 |
| St Anthony, ID 1948 |
The description 'two-story' is a bit embellished since the upper single bedroom, shared by my sister and me, was no more than an unfinished attic, with a single window over the front porch roof. I remember also some sort of outbuilding, where we kept a hog, a sort of four-legged garbage disposal with a name, forgotten now, which could in the future be butchered for our own food, or sold to someone else for theirs. A year or so before, in Kendrick, Idaho, I had learned to not become friends with the live-stock, after my lamb, appropriately named Lambie ended up in in white wrapped-paper packages in our rented freezer-locker at the local independent grocer. Lambie thereafter put in sporadic appearances on our spartan dinner menu, as did unnamed possums and squirrels, but that's a different story.
In any case, here we were in St. Anthony for reasons I can no longer recall. And, before I get to the central story, I want to talk about memory. I have direct memory of a few events back to the time that I was four years old, nearly five years old, in Kendrick, Idaho. I refer to them as 'direct' because I have an intact, original image in my memory, and other sensory cues, including smells, pains, and the like. Other 'memories' are memories of some other one's account, telling what happened in a conversation with another or correcting my own version of what happened, and while I have no reason to doubt their accounts, my memory is of their telling, and I have no imagery or sensations of my own.
When I take these memories out of their filing place, whether direct or recounted, I either fray the picture, or enhance the account somehow, by updating it with more current information which has recently come to me, probably by way of others, or by realizations, assumptions, or conclusions...inauthentic color and texture. So memories are dynamic, and susceptible to the other needs of life, such as, the need to see ourselves at the center of things, or in some heroic or tragic role. In other words, our memories are distorted by our needs and wants. So what follows is my original memory, of first death, and I likely place myself more in the center of the event then an adult eye-witness might have put me at the time...but the fact is, I was there watching with the intense focus and presence that only a 5 or 6 year old can achieve.
An unusual noise came in through the the open windows of our house. On that sunny Spring afternoon, through our wide open front room windows, we heard the sound of someone running, staggering, gasping, sobbing in a frenzy, out on the dirt road leading toward the paved highway, which linked us to town. I can still hear the slow, staggering footsteps, and I can remember my surprise at seeing that the sounds were made by the stumbling feet of a childhood acquaintance, though not a friend. My Dad immediately jumped outside to the road and stopped the child, who was probably a couple years older than I, holding him fast to halt his frenzied running. I remember my dad shaking him gently into attentiveness to find out what had happened. The boy struggling for breath, legs likely cramping from running, submerged in delirious shock, managed to convey that his younger brother had disappeared into the water of the "gravel-pit," the quarry up the road, then he tore loose from my father’s grip and continued running for home, or somewhere, in that staggering gait, caused perhaps by shock, exhaustion, or muscle cramps.
My father, probably in his late 30's at the time, a fit working man, and sometime Pentecostal preacher, sprinted the distance to the quarry, maybe a quarter of a mile, and by the time I got there had already dived, surfaced, and dived several times, in his futile search for the child. After what seemed like a long time in child-minutes, he surfaced holding the boy, like a "rag-doll" with an ashen-face, bluish-purple lips, absolutely limp, with only the whites of his eyes showing through his narrowly parted eye-lids. My father stretched the child out on the drive-down 'beach' of the quarry and began what passed for artificial resuscitation at the time.
I can remember hopeful exclamations from the growing crowd of neighbors as the child's eyes moved beneath his eye-lids, but in harsh fact he was destined to never breath the crisp air of Spring or any other season again. Even when the volunteer fire department ambulance arrived with oxygen, he did not breath. His brain, lungs, and heart had permanently parted ways. Sometime later, perhaps about then, his mother arrived, as I remember driven by the police, with his still shocky older brother in tow...panicked, hopeless, sobbing...rumored later by the chatter that she had to be '...hauled off of some local bar-stool...' an accusation which implied that she may as well be guilty of the child's murder. Only years later did I consider the awful lifelong burden which had been placed on the barely-older brother and his mother that day; I wondered how many nights during his life he dreamed of having that moment back...that moment just before he lost track of his younger brother, and how many different ways he rewrote that outcome in his dreams, only to awaken to the inevitable fact that his brother was gone, he alone was to blame, and the ending could never be different.
I think this event nudged my experience of life, perceptions and cognitions, a bit off course. I watched this small death play out from ground level perhaps 10-feet away. I was as close as I could get to the event, down on my knees and elbows, chin in hand, watching the boy, glancing up and around at faces, listening to the talk and the tone...until they wrapped up the kid and took him, his mother, and brother away in the ambulance. The noise of the departing ambulance, its tires compressing the crushed rock of the gravel-pit, left an oppressive, cloying silence for those who remained. As I think of it these days, and put myself as an adult into that past setting, maybe what I felt was not simply silence but also the shame of elders who had failed to protect the most vulnerable of their community.
