Hearts Left Behind (4 page)

Most of the faces in church that morning were
familiar, but some familiar faces were not there.  The congregation was
smaller as membership growth had been outpaced by attrition. 
Attrition by life that carried youngsters away from home.
 
Attrition by death that carried the elderly farther than
that.
  Sophia Mane walked in alone and it made me miss her
husband.  Good old Burt who used to shake my hand with an assuring vigor
on a Sunday morning and tell me how well I played in my soccer match the
afternoon before.  I was not a good soccer player, but Burt Mane was no
liar and he made me believe that just maybe he saw something in me that I
couldn’t see myself.  I loved him for that gift and the warm handshake it
was wrapped in.

Sitting in the seats that Al and Opal Hess had always
occupied was a young couple I did not recognize.  Another young couple with
two young girls sat in the front row, where the cushions were less flat and
more green
than those found in the pews in the back. 

And what about O.J. Ross?
 
He had passed some time back, I knew, but it still felt something like
trespassing for me to be here when he was not.  Phyllis Ross walked alone
these days, too.

Still, this was a church built upon a strong
foundation of names like Wilton, McArthur, and Jenkins and many of those old
family stones were in the same place they had settled in years ago.  And
there were a few of the sons and daughters of yesterday that had grown into the
fathers and mothers of today and those old rock names hung on them now,
too.  Yes, they had grown and looked the part but in an improbable, almost
silly sort of way. 
Little boys and girls playing
dress-up with clothes from their parent’s closet.
  The elders look
at me in the same way, I suppose.

I thought Mom and Larry might be here, but their pew
was empty, so I sat down in the seat that my Grandma Mueller used to sit in every
Sunday and felt a little unworthy in doing so.  Grandma Mueller was to be
credited for this flat and faded cushion, wearing it down one Sunday at a time.

There were several announcements shared with the
congregation that morning, including one from Dorothy Sheridan who informed all
of a major upcoming event.  “You are all invited here next Saturday
afternoon,” said Dorothy, “to see Janice Sawyer who will be here to entertain
us all with her world-famous Minnie Pearl impersonations. 
A special thank you to the United Methodist Women’s Club for making
this event possible.”

A “world-famous” Minnie Pearl impersonator seemed
improbable, and yet I was intrigued.  I was tempted to come just to see
how long Miss Sawyer could entertain an audience – any audience – with
still-tagged straw hats and screeching
howdees
.  

When Pastor Judy asked the congregation to share their
joys and concerns, several hands went up.  Alice Mandel lifted up people
in nursing homes.  Norma Todd asked for prayers for our military overseas. 
Don Jeffries gave praise for the recent rain that would surely help the
farmer’s crops.  Elmer and Millie Sands announced the birth of their 19
^th
grandchild.  Martha
Piscatella
prayed for safe
travels for vacationing family and friends.  Florence Howell gave thanks
to God for the sun. 

We bowed our heads and Pastor Judy lead us in a long
passionate prayer,
full of high praises,
sincere gratitude, and humble requests.  I closed my eyes to add power to
the prayer, but found myself thinking back to those Sundays when I would sit
here next to Grandma Mueller and she would scratch secret messages on my back
with loving fingers. 
Hi,
T.  Love you, T. 
My boy.

When Pastor Judy finished, she encouraged us all to
take a few seconds of silent prayer, but all I could think of was to thank God
for my wife and daughter and to ask for more feathers.

I don’t know that I got much from being there.  I
listened for messages but didn’t find any in sermon or song.  The
highlight of the whole service came when a girl from the youth group referred
to history’s most famous hand washer as Pontius
Pilates
(as in the
exercise program) during a reading of the New Testament.  Still, there was
something about being there that seemed to calm my soul a little.

After church I went to the cemetery to visit
Ethan.  Tammy had not wanted our son buried here, nearly an hour from our
home in Westfield.  But the Gaines family plot was here and this fact
brought me some measure of comfort.  It was close enough.  It was far
enough.

