitterness on one, the joy that was Linda on the other. I find that there is always something to smile about even in the darkness of absence.

The Cellar Revisited

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I originally wrote this years ago. Since learning the former Beach Music icon, The Cellar, burned Saturday morning, I decided to update it as a eulogy for a place that held a prominent place in my memories and a time long gone.

“A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile”               -Don Mclean, American Pie

It was an early Sunday morning, as in after midnight. I had just returned to my dorm room from a date with a young woman who was successfully auditioning to become ex-wife number one.

Sitting at my desk listening to the local radio station, I was shocked to hear that Billy Stewart, the singer, had died in an automobile accident near the North Carolina coast. It was January 18, 1970; he had died just hours before.

Saddened by the news of his tragedy, for the next hour I sat and listened to Billy Stewart’s greatest hits while reminiscing with one of the voices in my head about seeing him live the previous summer. “Summertime,” “Sitting in the Park,” “I Do Love You,” “Secret Love,” – I heard them all and more that morning on WKDK. I had been there to watch him sing all those songs live at The Cellar in Charlotte in 1969.

To this day, I enjoy “hole-in-the-wall” kinds of places, and The Cellar was certainly that. A little dark, it was mostly lit by neon beer signs and had an ambience that was special only to me and the rest of the flat top, madras and khaki wearing, and Weegan crowd.

A door next to a large oak tree had a simple wooden sign above that welcomed you to “The Cellar.” The tree with roots pushing their way above ground level was an obstacle getting into the club. I think it had become a type of “drunkenness” test administered by the bouncers taking up the cover at the door. I once had a friend get kicked out for being drunk after he had tripped over one of those roots. The problem was we hadn’t made it into The Cellar. Don’t you have to be in before you are thrown out?

The Cellar was aptly named being in the basement of an old brick building. Once you navigated the tree roots, paid your dollar cover and walked through the door, you would be assaulted with the sound of a live band playing “soul” or “beach” music or the greatest “beach” music jukebox in the world doing the same.

A bar, located to the right, ran the length of the foyer for lack of a better descriptor. Double archways separated the bar from the young people “strutting their stuff,” dancing a dance known as the “Carolina Shag,” a descendent and a much slower version of the Jitterbug or Lindy Hop. The dance itselStrandmusic that went with it was born on the shores of the Carolina Grand Strand and continues to be so popular today that it has been named the state dance of South Carolina.

A small bandstand was located against the left-hand wall in front of a hardwood dance floor. The rest of the flooring was unfinished concrete. Near the right-hand wall was a small seating area. In addition to the music that made normal conversation impossible you would be seduced by the smell of stale cigarettes and spilled beer. Oh, how I loved it!

The Cellar had everything a college boy might desire except the restroom was upstairs and navigating the stairs became much harder as the night progressed. It was such a ratty place that people our age could do as we pleased and there was no way we could mess it up any more than it was.

We certainly did not have to be rich to go there as it had a cheap cover charge, live bands, fifteen-cent drafts, and college girls…if you had a good line to meet them. I did sing the Sam Cooke lyrics from “Another Saturday Night” on occasion, “If I could meet ‘em, I could get ‘em, as yet I haven’t met ‘em, that’s why I’m in the shape I’m in.” I wonder if a simple “Would you like to dance?” would have worked?

I was not shutout every night but the night I heard Billy sing live I invited Sally McGinn to join me to ensure I didn’t want for female companionship. It was a good thing. There were so many people jammed into such a small space, movement, or meeting anyone was nigh on impossible. I remember being packed in so tightly, Sally and I could not have been any closer unless it had been our wedding night. No, tightly packed doesn’t quite describe it. When we left, the floor was so sticky with spilled beer, momentarily I was cemented to the concrete. I miss that.

Billy was not the only live act to grace the small stage at The Cellar. Every weekend there were different groups performing. Archie Bell and the Drells “Tightened Up,” The Georgia Prophets gave me a “Fever” and the Catalinas reminded me that “Summertime’s Calling Me,” as is The Cellar…which, like so many places of my youth, no longer exists.