Obviously the event touched me in some fashion because I still have direct, sensory memories of it, which I occasionally unpack and sort through; I don't recommend that children be allowed to watch a death, real or otherwise;. I know the memories are direct because I can smell the water on the crushed rocks; I can see my Dad's shoes and wallet at water's edge; I can hear the ambulance whining in the distance as it makes the turn in front of the rich farmers’ house, where the kid with Polio lived, and on toward the quarry, and I can hear its tires on the crushed rock...and, then we never talked about it much around my house after that day. I remember that I wasn't sad, and I wasn't afraid. This kid was about my age, and he and his brother had not been particularly nice to me...something I understood and even justified, because I was, after all, 'the new kid' so I somehow deserved to be bullied. But, I also remember that at odd times after this small death, for no apparent reason, I didn't feel as safe as I had before. The water of the river and falls at the park in St. Anthony became something different than it had been. The swimming pools of the future would be more than a place to have mindless fun. Pleasant, soothing water had joined that growing list of possible enemies.
So without much adult help, I figured out that this was the dreaded 'dying' which I had heard people talk about; when they bundled the kid up they seemed to be handling an object; it didn't seem like they were as careful as they would be if he were headed somewhere to be cared for; his mother and brother sat in the ambulance, one in the front-seat, and one by the gurney in back, as I remember. Both were in shock, silent, and staring into a future where the dead child didn't exist. (See? That’s not a “memory” that’s an embellishment...they were staring then, but now I know what they were likely viewing). In fact, everyone present seemed defeated. I had no sense of loss...and no epiphany about 'the great unknown.' I don't remember even having a realization that I might not see him again...I had no experience with finality at that age, but I remember being disquieted inside by the defeated spirits of the adults. Adults were supposed to have the answers, and be solutions.
In that moment when it dawned on the adults including my dad that there was going to be no happy ending, no mother and child reunion, I was struck by their helplessness. Some just bowed their heads, looking no further than the ground in front of their next step, turned away and walked home. Others seemed agitated and frustrated, like they wanted to hit or kick something, but there was no visible enemy to flail at. It was the first time I had witnessed adults, in particular my dad, having no answer...no solution...no quick cliché to cover this event. Understand, these were images and hints, inklings on my part, not rational well-formed thoughts and conclusions...I sensed it in the same way you would sense that a horse you're walking around is nervous and jumpy, or that a dog is about to growl. And, I must admit, as I walked back up the dirt road toward my house, I too did not feel things were okay, like they had been when I ran down the road an hour or so earlier. I look back on it now, as the first inkling I had, that in the World, everything might not be okay, and that things didn't always get better.
My next experience of dying was that of my Dad's brother Charles in St. Louis, Missouri, several years after the St. Anthony event. At that time, I did not even equate or relate this adult death with the first one, the small death. It was not at all the same, so Charles' death didn't even provoke memories of the child's death. Charles had what we would today refer to as Type I adolescent on-set diabetes. There was then no technology for purifying the blood of the waste toxins from unmetabolized sugars. My memory may be flawed but I think I remember Charles undergoing blood transfusions which offered some temporary relief, and always seemed to create some ill-fated hope. His death was a “hospital and funeral home death” which seemed actually more fear-filled than a young child dying in the Spring sunshine on the drive-down beach of a gravel quarry. The adult death seemed so staged, and like so much was going on out of sight, behind the curtains, things which should be able to resolve it. This was no quick accident on a sunny day...this took weeks. Why didn't someone just fix it?
I didn't see my Uncle die, or even see him after he died until he was 'prepared' as they used to say; it was strange because I had seen him alive and talked to him at his home and at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, then I heard he had died from my parents who were clearly sad and distraught, and felt that I too should be. I next saw the 'mannequin' in the casket...a very disorienting disconnect; and, once he was 'prepared' it seemed very spooky and unnatural, to sit with the weeping family and strangers in a hot, stuffy room, with the open casket and the non-family guests sharing a room as we sat crowded together looking on through a glass window. So as it occurred, these 'civilized' deaths, Charles' death and others to follow, were much more haunting of my thoughts and even dreams for a short while, than was the death of the child in the gravel-quarry.