“All my family is in Willow Grove, Tam,” I had
said. 
“The dead and the living.
  And it’s
only an hour away
.”

I should not have insisted, I suppose. 
Should have let her keep him as close to her as possible, but I did
not.
  And so here he rests. 

It is so much warmer on this day than it had been on
the day of his funeral.  And quiet. 
So quiet.
 
Laying flat on my stomach, I could feel my heart beat against the earth and
back again against my chest.  Like it was Ethan’s beating back at me or
maybe just the one heart we were sharing for a moment.  Somebody once said
that having children is like letting your heart live outside your body. 
Yeah, it’s exactly like that.

To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die

That was the quote we put on the back of Ethan’s headstone. 
Below the quote was Tory’s name and space for the names of her future
siblings.  I closed my eyes and tried to feel my heart.  Tried to
reach inside and feel around for something that maybe hadn’t always been
there.  Truth was it felt almost like the opposite.  Like something
that had once been there was now missing.

I wiped away tears and pulled a blade of grass from
above his resting place and tucked it inside my sock against the angel tattooed
there.  “I love you, Ethan.  Daddy loves you forever.”

My background mind had been quietly obsessing on
something that the rest of me couldn’t put my finger on.  I tried to walk
it out of me and found my feet leading me to the playground.  Like some
dopey bird instinctively flying south, I seemed to be drawn to the park
whenever some termite problem was gnawing through my wooden brain.  She
was there, of course, swinging on her swing, face hidden behind a big pink
bubble.  I took my place on the bench. 

“Hello,” I said.

“Hey.”

“You sure must like swinging.”

“Yep.
  Don’t you?”

I thought about the porch swing at Grandma’s. 
“Yes.  I do like swinging.”

The chains on her swing clanged in a rhythm that gave
tempo to our conversation.

“Then swing.”  She nodded to the empty swings
next to her. 

“Maybe next time.”

“You’re just going to sit there again, aren’t you?”

“I’ve got more thinking to do.”

“Have you figured out what you’re even thinking about
yet?”

She was swinging a little faster now and the tempo of
our conversation picked up.

“Well, sort of.  I mean, I know what I’m thinking
about.  It’s just…it’s complicated.”

“UGH!”
she said,
as though she had just stepped out of a Peanuts comic strip.  “I hate how
grown-ups are always talking about how complicated everything is.”

I had no defense for that.  She was swinging
higher, faster, harder, and my heart went with her.

“You know what’s not complicated?” she asked.

“Swinging?”

She smiled and extended her legs, the tempo slowed,
and for the first time, I took a really good look at her.  She couldn’t
have been more than eleven years old.  I guessed that she was small for
her age, but couldn’t be sure.  She had long straight brown hair held back
by something bright red.  Her complexion was light and she was dotted with
freckles around the nose.  She had very light green eyes and long lashes
around them that conjured an image of blooming daisies in my mind.  She
wore jean shorts and a new-looking t-shirt with an image of a cartoon character
on it that I did not recognize. 

I settled into the swing two away from hers.  I
walked it backwards, then lifted my legs and glided forward.  I pumped
until my legs stretched nearly as high as hers did, though somehow not
quite.  And we swung together like that, side-by-side.  No talking,
no thinking, just swinging.  When I closed my eyes it felt like yesterday
- all things forgotten and all things remembered. 
Back
and forth through space and time.
  The farther back, the higher
forth. 
Only occasionally dragging my feet in between to
remind myself of dirt and rock and things that can be touched.
 
After some minutes, we both just stopped.  Stopped striving, stopped
reaching higher, stopped pumping, and just glided until we stopped.  There
we sat twisting in our swings.  The only sounds in the entire world came
from the chains clanging above our heads and the gravel that crunched beneath
our feet.  I felt her turn my way.  She looked up at me with those
daisies and stared back hard, flower eyes dancing across my face left to right
to left again, as if literally reading my face.