 Much of my time during the summers of ‘68 and ’69 was spent pursuing coeds at The Cellar. High school friends, Al Stevenson and John Nesbitt, along with myself, became the Three Musketeers those summers pursuing “man’s favorite sport,” but like “car chasing” dogs, rarely did we catch our quarry. We were the Three Stooges instead.

We worked during the summer, and I remember many mornings getting home just in time to change clothes and head back to work in Charlotte. Working for Crowder Construction Company on Interstate Seventy-Seven, I attempt to avoid bridges that I know I worked on during those summers. I fear they could fall in at any minute.

My last trip to The Cellar would occur in the summer of 1970. I brought Dianne, the woman who would become ex-wife number one, home to meet the family and later took her out for an evening of shagging at The Cellar. It was a standout night that figured prominently in my memories. Dianne was a statuesque redhead who rocked a red-patterned halter suit that she filled out quite nicely and more than adequately. We ran into Al and with his drooling Saint Bernard impersonation I would say he was impressed, too.

I’m not sure why I never went back. I know I never intended not to. School, life, and marriage along with divorce got into the way. I think in some ways it was a sign of the times, or I just grew up.

Al decided to hitch hike to California. He didn’t make it out of Charlotte but ended up living on a local commune trying to find himself. I understand he was successful. John followed the same track as I, teaching before getting into school administration before he died. Shamefully, to my knowledge I never saw them again.

While the music didn’t die it changed along with the times. It went from easy rhythms about love to harsh Protest music. Shagging to that was impossible and the mood was wrong. In 1977 Saturday Night Fever put a spotlight on leisure suits and Disco. I never tried to get the hang of it.

As disco fought its death throws, Urban Cowboy was released, making Country, the Texas Two-step and line dancing the craze. Somewhere in the Seventies and Eighties I got lost and our ratty club became The Country Underground and later a restaurant and…sadly, like Sally, Dianne, Al and John, a memory of something that once was.

Valentine’s Day

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“This fire that we call Loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls.”
― Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love

It is Valentine’s Day. My first without my bride. Memories flood over me…and when it came to this day, few were memorable in a positive way. It was always a very stressful day.

My bride didn’t like traditional Valentine’s Day gifts…you know…roses or chocolate.  Stress!  I mean she likes roses, but she’d rather have a bare root rose to plant in the spring…you know the gift that keeps on giving…season after season.  I did that for one year.  It died.

Chocolate would be fine if we celebrated at an intimate little Belgium chocolate shop, we once discovered in Charleston…the owner, a Belgian Jew whose family fled to the United States as Nazi tanks began rolling toward France, died a while back.  How dare she.  The son who took over was…was…delicate and high strung, prone to fainting.  He couldn’t take the pressure of making handmade chocolate delights.  He sold out and for some reason, it’s just not the same.  It’s like the shop died too.

One of the first Valentine’s Days we celebrated after moving to the foothills of the Blue Ridge is a prime example of my luck as it relates to Valentine’s Day. I found a nearby inn offering a romantic dinner for two.  I jumped on it…it snowed.

The owner called us saying, “they say the roads are cleared.  We’re open but have no power.  We’ll be preparing your meal over an open fire if you can get here.”  We’ll get there. 

“Have four-wheel drive, will travel” which explains why we opted to take the Thunderbird instead of the old Landcruiser.  The Landcruiser just wasn’t sexy enough for Valentine’s Day.  “Fools rush in….” Up the Saluda Grade for twelve or so miles.  Everything was fine until we hit the North Carolina line.  Snowplows?  Even South Carolina has heard of them.

It was a drive through the mountains that reminded me of the scenes from the movie “Battle of the Bulge.”  The road looked like it had been bombed.  Trees and powerlines went down, six inches of snow on the ground with a heavy fog rising as it melted.  Instead of Nazis directing mortar fire on us, power crews in yellow helmets directed us around obstructions.  No artillery shells exploded, just transformers lighting up the approaching darkness.  We made it.  How are we getting home?  I’m sure the inn is full…it was.