That first death in St. Anthony in 1948 or '49 became a bench-mark of sorts against which I calculated and compared all other deaths until present day. It was just a "pure" event unsullied by sentiment or symbol. My reality was pre-scientific, pre-religious and entirely without magic. It just happened, he had been there, and, he was gone...without fanfare or drama, quietly as an otherwise watchful brother was momentarily distracted, and a young single-mother took a moral holiday from parenting, just for a while sipping her beer with her friends in a not too distant tavern, secure in the fact that her sons were together at home, and, worst case playing together safely outside in a small country, LDS community. The small deaths happen just that way, interfering with a moment of joy, on the first warm day of Spring, under the watchful eyes of someone who loves you, in a moment of distraction.
 |
| Billy and "Lambie" 1947 |
In any case, here we were in St. Anthony for reasons I can no longer recall. And, before I get to the central story, I want to talk about memory. I have direct memory of a few events back to the time that I was four years old, nearly five years old, in Kendrick, Idaho. I refer to them as 'direct' because I have an intact, original image in my memory, and other sensory cues, including smells, pains, and the like. Other 'memories' are memories of some other one's account, telling what happened in a conversation with another or correcting my own version of what happened, and while I have no reason to doubt their accounts, my memory is of their telling, and I have no imagery or sensations of my own.
When I take these memories out of their filing place, whether direct or recounted, I either fray the picture, or enhance the account somehow, by updating it with more current information which has recently come to me, probably by way of others, or by realizations, assumptions, or conclusions...inauthentic color and texture. So memories are dynamic, and susceptible to the other needs of life, such as, the need to see ourselves at the center of things, or in some heroic or tragic role. In other words, our memories are distorted by our needs and wants. So what follows is my original memory, of first death, and I likely place myself more in the center of the event then an adult eye-witness might have put me at the time...but the fact is, I was there watching with the intense focus and presence that only a 5 or 6 year old can achieve.
An unusual noise came in through the the open windows of our house. On that sunny Spring afternoon, through our wide open front room windows, we heard the sound of someone running, staggering, gasping, sobbing in a frenzy, out on the dirt road leading toward the paved highway, which linked us to town. I can still hear the slow, staggering footsteps, and I can remember my surprise at seeing that the sounds were made by the stumbling feet of a childhood acquaintance, though not a friend. My Dad immediately jumped outside to the road and stopped the child, who was probably a couple years older than I, holding him fast to halt his frenzied running. I remember my dad shaking him gently into attentiveness to find out what had happened. The boy struggling for breath, legs likely cramping from running, submerged in delirious shock, managed to convey that his younger brother had disappeared into the water of the "gravel-pit," the quarry up the road, then he tore loose from my father’s grip and continued running for home, or somewhere, in that staggering gait, caused perhaps by shock, exhaustion, or muscle cramps.
My father, probably in his late 30's at the time, a fit working man, and sometime Pentecostal preacher, sprinted the distance to the quarry, maybe a quarter of a mile, and by the time I got there had already dived, surfaced, and dived several times, in his futile search for the child. After what seemed like a long time in child-minutes, he surfaced holding the boy, like a "rag-doll" with an ashen-face, bluish-purple lips, absolutely limp, with only the whites of his eyes showing through his narrowly parted eye-lids. My father stretched the child out on the drive-down 'beach' of the quarry and began what passed for artificial resuscitation at the time.
I can remember hopeful exclamations from the growing crowd of neighbors as the child's eyes moved beneath his eye-lids, but in harsh fact he was destined to never breath the crisp air of Spring or any other season again. Even when the volunteer fire department ambulance arrived with oxygen, he did not breath. His brain, lungs, and heart had permanently parted ways. Sometime later, perhaps about then, his mother arrived, as I remember driven by the police, with his still shocky older brother in tow...panicked, hopeless, sobbing...rumored later by the chatter that she had to be '...hauled off of some local bar-stool...' an accusation which implied that she may as well be guilty of the child's murder. Only years later did I consider the awful lifelong burden which had been placed on the barely-older brother and his mother that day; I wondered how many nights during his life he dreamed of having that moment back...that moment just before he lost track of his younger brother, and how many different ways he rewrote that outcome in his dreams, only to awaken to the inevitable fact that his brother was gone, he alone was to blame, and the ending could never be different.
I think this event nudged my experience of life, perceptions and cognitions, a bit off course. I watched this small death play out from ground level perhaps 10-feet away. I was as close as I could get to the event, down on my knees and elbows, chin in hand, watching the boy, glancing up and around at faces, listening to the talk and the tone...until they wrapped up the kid and took him, his mother, and brother away in the ambulance. The noise of the departing ambulance, its tires compressing the crushed rock of the gravel-pit, left an oppressive, cloying silence for those who remained. As I think of it these days, and put myself as an adult into that past setting, maybe what I felt was not simply silence but also the shame of elders who had failed to protect the most vulnerable of their community.
