It occurs to me that yesterday’s post might have been a bit confusing for those of you who do not know me personally, and maybe even for some that do. I mentioned Daddy’s grave and just last week I told you Daddy bought me some shoes. Well, neither one of us has lost our minds. Daddy and Daddy are too different men. They are so different, even, that I have been told I say the word differently depending on which I am talking about, and that those who know I have two dads can tell which one I am talking about by the way I say the name. I suppose that’s true, because they feel, smell and taste different inside my head.

My first Daddy is indeed dead, and it was his dad’s funeral we attended Sunday. He died when I was thirteen, but I’d not seen him since I was 6 or 7. It wasn’t what either of us wanted, but it’s the way things happened, and there you have it. You might as well put your past behind you, because you certainly can’t change it. I remember very little about him. A jar of marbles on a dresser, being carried through the snow. I was ….not happy as a child, and my solution to that was to blank my memory. I remember very few events, even up through my teens, and my first miserable marriage. Apparently, I found a trick that worked and I stuck with it. From the small tidbits I do remember, I know he loved me, and that is enough. I can remember things if I am reminded and/or shown pictures, and that is also enough. See, no one takes pictures of bad things, so then all my memories can stay good. That’s my Daddy.

My second Daddy is my mother’s second husband. They married when I was nine, and I have called him Daddy for 31 years. And he truly is my Daddy now. It took a very long time for us to get to that point. A lot of time, and a lot of pure-tee hurt, there is no denying that. He’s a huge man, and his voice is very deep, and I was a very small child, and so I stayed scared of him until I moved away from home. And then when I came home, I guess we both decided that it could and should be different, and so we made it that way. He may have never carried me through the snow so my shoes would not get wet, but I know he loves me just the same. He’s the one who drove me to the university hospital when Drama was life flighted out of our community hospital on a breathing tube. He’s the one who drove me to the eye doctor last year when I thought I was going blind. That’s my Daddy, too.

So there you have it, as well as I can explain it, anyway.

You know there are a lot of things that make me feel guilty. One of them is that I am not able to help my mom with Grandmother’s stuff as much as I feel I should. I’m not blowing her off, but I am just heavily scheduled. (BTW, Mama, next Saturday, we are on. I think.) I’ve enjoyed the couple of times I have been able to go with her, but it’s not easy work. It’s not hard work, either, but it is heart work. I touched on that just a bit when I told you about the note I found.

See, in between the old issues of Birds and Blooms and the shower chairs, (yes, two, Granddad’s old one was still there, I think) we find things like this:

and this:

The picture is of my grandparents, probably taken not long after they married. There is one of Grandmother alone from that same day, and I have a picture of it as well. The bowl in the second picture belonged to my great grandmother. In fact, I have a lot of pictures of people and things that I need to tell about, but the telling is also heart work. And I am just not ready to work quite that heart right now.

Saturday was the Pinewood Derby for my boy scouts. I worked in the kitchen selling hot dogs to raise funds for camp scholarships, and so my angle on things was a little different from most of the spectators. This scene that I have captured here is a very poignant one, and I want to introduce you to the hero pictured here.

Lief was my oldest son’s den leader last year. He’s a big burly guy, with several earrings and more than one tattoo. He’s bold, and he’s loud, and the kids just LOVE him. Mr. Lief, Mr. Lief, Mr. Lief. And not just from Stuntman, either, but from most of my kids, LOL! Lief has no kids, and he was rooked into leading the den by a friend of his. His day job is teaching, which seems pretty basic, until I tell you that he teaches at the juvenile detention center. I just found out a few weeks ago that Lief is not as young as I thought. I guess I figured that he taught there because that’s the type of job he could find, being so young, and with the earrings and tats an all. In fact, the man is 35 years old. But really, none of that is what makes him a hero. That stuff is just an ordinary guy who happens to care a lot about kids.

In this picture, he’s helping with the Pinewood Derby. He had the job of gathering the cars after each run and taking them back up to the front of the room. On his way back, he’d crouch real low and “five” the boys as he went. The kids absolutely ate it up! You see I’ve caught him here with the American flag while he was waiting for a set of cars to come down the track. In one month, Lief is going back to Iraq. Yes, I said back. What makes him a hero is that a month from his tour, he’s still making these kids’ day, still involved with them, still so “here” for them.