Saluda, North Carolina, is a rustic little village filled with memories of past days when it was a stop for the railroad.  The inn, built to serve the railroad elite, was located on the far side of town, and welcomed us with hurricane lamps that gave the old structure a turn of the Twentieth Century feel.

Oil lamps provided a warm glow with a hint of kerosene wafting through the air.  An intimate table for two covered in red and white checkerboard.  A flickering candle in the center of the table caused shadows to dapple around us as if bathed in soft moonlight.

There was a view of snow-covered mountains as we sat next to an open fireplace that could have burned a giant Sequoia tree.  Everything was warm and cheery…and of course, romantic.  None of the waitresses called anyone honey or sweetheart.  The offer was of a young red wine, not sweet Southern tea.

The bill of fare included mushrooms stuffed with duck liver pâté, Caesar salad, a healthy cut of filet mignon sided with asparagus and roasted potatoes…can you believe I can remember a dinner from nearly forty years ago?

A chocolate cheesecake topped with a cherry sauce finished the meal…a decadent, triple-digit priced meal…worth every penny…to me…but not to my bride which is the only reason I had come here anyway.  She enjoyed the meal when she ate it, later…not so much.

We decided to take the long way home by interstate…the interstate had to be clear.  The wide four lanes had to be safer than the two lane we had traveled up.  We found it clear of snow.  We also found it shrouded in a heavy fog rising from the asphalt as thick as (insert your own cliché here).

Worse still, my bride was sick.

“Honey, you need to pull over,” she said weakly.  She looked a bit green in the light cast by the passing headlights.

“What?”

Said with emphasis, “YOU NEED TO PULL OVER!  I’M GOING TO THROW UP!”

Slowing and easing to the side of the road, “STOP THE DAMN CAR WILL YOU!”  Okay, not fast enough.

I watched in horror as half of a triple-digit meal landed on the pavement with the force of a high-pressure hose.  Think Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.”

Once I helped her into the car, I pointed out, “The pâté….”  I shouldn’t have mentioned food.

“What?”

“It had to be the pâté.”

“Oh, just shut up and get me home!  NO WAIT.  STOP THE CAR…NOWWWWW!”

So much for the after-dinner festivities.

I’m only sharing because it exemplifies the horror that is Valentine’s Day…and it is more subtly humorous in retrospect than at the time.  The ‘meal from hell’ is not the exception; it is the rule.  So bad are my Valentine’s Day memories, I’ve blocked most of them, locking them away somewhere in my head and throwing away the key.

What can you expect from a celebration of love named for the patron saint of epilepsy?  A jailer beaten, clubbed, and beheaded for trying to convert prisoners into Christians.  Nothing says “Be my Valentine” like a bloody, headless corpse.

I thought long and hard about this Valentine’s Day…just like every other one when she was alive.  It’s been a rough month in a rough year.

The last Valentine’s Day gift I gave her was perfect. A handmade (chortle) necklace…a cheap, fake silver locket in the shape of a sunflower on a cheap, fake silver chain.  The sunflower splits apart to expose an engraved message, “You are my sunshine.”  It’s beautiful.  Perfect.  She was my sunshine.  Her light still burns brightly in my heart.

Soulful Vaccination

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“The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.”

— Stan Getz

Other than those found on my playlist, I hadn’t thought about saxophones until I chanced upon a beautiful, blond, Dutch saxophonist named Candy Dulfer. Where have you been all my life?  I admit her long legs and short skirt got my attention at first but then I clicked on a YouTube video, and not only does she look alluring, but she is also a damn fine saxophonist.

A version of “Pick Up the Pieces” led me to a cooperative effort with Glennis Grace singing Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” This in turn led me to a comment by a fan, “Just what I needed, a soulful vaccination.” I feel it. I needed one too.

I am prone to following pig trails in my mind and was led back to late 1950s or early 1960s to my mother’s living room. A large, cabinet stereo occupied one corner, and my mother was prone to playing Ray Coniff, Perry Como, or Mitch Miller…she did give me Johnny River’s “Live at the Whiskey a Go-Go” my fourteenth birthday, but rock and roll was a rarity for her.

