Blog Index - October 2017

October 19, 2017	Barbara St. John my Mom, 1924- 2017
October 22, 2017	The simplest of things still fascinate me.
October 23, 2017	This week will be an eternity for me.
October 26, 2017	The angels wept.

October 26, 2017 – The angels wept

        Last week, my brother and I planned and executed my Mom’s funeral.  Of course, in the height of the well-known New England Fall foliage – it rained all week, only clearing off into bright sunshine and royal blue sky the final day – the day I flew home.

        Arriving at the airport in Rhode Island, my brother drove North to Massachusetts and the misty rain tried its best to clear, yet it stayed dark and cloudy. I did catch welcomed glimpses of the yellow, gold, and red maples and the stunning yellow elms along the way when the sun valiantly tried to peak out between the dark heavy clouds that were skipping across the sky giving us intermittent rain.

But, if the sun had been out – the foliage would have been blinding – a welcomed blinding of the eyes for anyone who compares Fall foliage anywhere they currently live with where they were born and raised.  As usual, I feel New England’s fall foliage, even on off years, always wins out as the best ever show anywhere.

        Berlin is a quaint town and I actually think it will retain its quaintness.   I moved away over 40 years ago and it hasn’t changed very much.  No strip malls in the center of town yet, and Route 62 leads one from Clinton through Berlin and slips off to Hudson after it connects one to Route 495 that runs north and south.

        The common has a huge white clapped board church with green shutters and giant clock.  It is an incredible building built in the early 1800s and is well maintained and often the subject of a quintessential portrait by many who visit the area. Across the street is the General Store, with new tenants this year, which has remained the center of town’s small store for coffee, wicked-good sandwiches, and a convenient pickup of newspapers, milk and bread as it has for the last half century.

        Relating to the rain during the time I was up for my Mom’s funeral, I mentioned to my brother . . . “rain . . . it means the angels are weeping for Mom. Do you remember when Grampa Nixon died?  Gramma Nixon said, “The rain means the angels are weeping.”  I never forgot that moment. [I was 17 at the time.]  All the rest of Grampa’s funeral is a blur, but I never forgot that. And, come to think of it, I’ve been to more rainy funerals than sunny funerals – which is a good thing from where I see it.

        It rained the majority of the week and Mom was interned at The North Cemetery off Highland Street in Berlin, Mass., and now rests alongside her beloved husband of 63 years.

        I inherited many of my Mom’s historical books of the Worcester County, Massachusetts area.  Berlin is famous in the area for the 1812 Powder House Hill where the town’s people kept the gunpowder stores dry during the Revolutionary war.  A sketching of The Power House Hill has often been used on many items depicting Berlin, during my lifetime, and will probably continue to be so.

        I mentioned the “Friends of the Quaker’s cemetery” to my brother when we went back to check on the grave site after the funeral to see that it was “done right” as it should be.  He gave me a queer look and I guessed he didn’t know what I was referring to.

        Wouldn’t you just love to have one of those comic bubbles pop up when you get one of those looks and don’t know what it is . . .then you could just read the bubble and figure out someone’s reaction and move on.  I am still pondering it.  Did he not hear me?  Did he think I was mentally cracked? Or, was that look his, “Why that bit of useless information at this point?”  At the time, I brushed it off.

        When my parents bought the cemetery plot it was a private smile of theirs that they would be buried with the Quakers overlooking an old strawberry field.  I remembered their remarks as Dad drove down to the center of town to get bread, milk, and newspaper and then we drove up Highland Street.  He wanted me to see the new yew shrubs flanking the beautiful Sacred Heart etched pink head stone at the cemetery.  What I remember most that day was the newness of it and the “whispering” of the tall pines as a soft breeze ruffled their needles.  That section is surrounded by a stone wall typical of New England.  I thought it was a perfect setting.  Then, he drove back to the house via Randall Road with us in silent contemplation.

        I knew I wasn’t crazy remembering the Quaker connection and I was really disappointed at my last glance at the cemetery that the sign has “The North Cemetery” with no reference to Quakers – what a shame – some lost history there.

        So, it was delightful today when I was reading an historical book entitled: Towns of the Nashaway Plantation which was prepared by the Lancaster League of Historical Societies 1976, with copyright of 1976. The book traces the beginning of the large tract of Lancaster starting in 1653 and then covers the history of how Harvard, Bolton, Leominster, Sterling, Boxboro, Berlin, Boylston, West Boylston, Clinton and Hudson were carved out of the large tract into separate towns. [This dice-up of land is much like the county I live in now which ran from the Tennessee border to just about Charlotte, North Carolina.]