“Now, see, isn’t that better than just sitting there?”

“Yes.  It really is.”

“Thought so, it’s always better to do something.”

Grandpa and Grandma were both napping, though Grandpa
may have been aided in the effort by a liquid sedative.  I sat by myself
reading the Daily Chronicle.  When I opened the obituaries, which I had
recently taken an interest in, my eyes were drawn to the obituary of a little
girl who had recently passed. 

Laura Jane Benton, 3, rural Willow Grove, died May
15 after battling a brain tumor for more than two years.  She learned to
walk three different times because medical battles interrupted her development,
and when surgery took away her voice, she used sign language and other means to
communicate.  She was granted a Make-A-Wish trip to Florida where she met
her favorite TV friend, Barney.  Survivors include her parents Paul and
Beatrice (Hart) Benton, of Willow Grove; 2 sisters, Genie and Tanya, Willow
Grove; paternal Grandparents, Nicholas and Clarice Benton,
Winterhaven
,
FL; maternal grandmother, Helen Hart, Willow Grove; maternal great grandmother,
Anna Hart; 3 uncles; 1 aunt.  She was predeceased by her maternal great
grandfather Edmund Hart. 
Funeral arrangements by
Anderson Funeral Home, Glidden, where memorials are established for The
National Children’s Cancer Society and Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation.

Beatrice Hart had been a classmate of mine through all
my school years in Willow Grove and she had a crush on me through most of
them. 
Probably just because I treated her less bad than
most kids did.
  Because of this, Beatrice was always giving me
things - bubble gum, candy bars, even money sometimes. 

As most of us grew older, Beatrice seemed to regress
and withdraw.  She kept to herself so much that it felt as if it literally
pained her to be seen or spoken to.  She looked like someone who very much
wanted to not be noticed.  When she stood, she cowered.  When she
spoke her voice was muffled and the words came out garbled, like they didn’t
come from her at all but rather from some smaller someone deep inside of her
that strained to push the words through the barely parted lips.  When she
moved, it was with small steps, her head tilted down so that the long,
scraggly, gray-brown hair curtained her face.  Nobody ever saw the eyes of
Beatrice Hart.

When we played volleyball in P.E., Beatrice always
stood statuesque with her arms held in front of her and hands together, hoping
the ball would not come to her.  Whenever I was on the opposing team, I would
aim my serve at Beatrice because it was an easy point for my team and an easy
laugh for me.  Oftentimes I would hit her, but she never reacted. 
The ball would bounce off her arm, her head, her chest, and she wouldn’t
react. 
Just stayed the statue.
  I
laughed.  Everyone laughed.

Another time in P.E., Beatrice and I had been assigned
to be square-dancing partners.  Her hands were clammy and she was very
tense as we began to dance, anxious and nervous.  After awhile, though,
she did loosen up and almost seemed to be enjoying herself.  I was
swinging my partner round and round when my partner smiled and laughed just a
little bit.  Then she lifted her eyes cautiously, slipping a toe into
waters that were always cold for her.  I yanked my hands out of hers,
wiped them on my pants vigorously, and for the rest of the class we danced
without touching. 
Without smiling.
 
Beatrice Hart gave me a smile and I responded with a cruelty that chased it
away.  It should have changed me, that smile.  It was changing me now
just to think about it.  It was a remarkable smile.

I wish I had been a better person than I was.  I
wish I would have seen Beatrice as an opportunity for compassion, not
ridicule.  I wish I would have built her up with my kindness, rather than
thinking I was building myself up by mocking her.  I wish I hadn’t been so
cruel.  Life, I guessed, was cruel enough for Beatrice Hart.

I decided to write Beatrice a letter.  I put down
the newspaper, grabbed a pen and notebook and went to the kitchen table where I
wrote Beatrice Hart Benton a letter of apology for every cruel thing that had
ever happened to her.  I apologized for how unkind life had been to her
and promised her my prayers.  I told her how beautiful her daughter’s
obituary was and how much it had moved me.  How it had changed me.