She inadvertently introduced me to the saxophone with Billy Vaughn and his Orchestra. Vaughn’s trademark was harmonies with twin alto saxophones.  I think it was his rendition of “Red Sails in the Sunset” that got my attention, and I found myself attempting to play the sax in my high school band. They accepted all comers and honestly, I was no better at the saxophone than I had been at the drums, the first instrument I tried but failed to master.

Unless playing the cymbals, I didn’t have the manual dexterity to be a great musician despite my “want too”. More than likely, I would simply catch a body part between the two cymbals.

 More importantly I needed a “soulful vaccination” …or maybe a “soulful transfusion.” To quote my band instructor, “You’re just too tight assed.” He was correct and not just about playing the sax. It is a trademark of my life in general. Friends always comment, “I can’t believe you did that”, whenever I might step out of my comfort zone.

I played just well enough to join my college band, they accepted all comers too, and even spent a year as the second alto in the jazz ensemble… but only because we needed five saxophonist and five were all we had.

 I was no Cannonball Adderly or Junior Walker, but I had a great time and made great lifelong memories. I even got to play with Doc Severinsen during a jazz clinic. There was also a long night of partying with him but for some reason I don’t remember it as well.

I probably could have been better had I concentrated. I blame my small high school. Blame but in a good way. We were so small I was involved in everything from chorus and band to baseball and football. I was able to do it all but mastered none and would not take money for the memories.

Thanks Candy. Thanks for your sexy and soulful renditions. Thanks for the pig trail you sent me down. I’ll be adding you to my playlist. Thank you for the soulful infusion.

Don Miller’s latest offering is “Food for Thought” and can be purchased on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Food-Thought-Musings-Mad-Southerner/dp/B0CVFVVKZ3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3JOR4JC665OYR&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qHgZwjWZGMMWOAkFzZNGvUYxwSKDGldwLlh06k97FCmeZeq-pJC3KvlR9FJlvR50DyXu0dByDs0VDomtfuOpRw.4zi2lLYNri-Omdm8TQ4n4-aweXDLZEaozt9zQm83Ruk&dib_tag=se&keywords=food+for+thought+book+Don+Miller&qid=1737828043&sprefix=food+for+thought+book+don+miller%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-1

What Ifs

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“I’m always wondering about the what ifs, about the road not taken.”
― Jenny Han, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

“What” and “if” are two words if taken alone, are benign. Just don’t put them together side-by-side. When taken together, they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life. “What if…?”

I am attempting to “get on” with the rest of my life after loss of my beloved wife but find myself dwelling on a myriad of “what ifs.” Is this what haunted means? I spend too much time dwelling in the dark place that is my head.

My “What ifs” come calling during the darkest part of the night, usually around the witching hour. Many come after dreams with a reoccurring theme. I am lost in familiar surroundings and can’t find my way. I should find out what my dreams mean.

It is normal, after experiencing a life altering event, to assess where you are in your life. I truly try to focus on “what is” but I can’t seem to keep “what was” from creeping into my thoughts. It doesn’t take long for “what is” to morph into “what if.” I should be concentrating on “what will be” but can’t seem to move on.

What I wouldn’t give for a mulligan. What if I had a chance to do it repeatedly until I finally got it right? Or do it wrong again? What if I came to the fork in the road and took it ala Yogi Berra? What ifs are driving me a little crazy.

I realize now, a lot of my what ifs have to do with focus. Retirement brought a lack of focus. Linda dealt with it better than I did. She focused upon helping aging family members and friends, buying plants, and buying anything that might be on sale…whether she needed it or not. I focused on her and became her enabler.

Aside from her buying habits, she was the rudder to my dingy and my rudder is now missing. The way my head is, I fear stormy weather is ahead with no way to steer to avoid it. “What if…?”

Somewhere along the way we lost our spontaneity. I enabled that too. Was that because we grew older? I don’t think so…I think “what ifs” took on another meaning…an even more negative meaning. It is as if we grew scared to take chances.

