February 16, 2017

Blog Post #3

The Last Time.

There are so many times that I have wondered about the last time. The last time… are people really aware when it's the last time? Sometimes I wonder about couples who have been married forever. Do they still have sex? Do they remember the last time? Did they know that the last time was actually the last time?

Sometimes I think about headlines in the newspaper of somebody who died unexpectedly. Did the people who saw them last have some sort of inkling? Would they have said something different if they would have known it was the last time? I don't know.

But I do know that today was the last time.

Today we walked through the house that has been an anchor in my life for 40 some years. Today we stood in each of the rooms, now naked of decoration. Although they were bare and all that was left was just a few stains on the rug, I could close my eyes and I could hear the laughter. I can remember chasing my brother around the circle from the dining room through the kitchen and laundry room, making a hard left into the hallway and back again into the dining room. I can remember my grandmother laughing and telling us to stop or at least slow down. Our uncle would laugh at us from his wheelchair, his face split from ear to ear at our antics.

I can remember my grandmother sitting at the little table, the table she called her breakfast table. She was making a salad where she chopped up apples into tiny little pieces. She held the knife all wrong and pushed the blade through the apple towards her thumb. The blade was comfortable in her hand and never sliced her skin.  Breakfast was a wonderful affair... the table setting always included a plate under the bowl and the honey jar had a wand that slowly dropped the golden nectar onto the toast. Special glasses were used just for juice.

The living room is now devoid of any photos, the TV is gone, the chairs, end tables and the lamps have vanished yet the memories are so vivid. Every year there was an Easter egg hunt in the living room. We raced to find the most eggs that grandma had filled and hidden the night before. The candy was always the same. The jellybeans distinctive. Although I have sampled hundreds of bags of jellybeans since, I have never found any that tasted the same like the ones that grandma had. 

I remember the basement as it was from the very beginning. An old green vinyl sofa that folded out into a bed. It sat next to the furnace. Sometimes as a young teenager I would sleep on the couch down there and listen to my favorite radio station from home. Pretty incredible that KDWB could be heard on my little transistor radio in the basement of my grandparents’ home, hundreds of miles from the Twin Cities. I can remember thinking that when the furnace would kick in it was like the sound of somebody breathing really heavily yet I was unafraid.  

Years later I have memories of the guestroom upstairs. With its distinctive purple and lavender carpet. I can see myself laying on the bed nursing my daughter. My mother came in the room, saw this tender exchange and she quickly left, returning with grandma so that grandma could see "how things are done now.” It was about that time that grandma likened me to a Holstein cow. I was not offended. As both she and my mother had suffered tragedies in their childbearing careers, I was considered very successful after just my second child. Grandma said that I could make them and feed them like a Holstein.  Perhaps that is where my affection for cows began.

Perhaps Grandma never knew of my own struggles in that department, but she used that analogy until well after my fourth child was born.

Perhaps the loudest memories are also the most blurred. They take place around the dining room table. It was where my grandfather presided over the meal and led the prayer. It is where my grandmother and then my mother taught me to hover over the table, filling the water glasses and refilling the serving dishes. Grandma kept the food on the table and fed our uncle effortlessly. I can hear the timber and the tones of the muffled conversations. I can see my brother as a teenager regaling our grandparents with stories of riding his dirt bike to and around their land in the South Dakota countryside. His dirt bike roared down gravel roads where our ancestors once travelled by horse and by foot. I can remember feeling as though I must be starving because the food in front of me smelled and tasted so good. I can remember how incredibly unfair it was that when the meal was over it was the women, including me, who cleared the table and did the dishes. The men drifted off to the living room. While I may have felt that was very unjust, I do remember that some of the times in the kitchen, with my mother and grandmother, were the very best times ever. What I don't remember is the last time. Would I have taken a photograph, or written down this memory if I had known that I was experiencing the last time? Is the memory sweeter because I didn't know?

Fast forward to today and there are three of us standing in the kitchen. My grandparents are dead.  My uncle is dead. My mother stands between my brother and me. She is small.  In photos from our childhood she stood in the middle, an arm wrapped protectively around each of us.  Today we shield and flank her, surround her.

I knew we would do this. I looked forward to it, I needed it, yet I dreaded it too. We stood there in a semi-circle with our jackets on, ready to leave this house, this anchor, this haven, for the last time. We held hands as my brother prayed and blessed this house, a blessing for the new owner and the new memories that would be made here. A gratefulness that the house would have a new family. He thanked God for the shelter it had given us, for the memories we shared there, for the love and the laughter we exchanged. For the gift of generations and of family. As he prayed clearly and confidently, his voice enveloped us.  I tried not to squeeze my mother’s little hand too hard. Fat tears leaked from my eyes. As he thanked the Father for the loving memories we shared here his voice caught in his throat. 

The realization that we were here, experiencing the last time together, was inescapable.

Leslie Kemmet