I have a new hero and it is Laura Jane Benton, who
demonstrated more strength and courage in her 3 years than most of us show in a
lifetime.  I promise you this, Beatrice.  I will carry Laura Jane’s
life story with me every day for the rest of my life.  It is folded up now
and in my wallet. 

Whenever I feel overwhelmed by life’s challenges, I
will read about the little girl who learned how to walk three different
times.  Whenever I feel weak and defeated, I will remember the little girl
who learned to speak with her hands when she couldn’t with her voice. 
Whenever I feel sorry for myself, I will pull out Laura Jane’s obituary and I
will remind myself how blessed I truly I am.  Whenever I feel life has
been unfair to me, I will think of Laura Jane Benton who did not live to see
her 4
th
birthday.  I will also think of you, Beatrice,
for life has asked more of you than it should have.  And it has taken more
than it has given.

I promise that I will remember you and your
daughter forever.  I hope it provides you some comfort to know that this
world is a better place because Beatrice Hart Benton is in it. 
And because Laura Jane was.

  I didn’t sign the letter and I didn’t mail it. 
Instead, I put it in an envelope and carried it to the cemetery where I found
the small patch of dirt that Laura Jane was buried beneath.  I left the
letter under the angel figurine that stood where Laura Jane’s headstone would
soon be.

Some days later I was back at the cemetery and saw a
different envelope sticking out from under the angel figurine and I knew it was
meant for me. 

I have a new friend and it is
Whoever
You Are, who demonstrated more empathy and compassion than even my own
family.  Thank you for your letter and the promises you made me. 
Please keep them.  I do not know who you are, so I will pretend you are an
angel. 

Maybe I can be an angel for someone else some
day.  I will try to be.

With Love,

Beatrice

I felt that hole inside me beginning to fill a little
and it occurred to me that maybe the baby girl in my dream wasn’t Katie Cooper,
but rather Laura Jane.  I also knew that I wouldn’t be having any more
nightmares.  What I didn’t know was that I was wrong.  My dreams
choked me awake again that very night.

When I couldn’t get back to sleep, I went downstairs
to the kitchen.  My skin was clammy and where my heart should have been, a
fist was trying to punch its way out of me.  Or maybe it was just pounding
on something inside of me that didn’t belong there.

I pulled down the bottle of Scotch that Grandpa Gaines
kept above the refrigerator.

“Make it two,” I heard from behind me as I pulled a
glass out of the cupboard.

I turned around to see Grandpa standing in the
doorway.  His hands were in the pockets of a gray tattered housecoat,
which hung over flannel pajamas and a potbelly.  I never understood how
those skinny little bird legs of his could support such a heavy upper frame
.  It always scared me when Grandma told me how
much I looked like Grandpa had when he was a younger man, because as an older
man he looked like a damn ostrich.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.  I thought I
was being pretty quiet.”

“Oh, you didn’t wake me, Tuck.  I was up.”

When I raised my eyebrows in question, he said, “We’ve
all got our demons that keep us awake, Tuck.”  He gave me a conspirator’s
wink, but there
seemed to be something
like sadness behind it.

I pulled down another glass and poured.

“To demons,” I said, handing the glass to Grandpa.

“To demons,” he returned with another wink.

We took the bottle and our empty glasses to the table
and sat down.  I poured two more shots.

“You know,” he said, “I myself never did see anything
wrong with dousing one’s demons with some
holy
spirits now and again.  At the very least, you’ll confuse them a
little.  Disorient them and get them back on their heels.  If you’re
lucky, maybe you’ll drown them altogether.”

I drank down my shot and refilled.  “Were you
ever able to drown the demons that came after Uncle Joe died?” 