        Historian Barry W. Eager describes the cemetery connection as follows:

        “In his will, probated in 1867, Amos Wheeler bequeathed a half acre of land to the Bolton Monthly Meeting of Friends (Quakers).  This group counted nearly half of its members from Berlin.  Many of the Wheeler family were buried here.  In 1961, the Town was given title to this small burying ground on the west side of Highland Street near the Bolton line.  Now named the North cemetery, this has been increased in area by the purchase of neighboring land, providing a sizeable cemetery for the future. (4)”

        Footnote 4:  Berlin Town records. [Berlin was carved out of Bolton]

        So, thanks to Mr. Eager – I am not mentally cracked.   And, I can, without any hesitation or guilt, enjoy the quaintness of Mom and Dad both resting peacefully in a once known as Quaker cemetery in quaint Berlin.

October 23, 2017 – This week will be an eternity for me.

        As many of you know already, my Mom died last Thursday night and I have been coordinating a funeral from North Carolina that will take place in my hometown in Massachusetts.   I am down to only a few details and they might just wait until I get to Massachusetts tomorrow afternoon.

        Going through all the slips of paper and poems that Mom has sent to me over the years marked “keep for my funeral” – I found another poem by Grace E. Easley.  I am not sure where Mom clipped this poem from either, but it is faded and yellowed with age and I know the reason she sent it to me was to make certain I was not one of the folks with the narrow view of life making everyone including themselves miserable as described in the poem.

        I do remember at the time I was having trouble finding a job and I was turning into a curmudgeon in my telephone calls and letters and that wasn’t “her girl” or “my girl” as she called me affectionately.

        When Dad died in 2010, it created a sadness that has never fully lifted.  Christmas is no longer the same – there is no longer the yearly “hunt” for the newest aftershave that smelled like apple pie or pine tree forests to replenish his stock.  It took me three years before I could even look in the aftershave aisle without tearing up. What hurdles will now show up with Mom’s death? I am bracing myself for them as I know there will be many.

        The last several days I haven’t slept well and now the sadness of my Mom’s death is weighing on me.  I curled up in my husband’s arms last night and said,

        “There is really no one else now but you who really, really loves me.  With Dad and Mom both dead now, there is only your unconditional love.”

        He, of course, didn’t have the right words at that moment and later suggested I get pain killers or mind altering drugs to get through the funeral without having a heart attack.  Not what I wanted to hear, but he did understand my angst and conveyed his concerns as best he could. He is just not a wordsmith on demand.  

The love of my Dad and my Mom ran incredibly deep.  I never doubted their unshakable love all my life and now the fog of sadness is settling over me again and I am trying to be brave and put it into perspective that it, too, will lift eventually.  But, it never really lifted since Dad died.  I feel it has dimmed my soul.  Joy does not come easily now, I have to force it.  That shouldn’t be the way.

And, now . . . with Mom dying, I feel like the flame of my soul is flickering and sputtering.  And, as part of my makeup I am always competing with the whole world somehow.  My parents gave me that competitive spirit.  I always did things to obtain their praise and pride. I ask myself:

Who will I try to impress now?

Who will be proud of me now?

        Maybe my Mom knew I would need the following poem to snap me out of this, so I will re-read it often to give me solace.  I now share it with you.

Rainbows

By Grace E. Ensley

Some folks I know have narrow views of life that close them in.

And they continually await misfortune to begin.

They never see the sunshine, but they always find the rain.

They’ve frowned so much they can’t recall how laughter sounds again.

Instead of seeing each new day a bright and shining thing,

They face the dawn and wonder what new sorrow it will bring.

They squeeze out every ounce of joy, within the hearts of those

Who seek to cheer their lonely lives, Why? Only heaven knows.

They put a price on everything, and say that “nothing’s free”,

And end up being miserable as anyone can be.

They haven’t learned the secret that life is more than just

Accumulating lots of things, that fall apart with rust.

For life is more than gathering what someday we must leave,

Each one of us needs principles in which we can believe.

It’s not so much the getting, if we don’t know how to share.

For only love can turn the rain . . . To rainbows, everywhere.

October 22, 2017 – The simplest of things still fascinate me.

        It was an ordinary cleaning day where I put my mind on auto-pilot and go through the motions of cleaning the bathroom.

        Scrubbing the floor my shoulder inadvertently nudged the half-empty toilet tissue roll and it started to unroll.   I didn’t stop it expecting it to stop in a revolution or two or three. I simply sat back on my heels and watched it as I was in a daydream you get when you are thinking other things far away from where you are.   At first the plush two-ply rolled slowly then it speed up and the entire half roll ended up looped back and forth on the clean floor much like an oversized pasta noodle folding out of a pasta machine.

        First, I was amazed at the slowness then the speed. Then, I was actually delighted by the symmetry of the back and forth looping of the unrolled tissue on the floor.

