The Day The Robin Flew

The Day The Robin Flew

June in Alabama is hot. The sun is high by 9:00 AM and the tar on the roads starts to melt by noon. Some days a rain shower will arrive in the afternoon but they rarely last more than 20 minutes. Then the sun comes back out and the humidity is so thick a person can barely breathe.

The chapel inside the funeral home is cool and silent even though the temperature outside has already reached the 90's at 11:00 in the morning. My husband George and I are the first to arrive. I planned this deliberately so I could spend some quiet time with my mom before everyone else arrives.

The last two days have been horrendous. Mom died in Chattanooga, TN so we had to have her brought back to Anniston Alabama. She had picked out her cemetery a few years before when she gave me the instructions for her funeral. I have seven brothers and sisters, none of which can agree on anything so I spent the last two days trying to keep them from starting a riot and see to the arrangements at the same time. I am the oldest of our crew. My name is Alice and I am 47 years old. At this point in time I feel like I am four years old.

I am exhausted to the point of being numb. My mom had made me promise it would be a closed casket but my sisters insisted on it being open. I am afraid she is going to sit up and pull my hair out for letting her be put on display like this. She was a very private person, I understood her wishes but was just to tired to argue with them.

There is no one else in the chapel when we arrive. The room is filled with the sickly sweet scent of flowers surrounding the casket. I have to stop and catch my breath before I walk down the aisle. George discreetly leaves the room and leaves me alone with my mom for the last time.

I stand by her casket staring at her thinking how much younger and happier she looks. I wonder if the peaceful look on her face is due to the makeup or to her journey to the other side. I hope it is the latter. Her life had been a living hell, having 9 children, losing one and dealing with an alcoholic husband. People always ask why she stayed with him. I cannot answer that question truthfully. My own opinion is that she came from a generation who stayed with her husband, no matter what. And she had divorced him after 35 years. He has been dead for 10 years and while his children loved him it was not as hard to grieve for him like we are for her.

She looks like she is sleeping (don't they all??). Her new glasses are in her hand. She had macular degeneration at the end but her greatest love in life was reading. How many times did I walk into her house and find her asleep on the couch or on her bed with the book by her side and her glasses in her hand? This is a natural pose for her and it calms my mind a little. We have dressed her in a peach and white outfit my sister Barbara gave her for Mothers Day, only a few weeks before. When she got the package she wanted to know just where she was going to go that she would need such an expensive and classy outfit. But the night before she died a fever spiked over 105 degrees and at sometime she got up and took the outfit from the closet, laying it out like she intended to wear it. So we took that as a sign.

As I stand there my heart is screaming for her to wake up and lets go home. But I would not even cry for over a year. My mother was not the type of person to tolerate crying for no good reason and she would not have considered this a good reason to cry. She did not believe in public breakdowns and believed tears should be shed in private. I had tested her on this many times in my life and had learned to believe it.

My mother had been in the Marine Corp during World War II, where she met my Dad. On this day I have forgotten this and ordered a blanket of pink and white roses for her casket. She should have had an American flag draped on her coffin, she served her country. But even though she earned the flag I am very glad for the flowers. She loved flowers. The flag is folded and put above her head.

I brought one of my angel pins for her lapel but I cannot bring myself to pin it on her. George comes back and takes it from my shaking hands, pinning it on for me. I stand there by myself for a long time, wondering how I will manage without her in my life. She has always been the one person who stood up for me when the chips were down, and they have been down many times in my life. God has called home the only person I am sure loved me and I do not know what to do. Suddenly my legs feel like they were going to crumble beneath me so I walk back to the first pew and sit down. My tired, sick mind wanders back to the days when I was growing up and I push those thoughts out of my mind. I cannot deal with those memories right now, I just have to get through this day.

My family starts to drift in. My brother John is dressed in his Army greens. He is career Army now, a long way from the skinny little boy he was. He walks to the casket with his wife Debbie and they spend a long time looking at my mom. John later wrote a poem about her called "The Robin Never Flew", about how she stayed and took care of her family as best she could and sacrificed her own life for her children and grandchildren.

Barbara has arrived with her husband and her all her ex-husbands and boyfriends along with her son Jason. Jason is devestated as are my own children. Barbara always has to be the center of attention, even at mom's funeral. Doris Ann has come in, wearing a dress. The first one she has had on since high school. Doris Ann is beautiful but does not want to be.

David and his wife Patsy have arrived and people have started to come in for the funeral. I am not alone anymore but I feel more alone than I ever have. Stewart and Willie are the last to arrive, Stewart has been drinking. This is not unusual, he drinks everyday. Doris Ann will later claim that Stewart made a pass at her before the funeral started. He is her brother and would never do that. I do not pretend to understand why she will say this.

The last sister is Janet. She is younger that the rest of us and feels like she is not really part of the family because she does not have the same memories we do. She has three children and Mom has been living with her for awhile taking care of the children while Janet works. Her daughter Elizabeth is six and she has cried ever since she found out her grandmother was gone. Unfortunately this will haunt her into her teen years and make her do things she may not have done had mom lived. But that is years in the future and right now she is a scared little girl.

At last the ushers announce it is time to say our final goodbyes. My Aunt Janet is first to say goodbye to her sister. She is old and sad and we are all afraid she will collapse under the pressure. But she stays the course. We all file past the casket and out into the hall. When we return to the chapel the casket has been closed and locked and I feel a cold wave pass through me as I realize I will never see her again.

Somehow we got through that service. I don't remember much about it. Janet has met with the preacher and arranged the sermon. Then it is time to go to the gravesite.

The air is hot and muggy. There is not a cloud in the sky and no breeze is blowing. We gather around the grave site and the preacher says another sermon. George and John fold the flag and present it to Janet. I don't know why she was chosen. At this time I do not care, I just want this horrible day to be over. And then it is over. We are told to leave the cemetery until the casket has been lowered into the ground. Then we can come back and remove the plants and flowers we want to keep.

A friend of the family has fixed lunch for us so we go to her house. I don't eat very much and my nerves are just about shot. Barbara is flittng around all over the place driving everyone crazy. My brothers cannot take much more and neither can I. Finally I just suggest that she eat her lunch and be quiet. Since my brothers told her that would be a great idea because if she did not she would go into the grave with mom she finally settled down.

Now it is time to return to the cemetery. As we pull into the cemetery we see that it has rained on her grave. All the other graves were still bone dry but her's is soaking wet. It feels like tears from heaven have fallen for her and her alone. This is something I cannot explain and I don't try to. We take up the plants to be distributed among the eight of us and re-arrange the flowers. And now there is nothing left to do except go home. Exhaustion has set in for all of us and none of us have the energy to even feel right now. That will come in the days ahead but right now I know that all I want to do is go home and not feel anything. George and I bid my family goodbye and I tell them I will meet the ones who want to go to Chattanooga the next day to clean out her things.

I mentioned in this story that my brother later wrote a poem about my mother. He said the robin never flew. But the robin flew on that hot June day in 1997. I have waited for some sign that she would contact me over the years but there have not been any. So I believe the robin flew away to another world, hopefully one where she will be loved and cherished the way she should have been in this lifetime. I have given up waiting for a sign, I know she will not come. My dad comes and my brother Stewart who died in 2000 from alcoholism. I feel them when they are here along with my first love who died in April. I think she was just tired of this life and hurried on to the next where her adventures will continue. I just hope she knows that her children and grandchildren love and miss her and hope she is happy, whereever she is.

8/3/2009
ajmoss