My uncle Joe – Grandpa and Grandma’s youngest child -
had died in a car accident when he was eighteen.  It was the first time I
had ever brought up Joe with Grandpa and whatever he was about to say would be
the first words I ever heard him speak about the dead uncle I never knew. 
His own dead son.

“Yeah, Joe,” the words escaped him like a breath he’d
been holding for near thirty years.  He stared at the empty glass twisting
in his hands, before finally tilting it in my direction.  I poured and he drank.

“No, Tuck, I’ve never been able to drown those demons.”

“What was he like?”

Grandpa was still focused on that empty glass, like
all his answers were sitting somewhere inside of it. He smiled out of the
corner of his mouth and suppressed a laugh.  “Joe was just a big dumb kid,
you know. 
Always a dumb kid.
 
Having fun, joking around, laughing and smiling.
 
Everyone wanted to hang around with Joe.  I can still see that goofy grin
of his.”  He found it in the bottom of that twisting glass.  Finally,
he looked up at me.  “Nothing ever got him down, you know?  You ever
know one of those people?  They just always find the good wherever they’re
at?  Well, that was Joe all right.  Except he didn’t just find the
good, he brought it with him.  Wherever he went, he brought the
good.  That was Joe.  That was my boy.”  He sniffed and dabbed
at his eyes with the sleeves of his housecoat.  “Look at me.  It’s
been thirty years for Christ’s sake.”

I poured two more drinks.  He sniffed hard and
shook his head.  “Anyway, I figure when he died, he took all the good with
him there, too. 
Wherever that might be.”

“Seems to me he left some good behind, too,” I said.

Grandpa stared at me hard and then downed his
drink.  He set the glass down and weakly, brokenly, pushed away from the
table.  There was some kind of sadness – not so much on his face, as
behind it.  Regret for lost life. 

“Come on,” he said.  “Let’s go back to bed. 
The demons are gone.”

The morning after my night of Scotch and demons with
Grandpa, I walked the half-mile
to the
Willow Grove Cemetery, which rested just west of town.  I stopped first at
Ethan’s grave and sat down on the ground behind his headstone.  Exactly
where I had stood with my hands on his coffin until forced to let go and watch
as they lowered it into the open-mouth of the hungry earth.  I would never
be that close to him again.  I would never be closer than these six
feet.  Never farther than closed eyes and a quiet moment. 

“I love you, Ethan.  Daddy loves you forever.”

Katie Cooper’s gravesite was just thirty feet or so
from Ethan’s – from mine, too, for that matter, as my name was inscribed on one
side of Ethan’s, Tammy’s on the other.  I sat on the ground in front of
Katie’s headstone, put my hands to the ground, and stared at the words on the
headstone.

Beloved Daughter

Katie Cooper

1969-1980

Beloved Daughter
that was it.  Two words to encapsulate it all – everything she
ever was or would be.  Two words for a lifetime and just the one would
have said everything, really.

Beloved.

I remembered every moment with Katie all at
once.  I closed my eyes and pictured her face.  Saw it, like one of
those scenes in a movie where someone is remembered to music. 
Seasons in the Sun
played in my mind and I saw her face with my closed
eyes.  She faded into shadow and when it came back to light it was the
face of Swinging Girl.  She smiled her knowing smile then faded to shadow
again.  When Katie’s face returned, she was tilting her head to one side
and pulling long wind-blown hair away from mouth and eyes.  Imagination or
memory, I couldn’t say.  I opened my eyes and read the headstone again.

Beloved Daughter

Katie Cooper

1969-1980

1980 -
far
away and getting
farther.  How many eyes had looked upon these engravings over the years, I
wondered. 
The long hard stares of friends and family
wearing the letter and number grooves deeper into the stone.
  How
many hearts had mourned here?  More than just the Coopers and me, I
hoped.  We couldn’t do it all by ourselves.  Between what’s to
remember and what’s to wonder about, the three of us couldn’t bear the load on
our own.