Obviously the event touched me in some fashion because I still have direct, sensory memories of it, which I occasionally unpack and sort through; I don't recommend that children be allowed to watch a death, real or otherwise;. I know the memories are direct because I can smell the water on the crushed rocks; I can see my Dad's shoes and wallet at water's edge; I can hear the ambulance whining in the distance as it makes the turn in front of the rich farmers’ house, where the kid with Polio lived, and on toward the quarry, and I can hear its tires on the crushed rock...and, then we never talked about it much around my house after that day. I remember that I wasn't sad, and I wasn't afraid. This kid was about my age, and he and his brother had not been particularly nice to me...something I understood and even justified, because I was, after all, 'the new kid' so I somehow deserved to be bullied. But, I also remember that at odd times after this small death, for no apparent reason, I didn't feel as safe as I had before. The water of the river and falls at the park in St. Anthony became something different than it had been. The swimming pools of the future would be more than a place to have mindless fun. Pleasant, soothing water had joined that growing list of possible enemies.
So without much adult help, I figured out that this was the dreaded 'dying' which I had heard people talk about; when they bundled the kid up they seemed to be handling an object; it didn't seem like they were as careful as they would be if he were headed somewhere to be cared for; his mother and brother sat in the ambulance, one in the front-seat, and one by the gurney in back, as I remember. Both were in shock, silent, and staring into a future where the dead child didn't exist. (See? That’s not a “memory” that’s an embellishment...they were staring then, but now I know what they were likely viewing). In fact, everyone present seemed defeated. I had no sense of loss...and no epiphany about 'the great unknown.' I don't remember even having a realization that I might not see him again...I had no experience with finality at that age, but I remember being disquieted inside by the defeated spirits of the adults. Adults were supposed to have the answers, and be solutions.
In that moment when it dawned on the adults including my dad that there was going to be no happy ending, no mother and child reunion, I was struck by their helplessness. Some just bowed their heads, looking no further than the ground in front of their next step, turned away and walked home. Others seemed agitated and frustrated, like they wanted to hit or kick something, but there was no visible enemy to flail at. It was the first time I had witnessed adults, in particular my dad, having no answer...no solution...no quick cliché to cover this event. Understand, these were images and hints, inklings on my part, not rational well-formed thoughts and conclusions...I sensed it in the same way you would sense that a horse you're walking around is nervous and jumpy, or that a dog is about to growl. And, I must admit, as I walked back up the dirt road toward my house, I too did not feel things were okay, like they had been when I ran down the road an hour or so earlier. I look back on it now, as the first inkling I had, that in the World, everything might not be okay, and that things didn't always get better.
My next experience of dying was that of my Dad's brother Charles in St. Louis, Missouri, several years after the St. Anthony event. At that time, I did not even equate or relate this adult death with the first one, the small death. It was not at all the same, so Charles' death didn't even provoke memories of the child's death. Charles had what we would today refer to as Type I adolescent on-set diabetes. There was then no technology for purifying the blood of the waste toxins from unmetabolized sugars. My memory may be flawed but I think I remember Charles undergoing blood transfusions which offered some temporary relief, and always seemed to create some ill-fated hope. His death was a “hospital and funeral home death” which seemed actually more fear-filled than a young child dying in the Spring sunshine on the drive-down beach of a gravel quarry. The adult death seemed so staged, and like so much was going on out of sight, behind the curtains, things which should be able to resolve it. This was no quick accident on a sunny day...this took weeks. Why didn't someone just fix it?
I didn't see my Uncle die, or even see him after he died until he was 'prepared' as they used to say; it was strange because I had seen him alive and talked to him at his home and at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, then I heard he had died from my parents who were clearly sad and distraught, and felt that I too should be. I next saw the 'mannequin' in the casket...a very disorienting disconnect; and, once he was 'prepared' it seemed very spooky and unnatural, to sit with the weeping family and strangers in a hot, stuffy room, with the open casket and the non-family guests sharing a room as we sat crowded together looking on through a glass window. So as it occurred, these 'civilized' deaths, Charles' death and others to follow, were much more haunting of my thoughts and even dreams for a short while, than was the death of the child in the gravel-quarry.
That first death in St. Anthony in 1948 or '49 became a bench-mark of sorts against which I calculated and compared all other deaths until present day. It was just a "pure" event unsullied by sentiment or symbol. My reality was pre-scientific, pre-religious and entirely without magic. It just happened, he had been there, and, he was gone...without fanfare or drama, quietly as an otherwise watchful brother was momentarily distracted, and a young single-mother took a moral holiday from parenting, just for a while sipping her beer with her friends in a not too distant tavern, secure in the fact that her sons were together at home, and, worst case playing together safely outside in a small country, LDS community. The small deaths happen just that way, interfering with a moment of joy, on the first warm day of Spring, under the watchful eyes of someone who loves you, in a moment of distraction.
No comments:
Post a Comment