        Often we have seen in toilet tissue commercials or comics about cats unrolling toilet tissue –but I’ve owned cats and only once I caught my little T.C. kitten “thinking about” the toilet tissue dangling and I grabbed him and kept the bathroom door closed during his kitten years.  So, I had never experienced the cat play with toilet tissue ending results.

        From one aspect, I’ve missed something – the cuteness of it and from another aspect the science behind the acceleration of slow rolling to suddenly fast rolling.  I wonder what scientific name they have for that -   does it fall under the laws of gravity or the laws of momentum or something.   Me, I was a poor student in science class, got the basics of why you add salt to ice in order to make it colder for the ice cream churn and something about the extra ions or molecules during a rainy day was supposed to assist your brain when taking tests. [I think that is an old wife’s tale though.]

        But it gave me a small respite to put things into perspective – this too, the little incident of the toilet tissue spilling off the roll onto the floor in such a way was interesting, eventful and in its own way soothing.

        The continuous laws of nature never end and never cease to surprise and, yes, delight me when witnessed quietly and unexpectedly.

        I’ll never look at a roll of toilet tissue the same way.  Who would have known something so simple could force me to sit and think this deeply and give my soul such needed refreshment.                                                

October 19, 2017 – Barbara St. John, my mom, 1924 to 10/19/2017

          I’ve been absent from my Blog for some time attending to life’s ups and downs. The first two full weeks of October, I drove up to Massachusetts and helped clean out Mom’s house with my brother, Ken.  Attic, house and basement.  I even did the “gardening” around the front yard in order to create a wonderful street appeal for the upcoming house sale.

          I am now a member of the “breaking up household of one’s parents” club and only those who have actually done such understand the process and overwhelming emotional toll it takes on you.   Flipping through wonderful old pictures found in desk drawers and fingering chipped china that was kept merely for sentimental reasons swamps one with unchecked emotions.

          Mom has been failing for some time and she was extremely frail.  She recognized me only in the mornings and then in the evening she asked my brother to bring back the “other” me.

          When I left her for the last time – about 10:00 a.m. on October 13, 2017, I hugged her good bye and said I was leaving for home.

          She said the most startling thing to me:

“The next time you see me, I’ll be in my box.”  She tipped her head coquettishly and smiled and there was a splendid lilt in her voice.

          It didn’t take me back as much as the thought was already in my mind.  My Mom always knew how to “upstage” any sweet parting over the years and this topped them all.

          “Yeah, Ma, I know.”  I whispered to her and smiled knowing that she was spot on as usual.  That is what she wanted and I knew she wouldn’t be with us much longer.   How soon, I didn’t know at the time.

          The evening of her death I had gone to ICC college for a cabaret review of  Gershwin.  I turned my phone off so as to not disturb the performance and missed the call from my husband letting me know that Mom had died quietly when she was being put to bed.

          One of the first songs of the evening was from Porgy & Bess, the one Mom loved so much of George Gershwin’s compositions.  Now that I think of it, it is sort of ironic that I thought of Mom during that entire song and how she would have loved to have heard her old favorite.  She would have sung along as she knew all the words. Me, I only knew half of them.  At the time, I didn’t know that she was probably taking her last breath.  But, later when I thought back at what I was doing at the time of her death, I realized the coincidence of it.  Maybe at the moment of her death her soul had fleeting come to me and she enjoyed her favorite song one more time with me.

          Long distance I have been planning the funeral with my brother, Ken.  I’ll fly up next week to attend.

          I had been praying for a quiet, no fanfare [hospital or nursing home, or pain] death for some time for my Mom because that is what she wished.

          She is at peace now.

          Mom, always the lady, knew when it was time to leave a party and she waltzed out of my life – right on her cue – as if she planned it that way.

          I will  share with you the poem she wants read at her funeral.

          Hopefully I can say it out loud without falling apart. We shall see.

          Me, I’m okay.  She will never be far from me because she is forever in my heart.  She had a wonderful life.  A life we will celebrate with friends and family next week.

A Talk with God

Today I had a talk with God,

Out in a field of goldenrod,

As grasses rippled in the wind,

Some things just needed saying then.

As blackbirds glistened ‘neath the sun,

My little sorrows one by one,

Stirred sleepy wings and flew from me,

Into God’s great infinity.

I walked beside a shallow creek,

And through the silence heard Him speak,

And once important things to me,

Seemed smaller than they used to be.

I sat beneath a shady oak,

Where dreams of long ago awoke,

And here within this quiet place,

I met my Maker face to face.

Through forest trail and underbrush,

I heard the plaintive hermit thrush,

Departing from the beaten track,

I got my lost perspective back.

Returning then from whence I came,

I knew my life was not the same,

Since I had talked awhile with God,

Out in the field of Goldenrod.

By Grace E. Easley