The Linda I fell in love with never liked anything scripted. She was fearless. We dropped a hat and took a road trip to Georgetown to celebrate our anniversary…not realizing it was also the weekend of the Fourth. We found the last room available in Georgetown County. That “what if” was epic.

Traveling at the drop of a hat worked out more times than it didn’t. I can’t remember any that didn’t work out…Well, we should have never made that side trip to Memphis…the barbeque just wasn’t worth it. We dropped our hats and traveled to New Orleans to celebrate an anniversary and later to Omaha to see the last College World Series played at Rosenblat Stadium. We didn’t think twice about it. What happened to us? Why didn’t we take more chances? “What if…?”

What if Covid hadn’t hit. What if we had discovered the cancer earlier…what if I had found her sooner after her first stroke when the “clot buster” drug could have been administered. What if I could hold her one more time? What if I could kiss her one more time? I think those last two are the what ifs I’m mostly dealing with.

Before Linda passed, I wrote “Food for Thought.” It is more about thought than food but there are plenty of recipes too. Available in paperback and download at http://tinyurl.com/yrt7bee2 .

It was the Kiss

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“Okay, this was kissing. Serious kissing. Not just a kiss before moving out, not a good-bye, this was hello, sexy, and wow….” ― Rachel Caine, Glass Houses

I’ve got Betty Everett’s “Shoop, Shoop” song playing in my head. If you don’t remember it, there is a Cher version that is slightly younger. The reframe, “It’s in his kiss, that’s where it is” is on auto repeat in my head. I am changing the pronouns from his to her.

Today would have been thirty-eight years…our anniversary. Unfortunately, it is exactly three months to the day since you left me. It is exactly three months not using the “d” word. Saying you “left” implies there is a possibility of reunion. Using the “d” word implies finality and I can’t use it. The truth hurts too badly.

This past weekend I decided to take a drive. I needed to get out of the house and a walk in 95-degree weather didn’t seem prudent. I decided to retravel some of the old pig trails we once traveled together in the comfort of our air-conditioned Jeep. It was a mistake. The pig trails mean nothing without you.

My drive did trigger memories of a time now past. The good old days…late 1984.  Pig trails meant something then.

I danced around you for a year or more while you dated Jim, my roommate. We became great friends that year. We grew close but there was no dancing together. You tried to “fix” me up with all your friends, but all your efforts failed. The joke was that you failed so badly you took mercy on me. Thank you for that mercy.

I think my subconscious knew you were the one. I recognized there was a spark, a tingle whenever our fingers might touch but you belonged to another. That’s not true, you never belonged to any one person, not even me. The problem was that I was loyal to a fault even to a person who didn’t deserve it or you.

Later that year, there was the inflatable pumpkin on your head in the fall and a major reaction when I came home and found you helping Jim wash his boat that spring. That two-piece… ala Jimmy Carter I sinned in my mind. In between there was the ice storm power outage and Jim’s stupidity putting a puppy dog under the house to keep warm with a five gallon can of kerosene. I don’t know when we laughed so hard, and Jim didn’t appreciate it or deserve the puppy…or you.

With summer came the road trip from hell. I was a tag along…a third wheel as I had been all that year. If a film or fifties TV show had been made of the year, I would have been Pat Brady to Roy Rogers or Jingles in Wild Bill Hickock…funny but safe.

Jim was forced to move to Charleston because of his job but your relationship with him was already unraveling…had been unraveling for a while and that trip to Charleston brought it into focus.  I had nothing to do with the fraying even though Jim believed otherwise.

I don’t remember what threw us together without Jim that Saturday afternoon in Charleston, but I took you to the market. What an afternoon. That is when it dawned on me that you might be special. Confirmation would have to wait until Jim’s final straw broke your back.

After your breakup, I continued to dance around until you took the initiative. We found ourselves dancing together for the first time at Bennigans. Serendipity put us together, and like the stray animals you love to adopt, I followed you home. The pretense was to get you safely home but there was the goodnight kiss…and I knew. There might have been several kisses at your doorway, but I knew after the first one. You were the best kisser…the best friend…the best lover…the best everything. I think heaven will be like that first kiss.

