Friday, November 25, 2005
thanksgiving 1979...
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, His love endures forever.
- Psalm 136:1-3
I barely remember it, but today I was reminded of it, and a few of the memories came back. My mother sent the following:
We have used these scriptures around the table every Thanksgiving since 1979 when I realized that my Daddy was failing fast and wouldn't be able to say the prayer at dinner, as he usually did. So that year for the first time we just read scriptures instead.
I remember this, vaguely. In that different time, that age ago time when memory for me is now floating clouds of almost imperceptible pictures and feelings, I can see it, as it were, projected in front of me.
In my minds clouded eye, there we are, sitting around the large Thomasville dining room table, so rarely used, but so filled with family during this time of the year. There are my older sisters, both married by now I think; one to a quiet man, the other, more recently, to a strange and funny man. There is my older brother, bushy hair and dark eyebrows. There's my dad, all dark eyebrows, glasses and bald head, and my mother standing next to him, apron on, a shock of whitening curls haloing her smiling face. And there's my grandfather, at the head of the table, for the last time, white hair, curved nose, horned rimmed glasses, and the light slowly fading from his eyes.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise; be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
- Psalm 100:4
My mother continued in her email from today:
That is also the year that I called Jean (who had decided not to come, but to wait until Christmas) and told her that she should come because something was going on with Daddy. I remember her sitting at our kitchen table later that afternoon, talking to Daddy and asking him, "Well, how are you feeling, Daddy."
I remember this, also. It wasn't strange, that my aunt wasn't there. She didn't come all the time, but she was usually up from Austin on occasions like this. She would often arrive after I was in bed for the night. In the morning, however, I would be able to tell that she was in the house because, permeating our entire two story house, would be the smell of strong coffee mingled with the scent of her perfume. It wasn't unpleasant, just another sign of the holidays. It was her smell.
On this occasion, I simply remember that she wasn't there during the Thanksgiving lunch, as was our tradition of those days, but then she appeared, much later in the day, and sat with my grandfather at the kitchen table, by the large bay window in our house that looked out over our ten acres. She found out then, that his light was fading, his eyes were becoming more and more clouded. He was an enigma to me that Thanksgiving, and I kept my distance, a little afraid of what I didn't understand.
O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good; for his mercy endures forever.
- Psalm 107:1
My aunt had asked him how he felt on that Thanksgiving day in 1979, and my mother, only today, related to me what his answer was, here:
...he replied calmly, "Well, I guess it's how you feel just before you die." She was stunned and assured him that he wasn't about to die, but it wasn't long before we lost him. New Year's Day, 1980, in fact. You were so young that you probably don't remember much about that. His brain was just shutting down because of the "hardening of the arteries" disease he had, caused by heart disease of course. He was a very kind, gentle man of high integrity from whom I never heard a profane word. What a treasure.
Twenty-six years have passed since that Thanksgiving. He was seventy years old when he died. I am now half that age. I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and am on medicine for both. My mother, and both her sisters say that I am the spitting image of Johnny Stroup, my grandfather. But I have to disagree just a bit, because while I do my best to be kind and gentle, I often am not. While I endeavor to be a man of high integrity, I often fail. As I do my best to be someone from whom a profane word is never heard, I am all to frequently profane. I am not Johnny Stroup, as much as I wish I could be, he was most likely a better man than I ever could be.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
- Philippians 4:6
My last memory of my grandfather, before the funeral, is that of a man silenced by sickness. I see him lying in the bed, in that place that I hated to go to, that place where there were so many other old people looking at me. That place that smelled of urine and bad food. I was so sad for him, I remember that. He couldn't talk, he wouldn't eat, and he held my hand and wouldn't let go, and only stared at me with tear filled and silent eyes. It frightened me.
Soon after, he was gone. I was nine years old, and had only had a few short years from which to draw lucid memories of him before he became a ghost of the past. I remember distinctly that it was new years day 1980 when he died, because it was such a strange contrast of emotions for me. All things new were here, and all things old were passing away. An entire chapter and era of my life, and indeed in the cosmology of my little world changed that day.