I mentioned before that there were a few things I wanted from my Grandmother’s house to remind me of her and continue the connection we had. I went with Mama today to do some sorting and cleaning and to get some of those things. Oh, we found some grand treasures: things that belonged to my great-grand-dad (did you know that as late as the 50’s driver’s licenses were issued without a picture?), the original receipt for the farm (now I know exactly what “bought the farm means”, and I’ll tell you about it another time), the picture of Uncle Bill, a compact that Granddad sent to Grandmother, even though she didn’t wear makeup, rare pictures of her smiling, and I learned that Granddad frequently transposed Grandmother’s initials.

We had to go through a lot of stuff, and we have scads more to go. No stack of papers can be thrown away unsearched, because we’ve found pictures and such tucked in among stuff that is “worthless’ to us. Today, for instance, I opened a small box that my Uncle brought down from the attic last week. It was on a box of “bank china” that my Grandparents got for me eons ago. On the outside I read “handle with care”, and then I untied the well-tied string and opened the box. There was a note that just said “Bowls Tommy gave to me. Love, Grandmother” on the back of a calendar page. Yes, my Grandmother was ever a frugal woman, and long before budgeting software became the norm. There was no indication on the paper who the bowls were meant to go to, and signing the note “Grandmother” only limited the possible pool of candidates by 3, since every other member of an incredibly large family refers to her by that name. So, employing my usual wit and sarcasm, I said “Hmm, thanks Grandmother.” A lady was there talking to Mama, and she asked if there was a name on the box, and I said no, and closed the box. As I was closing it, I noticed the name that had been hidden under the string, “Denise”. That’s me. And I opened the box again to see what it was exactly that she had wanted to give me, and I saw that note again, and it was as though I was seeing it for the first time, this note my Grandmother wrote to ME so long ago, knowing I would probably not see it until she died and she signed it “Love, Grandmother”, and I kinda sobbed right there, and the tears are pouring down my face right now, even as I type. Because she is dead now about 6 weeks, and yet “Love, Grandmother” rings across eternity to me.

Yesterday, I was at the bowling alley, lamenting the ball and shoes I left in Topeka, Kansas some 6 years ago. That bowling equipment is the only thing I have let go of in 40 years that I seriously regretted for more than 30 seconds. At the time I decided not to bring it, I was pregnant with my 6th child, and I was at that stage of pregnancy that just seems to drag on forever. If you are a mom, you know how that is: you’ve always been pregnant, you are always going to be pregnant, and pregnancy is just your permanent fate. Forever. World without end, Amen.

So, as I was explaining about the bowling ball, I did some quick multiplication and division. 9 months x 8 babies = 72 months. 72 months / 12 months = 6 years. I’ve been pregnant for 6 full years. That’s a long time to wear maternity clothes, yk? And I’ve nursed for even longer. Gallons and gallons and gallons of good milk have I made.

I’ve been thinking for several months now that God may be calling me on to other areas of work. And I was kinda confused by that, because I know for certain His clear direction for me had been to bear children and to leave the timing to him. I even wondered if I was mis-hearing, hearing what I selfishly wanted. That is, up until my husband looked at me and said, “you know I’ll be 70 when DaBaby is grown.” And I said, “umm, honey, it’s actually 75.” And he told me he didn’t want any more babies. And I totally understood where he was coming from with that, and I totally took it as confirmation from God that this chapter of my life was at an end.

And I think that the child I now call DaBaby will in fact be DaBaby forever. I never thought I would say that on this side of menopause.

that cardboard boxes, paper bags and even trash bags dry rot and fall apart when you touch them. I learned this up in Grandmother’s attic as I was going through her things. There’s just something so sad about a trash bag, lovingly and carefully wrapped around an item to preserve it, that disintegrates at a touch.

that the things in our lives take their meaning from the hands that use them and that the tools a person leaves behind tell a tale of their own. There’s not a whole lot I want from her house, just a few things really to remind me of her, to continue the connection we’ve had all my life.

that the sight of a funeral wreath can make your heart skip a beat. And possibly make you stop in the middle of the street and burst into tears. Regardless of the traffic.

How do you follow up an obituary? I didn’t realize when I posted it that it would be so hard to put up another post after it. How do I push such an important part of my life off the front page? And I guess I do that by doing what Grandmother did all her life as long as she was able: roll up my sleeves, get back to work and do the next thing.