Dusty Springfield has replaced Betty Everett, “That ever since we met you’ve had a hold on me, it happens to be true, I only want to be with you!”  And now I can’t. I can only remember your kisses…and the way your body fit perfectly with mine when I held you close. You took spooning to a grand level.

I think about all the mistakes I made before we found each other. You made a few mistakes too. Our mistakes were fate’s way of preparing us for kismet. We talked about it often, sometimes karma isn’t a bitch.

The night I followed you home I wanted to protect you. I have wanted to protect you for thirty-eight years. When it came down to it, I couldn’t protect you from what I couldn’t see or touch. It isn’t logical but I still feel guilty.

Happy Anniversary my love. I miss you terribly. Truely, the guilt is real. So is my love.

Do I Want it to Get Better?

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“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

It has been two months, ten days and a double handful of hours, minutes, and seconds since you left me. I do miss you like hell. You were my sunshine, and the skies are much grayer since you left.

Family and friends check in to make sure I’m okay and always ask, “How are you doing?”

I appreciate their concern, but I don’t know how to answer the question. “I’m okay” is the lie I often tell them because I don’t think people want to hear, “Somewhere between numb and devastated.” Whatever I answer, I usually get the unsolicited but well-meant comment, “It will get better over time.” Will it?

I appreciate the advice but one of the voices in my head asks, “Do you want it to get better and for clarification, what is ‘it’ exactly?”

An honest question deserves an honest answer. I don’t have one. I’m at a loss. I want the pain to go away but I honestly don’t think I want the hole in my heart to heal. I think for the pain to go away memories must fade like an old black and white photo. You were so much more than a faded black and white photo. You were my “technicolor” darling.

My life was without color, and I was never whole until I met you. You were the tie that binds and a colorful psychedelic painting. I’ve gone back to incomplete and unraveled and as bland as boiled chicken. I don’t like the feeling that I’m not dead but not alive either. I am in a halfway house for grievers it seems.

Truthfully, I don’t want to not be thinking about you. I don’t want to not be missing you. I want you to be the first thing I think about when I rise in the morning and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep. You deserve that along with the thoughts that come to me throughout the day and in dreams at night.

I’m sure people are worrying that I’m spending too much time alone wallowing in self-pity. I’m not. I’m not alone. You are still here. I carry you with me, right next to the hole in my heart.

I remember going to parties or gatherings and following you around like one of our puppy dogs. We would always find ourselves in an unpopulated corner of the room talking to each other, ignoring everyone else. You were always the most interesting person in the room and tit was comforting feeling your hip pressed against me and your arm hooked in mine. I carry you with me but the thought that I will never hold your hand or hug you brings back the unfathomable pain.

I try to stay busy. You certainly left me with a gracious plenty to do but as I work my way through bins and boxes, it is like one of our adventures. I never know what I’m going to find next, I just know it will remind me of you or something we did.

“So”, the nagging voice in my head asks again, “do you want it to get better?”  No, I don’t if it means the memories of you will diminish in any way. Maybe I can just hope for getting different rather than getting better.

***

Just before my wife’s passing, I published a “cookbook of stories” described as being Southern fried in the renderings of fried fatback. These are short essays and recipes from the South. Download or purchase in paperback. Food For Thought. http://tinyurl.com/yrt7bee2

Bumping into Memories

/ cigarman501 / 15 Comments

“There are memories that time does not erase… Forever does not make loss forgettable, only bearable.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire

It has been a month and a half since Linda left me. I struggle most days…attempting to come to grips with my new normal. Friends and family check on me. I say what I think they want to hear but truth be known, I am struggling.

I try to stay busy putting one foot in front of the other. It is easy to stay busy…I lived with a hoarder. Just a fact. Not recrimination. I allowed it. Thunder just rumbled. I’m sure it is just Linda’s “heavenly” reaction to hearing the word “allowed.”

We often talked about decluttering but never moved past conversation. I once attempted to put my foot down and exclaimed, “You can’t bring in anything new until you take out something old.”  It had no effect because I could never say no to her. She just stomped the foot I had put down.

