The canary yellow Sun pierces through the mid-afternoon sky. The whispy aluminum gray clouds resemble Saran wrap attempting to conceal the Sun. All around me is still. The Evergreen and Deciduous tree limbs lay limp like sloths. Cars pass by in the distance. Yet, none are close enough to disturb this place. The eerie solitude of the area makes me believe that life ceases to exist inside these two acres. I’m tempted to turn on my car radio just to hear noise save for the few bumblebees that fly past and the blue jays chirping on the fence row.
I look around and find myself surrounded, but realize I’m the only one here. The smell of farm life hangs in the air as fresh cut grass blends with cattle and goat manure. However, it’s not the animals that make me cringe. It’s the numerous headstones scattered throughout the hunter green crab-grass and marigold yellow and eggshell white wildflowers. The spread out headstones resemble the arm of a child with chicken pox. Headstones of different colors and different varieties compose this graveyard. The older headstones, dating back to the early 1900’s, appear to have come straight from the rock quarries in Rock Island. Now they are reduced to the color of ash. Weathering and erosion has removed their dark shades of pewter silver and coal black. Everyone here who passed away in the last quarter century seems to have the same rectangular headstone made of or a combination of pea green, gray like stainless steel, magenta purple, and milky white granite.
Adorning numerous graves sun faded plastic flowers resemble apple red roses, lilies as white as a cirrus cloud, and cotton candy pink carnations. At the foot and head of a newly dug grave lays tissue from someone’s previous time of grieving. This mound of mocha brown topsoil mixed with rust red clay is covered with weathered plastic flowers. Their fading color looks like someone washed them in bleach. According to the grave marker the woman buried here was only 23. To the right of her grave her parents have placed their own marker for their future burial.
It was here, at this grave; I stood six years ago on a rainy Friday afternoon as we buried my grandfather Harry Wilson. Grandpa was a strong courageous man that I had grown up to admire and love. When I was seven I proudly wore a shirt professing, “If you think I’m cute you should see my grandpa!”
I didn’t get to see him much because I lived forty-five minutes away from his home in Kansas City, MO. However, the times I did spend with him were filled with joy. Endless hours were spent on his front porch guzzling down Mt. Dew listening to his war and bootlegging stories and how he met grandma in California at a bus stop. Some of the stories sounded too good to be true, but it didn’t matter because if grandpa said it, it had to be right.
In the fall of 2000 my grandfather became ill due to lung cancer. One September morning after he finished shaving he felt ill and lied back down in bed. My grandma asked him what was wrong, but Harry could give her no answer. My Aunt Linda took him to the hospital expecting his illness to be a bad case of the cold. The answer she received sent a shockwave throughout the family. Sixty years of cigarette smoking and chewing snuff caught up with him. Grandpa had tumors in his lunges and if chemotherapy or radiation wasn’t done soon he would pass away within a month.
Harry was a stubborn man and refused to take treatments. Thus, the cancer spread quickly throughout his body stealing his ability to talk and swallow. It was all he could do to sit in his recliner and watch television. Far from the man I knew as a child. Seeing him communicate with a chalk board and use tubes connected to his stomach to intake food was enough to make me cry. The only source of enjoyment he got from dinner was soaking a wash rag in Mt. Dew and sucking on it to taste the flavor. I wanted my strong grandfather back. Not this feeble excuse of a man that was before me.
Sunday February 25, 2001, as I was preparing for church my family received a call, and was told to head to the Baptist Hospital near downtown Kansas City. Grandpa’s blood pressure and pulse were dropping substantially. The doctors gave him one more day of life. Mom and dad left me home to take care of my autistic sister while they went to the hospital. They told me to stay by the phone in case the inevitable happened. Grandpa hung on to life for that day, but the following Monday morning the struggle became too much. He was pronounced dead at 5:45 A.M.
The funeral arrangements were made for Friday of that week. Services would be at Bible Way Free Will Baptist Church in Cameron, and he would be buried in Cameron’s Green Hill Cemetery. Grandpa had spent most of his life near Poteau and always wished to be buried in or near Poteau. Grandma said that Cameron was close enough.
My mother was an emotional wreck trying her to best to grieve. I held in my emotions and pain because I figured grandpa would want me to be strong and not cry for him. On the day of the funeral the tension was thick enough I could feel it. Four days had passed since grandpa died and now it was time to finally bury him. The dawn had been overcast and cool. Dark clouds from the west entered the scene as the morning lingered on. An hour before the funeral a steady shower began to pour down further emphasizing the gloominess of this day.
As the funeral began I took my seat in the front row determined to stay stoic for the sake of my grandfather. Grandpa told me that real men don’t cry, and I was set to be real man for my grandfather. As time passed on it became harder and harder to be a real man. The emotions swelled up inside me and banged on my heart and eyes to be free like flood waters on a levee. I held it in soaking up a tear or two from the corner of my eye with my sleeve before anyone could see them fall. At the end of the service I took my position as a pall bearer and helped escort his casket to the Hurst. Once the doors were closed I felt that I could let out all the emotion that had been built up because grandpa could no longer see me behind those closed doors.
Instantly my cousin Tiffany ran to me knowing I needed someone to hold me. I cried for ten minutes straight as five days of built up emotion came pouring out. I had to sit down on the ground because I started to hyperventilate. After a moment of dizziness I caught my breath, wiped the tears from my eyes, and got in the car with my parents. As we drove to the cemetery it was a quiet ride as we all contemplated life without Harry Wilson.
Fifteen minutes later the funeral procession arrived at Green Hill Cemetery. Nearly one-hundred people gathered around his burial plot as we said our last goodbyes. As I looked down into his cold lifeless body I felt shamed for grandpa to see his grandson crying. I wondered what grandpa would say about me “wimping out”. I walked away and saw people smiling almost as if they were proud of me. I wasn’t proud of myself. I promised grandpa I wouldn’t cry for him when he died.
Six years have past and I stand here before his and grandma’s granite headstone comprised of ash grays, chalky whites, browns as dark as the fur of a grizzly bear, and plum purple. The feelings of shame have left. I no longer feel that I disrespected grandpa by crying for him. I can look back and say it was better that I did cry than if I wouldn’t have. Below grandma and grandpa’s names a cross is etched in. I never knew grandpa to be a Christian. Maybe he died one and watched me that day from heaven. If so, perhaps, grandpa was more pleased that I showed everyone I loved him than by trying to be a real man.
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