The wake was incredible. We knew Grandmother was well liked and respected, but you never truly know all the lives they touch. Grandmother loved large and wide, casting a net of good over 3 counties, and it showed in the people who flowed in and out of that mortuary. Pretty impressive for a woman who never drove anything except a tractor. A woman who had far outlived all her contemporaries.

The funeral was also full, and the eulogy was fitting except that the preacher (who always called Grandmother “Mrs Chauncey” in life), mispronounced her first name the first few times he said it, causing the entire family to startle the first time, and writhe in embarrassed agony after that. He finally said it correctly, and then proceeded to call her Mrs. Chauncey for the rest of the service. Just so you aren’t left in suspense, it’s pronounced “Merle”.

We chose to celebrate life, instead of mourning death, and though I did cry a bit, I realized those were selfish tears, that they were for me and not for her, and I would imagine her up in heaven, smiling that wonderful smile, and it was okay. I did indeed have to go back into the house and grab her photograph to take with me in the van to the services, and that was ok, too. My Grandmother was such an incredibly large part of my life for so very long, it would be impossible to not feel sad at her passing. The truth is that I lost my Grandmother quite awhile ago.

Although the casket was closed for the services, the family was allowed to view her body. It was obvious from her face that she had indeed had a stoke as my mother had surmised last November. What we could not pinpoint in life was very obvious in death. Both sides of her face looked “normal”, but they did not match. And the final proof for me, if I needed it, that my Grandmother was NOT in that box was in her hands. All my life, Grandmother had skin that bruised if you looked at it wrong. She always said “be careful of my legs, I’ll get a place if you bump it”. She called them “places” because … well, I don’t know because, but she did. So, in life the backs of her hands were always mottled with big ugly purple and red splotchy “places”. In death, they were white. Not my Grandmother’s hands at all.

But she wore a fine red dress.
~~~~

And now, I have climbed back onto the blogging wagon, and I must work, because there is work to be done. I cannot think of any logical way to mention truck bed liner in the body of this post, so here it is, tacked onto the end like pure tackiness itself.

Muriel Jones Chauncey, 96, of Clarkton, NC, passed away on December 15, 2007. Born January 31, 1911, she was the oldest daughter of Shady E. and Nellie Booth Jones. She was predeceased by husbands, Bill (1935) and Russell (1988); sons, infant (1935), William (1952) and Lloyd (1993); also siblings, Eppie Jones, S.E. Jones, Mary J. Duncan, Leona J. Smith and Lanie J. Jackson.

She is survived by a son, Fred (Leah) Chauncey of Raleigh; and a daughter, Nellie (Bill) Martin of Leland. Also surviving are grandchildren, Bill (Lois) Chauncey, Steve (Lynna) Chauncey, Sarah (Johny) Thompson, Denise (Patrick) Darrow, Christine (Namon) Baits; and daughter-in-law, Jessie (Jim) Dobson; and 21 great grandchildren.

Muriel was a Gold Star Mother, loved her Lord, and was a faithful member of Western Prong Baptist Church since 1956, until her failing health prohibited her from attending. For many, many years she stayed in the infant nursery during Sunday School and Vacation Bible School.

Visitation will be at McKenzie’s Mortuary in Whiteville from 7 - 8:30 p.m. on Monday, December 17, 2007. Funeral services will be at Western Prong Baptist Church December 18, 2007, at 2 p.m. led by Rev. Willie McLawhorn. Burial will follow in Flynn Cemetery. At other times the family will be at her residence.

Active pallbearers are Bernard Baldwin, Carlton Boswell, Milton Bullard, Billy Creech, Wayne Creech, and Michael Hinson. Honorary pallbearers are Harold Bright, Joe Chauncey, David Duncan, Bobby Smith, Tim Tart and Kennie Watts.

As long as Muriel was able, she lived her life helping others and was most happy when doing so.

Memorial Contributions may be made to the American Cancer Society, 930-B Wellness Dr., Greenville, NC 27834, National Kidney Foundation of NC, 5950 Fairview Rd Ste 550, Charlotte, NC 28210-2102.

‘In God’s love He gives life and in His mercy, He takes life.’
McKenzie Mortuary, Whiteville.

ETA: Photo from 2002