The Road From Nowhere

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dland

Goodbye Angel

(05.20.2007 - 9:30 pm)

The air brakes made that hissing noise at the same time the crackled noise of the intercom system began, “Reidsville, North Carolina! Please watch your step as you depart.” the driver was saying. I wasn't listening though, this was my stop, and I was already looking through the thick glass for her.
I stepped off that Trailways bus and onto the asphalt of the bus station. I was wearing bib overalls, brogan style shoes and a “bowl” style haircut. The old man didn't believe in long hair at all. When I say long hair, I mean more than three inches. The old man was my grandfather from my mother's side. To say that he believed in the adage of “Spare the rod and spoil the child” would be an understatement. Life with him was sheer hell, and consisted of whips, extension cords, and the back of his hand.
I heard her voice through the crowd. “Tim!” she was crooning, “Oh did you make it safe? Let me see you!” It was like an angel had reached out and taken my hand and led me out of hell personally. My father's mother turned me around and around examining me for only Lord knows what, and when satisfied, suddenly declared, quite literally, “I declare, you must be starving child!”
She took me by the hand and led me to her car. She acted astonished when I told her that, yes, that was all my luggage. I threw the box in the back seat and started to crawl into the big Chevrolet's back seat beside it. “Why are you getting back there silly? She asked me. I told her it was were I was supposed to sit when in a car. If it were a truck, I have to sit in the cargo area in the back. My Grandmother got this strange look on her face, then slowly started talking, “I don't know what all has happened to you in the years you've been at that man's house, but as I live and breath, no one will ever lay a finger on you again, do you understand? I love you, you are with me now.” She then put her arm around me and squeezed. I recoiled, and regretted it as soon as I saw the hurt and pain on her face. What she never knew was that when she squeezed me, it opened up a gash at the top of my back. I never told her that, I thought I was doing the right thing by not doing so, but realize now that she thought I didn't want her love and affection. She could have never been so wrong.
It took my grandmother several months to get me adjusted to a normal life. A life that didn't involve a whip or repetitious labor for the sake of labor. It was a terrible life, and one that I feel certain that I would have not survived had she not intervened.
Last Tuesday my Blackberry started vibrating in my pocket. It was reality slapping me in the face. The angel that saved me from self destruction was dead. I couldn't even speak. I'm also afraid that as this sets in, my depression will become worse and worse.
She was always there, my light at the end of the tunnel, waiting for me. At the ready to pull me from whatever hell I had allowed myself to fall into. My life will never be the same.
I remember her at the kitchen table putting mayonnaise, salt and pepper on two pieces of bread, then putting them into a bag with a ripe tomato and a paring knife. The same paring knife she had taken to the mill for forty years to make her sandwich at work. Always the frugal one, she could take a single dollar and feed an entire army with it I think! She is the one that taught me to drive, and even rode with me during my learner's permit stage. She co-signed with me for my first car, taught me how to balance a checkbook, even how to sew. She taught me to hold open doors for ladies and always say yes ma'am and thank you. “Being wrong is not the sin,” she would tell me, “but being unwilling to admit it is.”
When my teen aged years arrived, as most of my peers did, I found alcohol. I can still remember the night my friends poured me onto the lawn and sped off. She found me on the back porch, and even while I threw up face down, she sat in a kitchen chair and read from the bible the rest of the night until I got myself up and showered. Then with clean clothes on, she actually tucked me into bed just as she had so many years ago, kissed me on the forehead, and told me she loved me, cut the light off and gently shut my door. I cried myself to sleep that night. I never told her.
She would carefully listen to my outrageous plans of animal liberation at some research and development facility, then shake her head and want to tell me to quit, that I was going to get into trouble, but instead, would point out things I might have overlooked. She was just that cool. She believed that I needed some space to grow, and a little more leash than most, and that I had to learn lessons different than most.
I can remember her cackle with laughter when I would imitate John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever”, or Richard Nixon. She loved to laugh, and if you told a “dirty” joke she would actually cover her mouth as soon as she “got” the punch line. It was always a delayed reaction, which made it even funnier than the joke. I would tell her these dirty jokes just to see her make faces.
My grandmother never had anything bad to say about anybody. I can honestly say that the worst I ever heard her say to or about anyone was, “Why you old so and so!” when some one once ran a red light and made her have to hit the brakes hard. Far more intelligent than most people ever gave her credit for, she was smart like a fox. She could work under the wire and around you without you ever knowing it, or hurting your feelings!
She was ninety years old, and I miss her terribly. I tried, as did my brother, and my father before us, to get her to move down closer to us. She wouldn't have it. She had lived there in N.C. All but a couple of years in her entire life!
I cannot begin to say how guilty I feel in not having just made time to go and see her more often than I did. I try and soothe myself in that her last days were spent the way she wanted. She didn't hurt or suffer in any way. I am so thankful for that.
The lady at the home said she ate her entire meal Monday night and even her cup of pudding. She spent the rest of the “free time” roaming about visiting with her friends before showering and going to bed. She died sometime that night in her sleep.
My pain surfaces different than some. I miss her terribly, and always will, and I've shed tears for her, but still, in a way that maybe only she could understand, it's not over. I tend to write out my pain and my emotions. It's the one thing he still has control over me. I can't show emotion like you do. It's there, it hurts, but it's on the inside.

Sweet Virginia Smiles

You were there when everyone else looked away
took me into your arms and showed me love
teaching me what to do and what to say.
showed me a world undreamed of.

Were it not for you, I would not be here
Unlike so many others before you
You were the only one that did not disappear
and the only real love I ever knew

What will become of me ?
Who will save me now?
Who will be my eyes when I cannot see?
Who will take my hand when I don't know how?

Whenever I feel helpless now,
I'll just close my eyes and think of you
Your voice is just the same
Your voice is just the same
Yeah, your voice will be just the same
Oh, your voice is just like it was
all those years ago.

Smile Virginia, smile just for me
Now you've gone and I feel so all alone
there's a part of you still in me
so smile sweet Virginia,
smile for me.

Somehow, in so many ways, here on the inside
I'm still that lost little boy that you made a man
Yeah, this pain will end someday, it'll subside.
But it makes me wonder if all along this is the whole plan?

Oh my sweet Virginia, where are you now?
There's so many things I need to do and say.
I don't know where to sart, or even how!
Don't leave me, please don't go away!

Smile Virginia, smile just for me
Now you've gone and I feel so all alone
there's a part of you still in me
so smile sweet Virginia,
smile just for me.
My sweet Virginia smiles.

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