Linda could throw nothing away and why buy one item when a dozen of the same item is a dozen times better. A bag full of broken sunglasses, other bags with the remains of broken drinking glasses or dishes. A bag with a dozen brand new baseball caps. Bags full of…bags.

In my head I heard, “It didn’t matter if I needed them or not, it mattered that they were on sale and I might have needed them.” I admit the thought brought a smile to my face.

I have taken garbage bag after garbage bag of clothes to a women’s shelter. Most were sweats or active wear and many still had tags, clothes she intended to wear but never got the opportunity to. Clothes she put away for a rainy day not knowing that day would come too soon. I still have many garbage bags to fill.

I pause to look at a beautiful purple dress with a colorful, matching wrap and a butterfly necklace hanging on a door frame. The outfit still has a tag on it. I’ve paused every time I’ve walked past it. It is so beautiful, so Linda. I can’t give it away…at least not now. I wish I had had a chance to see her wear it.

I took two large trash bags of stuffed animals, still with tags, to be given to the needy. I cried. I know there is a reason she bought them. I just didn’t know why. She never told me why.

In my head I ask for the hundredth time, “What did this (insert whatever) mean to you? Why was this little curio important to you and what should I do about it? I’m as bad as you are. I can’t just throw away for the sake of throwing away.” I should have paid better attention. I should have asked more questions.

I still have five rooms of memories to work my way through. I wonder what I may find. Blackbeard’s lost treasure may be lying under one of the beds surrounded by the other treasures you stuffed under them.

I bump into memories every time I turn around as it is. Bumping into memories is not a terrible thing. Sifting through the “treasures” saved by a hoarder is not a terrible thing if that hoarder’s name was Linda Gail. One woman’s garbage is another man’s treasure.

“For where thy treasure is, there also will thy heart be.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

It’s Alright Baby

/ cigarman501 / 13 Comments

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

Memories are odd as I am finding out. Memories will turn a frown into a smile or, just as quickly, a smile into a frown.

I am fortunate. I am surrounded by memories. I am also cursed. I am surrounded by memories. I can’t turn around without bumping into something that reminds me of you. As painful as it is, I don’t think I want it to be any other way.

To paraphrase your favorite NCIS character, Mike Franks: When talking about ghosts. Franks said to Gibbs, “But the memories we make. We fill the spaces we live in with them. That’s why I’ve always tried to make sure that wherever I live, the longer I live there, the spaces become filled with memories.”

My space is filled with memories but Franks said nothing about the emptiness that shares the space. The space I live in is filled with both memories…and emptiness. When you left me, you left behind wonderful memories but there is a tradeoff. There is a huge hole of emptiness where my heart once was.

Franks didn’t mention the bad memories, either. The last eight months have been hell on earth for you…and for me. I watched you fight and struggle. How many times did you try and uplift me? “It’s alright baby.” Those memories try to elbow their way in and are too successful.

I found an old flash drive with a folder labeled Photos and decided to relive the memories from days past thinking that if I filled my head with those, there would be no room for the bad ones. There would be no room for the emptiness. I was wrong.

I found out that I am a lousy photographer and that you just didn’t smile enough. You smiled for the photo but it was your fake smile. Your “say cheese” smile. You had a wonderful smile when you let yourself go, when the camera caught you unawares, playing with the grand babies or the puppies, smelling a flower or showing me a butterfly.

As I ruminated, I went to the more recent photos and videos, the bad memories, and found that you smiled more when you were at your lowest, when you were trying to convince me, “It’s alright baby.” You lied; it is not alright. Not alright at all.

So many mornings I came in to your hospital room and you smiled. Your true smile. When a visitor or a nurse came in, you smiled and tried to convince us that “It’s alright baby.” Even those terrible shots in the stomach earned the nurse giving it a, “It’s alright baby.”

I don’t know what to do. I try to busy myself but you elbow in between the words that play in my head. I spent thirty-seven years trusting you. I’m going to trust you one more time. I’m going to allow the memories to sustain me until “It’s alright baby.”

***

Thanks to all who attended and participated in Linda’s Celebration of Life. It was a special celebration for a special woman.