Tag Archives: death

You Can Learn So Much In a Year

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Ronald B. Wendell

6/7/1934 – 4/10/2014

I’ve learned a lot in the last year. I’ve learned that disagreements don’t mean much. I’ve learned that pride will rob you blind. I’ve learned that when people are still alive, it’s much easier to remember the bad times and after they die, it’s much easier to remember the good.

I’ve learned that all those sappy things that people say about making sure you let people know how you feel about them, are true. I’ve learned that it is much easier to let some people know how you feel about them than it is others. I’ve learned that those people that are the hardest to show how you feel about them, are probably the ones that need to know the most.

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Maybe the thing that I have learned the most in the last year is that no matter how you get along with someone, no matter what you choose to remember about them, they weren’t just that person that you remember. I’ve learned that what you remember about a person is filtered greatly by the level of difficulty you had in understanding that person. It is filtered by the difference between you and them, and sometimes, by the ways that you were alike.

Maybe the toughest thing I’ve learned in the last year is that sometimes the more strained your relationship was with them, the harder it is to deal with them being gone.

The story that I think will always be my favorite about my Dad, was the year that Lori and I needed to replace a section of roof on the back of our house. Lori and I figured that we could do it, we can be pretty handy. I’m not sure how my Dad found out about the upcoming project but he did. As soon as he did, he wanted to know all about it but mostly, when we were going to do it because he was going to be there to help.

I can’t remember the exact year or exactly how old my Dad was at the time but he was beyond the age that he should be ripping off an old rotten wood roof and putting on a new tin one over a set of cement stairs. I assured him that Lori and I would take our time and be able to get it done but he wasn’t having any of that. He wanted to know when we were going to do it and what time we wanted him to show up. As much as I tried to dissuade him and as much as I tried to not let him know when it was going to happen, he found out and because we wouldn’t give him an exact time we were going to start, he just told me that he would see me in the morning. In case you didn’t know my Dad, it could be impossible to change his mind, once he had made it up.

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My Dad was on blood thinners for a number of years before he died and he had already fallen off his own roof because he didn’t see the need to ask someone else to come clean the leaves and branches off of it. The thought of having my Dad climbing around on partially rotten beams that hung over cement stairs scared the crud out of me. But it became apparent that this was one of those times that it didn’t matter what anyone said, he had made his mind up and he was going to be there.

When the morning came, he and my Mom showed up first thing and he was probably the first one up the ladder. The rest of the story is pretty anticlimactic, thank you, Jesus. He climbed around that day as easily as I did and probably out-worked me in the end. We got the old roof off and the new one on and nobody fell onto the cement stairs below. At the end of the day I hugged him and thanked him and he walked away like it was nothing.

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I remember a story that my Dad told me a number of times through the years. He told me that early on in my Mom and his marriage, they were moving from one place to another. The place they were moving out of was upstairs and he had lined up a number of friends that all promised to come and help them move. The morning of the move though, nobody showed up. He told me that it was a hard day moving, that there were some things that were heavy enough that the only way he could get them down the stairs was to put straps around them and basically tie them to his back.

It’s funny but for someone who had a hard time talking about his feelings in a calm and cool way, he calmly told me that it wasn’t the actual work that he would never forget but the fact that for whatever reason, nobody that had promised him they would be there, ever showed up.

Even though we never asked and even though we tried everything we could to keep him off our roof, I think the reason he wouldn’t take no for an answer was because of that time probably a half a century before when nobody showed up to help.

Did you know, you can learn an awful lot in a year?

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Spring Fall

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Bernard never took to being called Bernie but it seemed like that’s what everybody called him. Way back in elementary school he had just decided to live with it. He still remembered when he was a kid, the grown-ups would laugh until they were red in the face when he would insist on being called Bernard.

Miss Gladys never called him Bernie, though. He had introduced himself as Bernard and even though all his friends did, she never called him Bernie. Not once.

She was smart that way, always knowing that one thing that was important to someone. He had watched it over and over during their 19 years together. She was always surprising someone with a particular kind of cake or pastry. They would look at her in wonder, thinking she must be psychic, Bernard knew her secret, but he wasn’t telling. He kept it to himself but he had figured it out pretty early on.

Miss Gladys was just a good watcher and listener, and nothing ever got by her that she didn’t store someplace in that pretty head of hers. She would notice when one of her friends would hesitate for a second longer than normal while looking at a scarf in the store. She would notice the look in their eyes when they described a certain dish. Everybody knew she was smart as a whip but they never put the two things together. But Bernard had.

Bernard loved Miss Gladys. Yes, he did. He loved her more than he ever thought he could love a woman again. In fact, he never thought he would love a woman again. Not in that way, not as a wife. When Alice had died from a bad heart, he was lost. All their children had moved away and truth be told, he had always missed them after each one had moved off but he never missed them as much as he did after Alice had died.

Oh, their kids had come and stayed with them after their mother’s heart attack. They’d taken turns and had always managed to have at least one of them there all the time she’d been sick. And Alice had been sick a long time, almost two years.

That was a long time to hold out hope and a long time to keep what he had known was inevitable hidden away in his heart. It wasn’t that he didn’t hope and pray that she would get better, he did. But at the very beginning, the doctor was quite clear, the heart attack had killed off a very large part of her heart. The doctor had explained and even showed them on that little screen how part of it just didn’t move like the rest of it did.

It had been a long hard spell but Bernard had stayed strong for his Alice. He loved her and he owed her that much and more. She had been a strong and equal partner in their marriage, something he didn’t quite know how to handle in the early days but something he’d grown to love and respect as their marriage had grown and their family had grown.

Now, Miss Gladys, she was different. It wasn’t that she couldn’t do for herself, she’d proved that many times in their 19 years. No, she could do for herself, but the truth be told she enjoyed for Bernard to do for her. That’s another thing that Bernard had figured out. Having a man do for her made Miss Gladys feel loved. And Lord knows that she had done for him. She had taken care of him and the house while he was healing from what they referred to as his “Spring fall”.

They laughed about it sometimes but truth is, Bernard had come very near to following right after Alice.

He had been cleaning off the roof, like he did every year in the Spring. That year had been a wet Spring though and it was proving to be quite the job. After a couple hours of pushing leaves and debris, he was tired, even though he was in good shape for his 49 years. But he was that kind of muscle tired that made your hands fumble to hang on to things and your feet stumble over the least little thing.

That’s exactly what had happened, just a small stumble. He didn’t even really remember just how it had happened. One minute he was wishing the job was over and the next minute it was, just not how he had planned.

In the end, the damage added up to a bruised shoulder, a pulled back and a broken hip. Funny how the hip had healed up pretty quick after the operation but the shoulder still ached when it got cold and his back never was the same. But he’d been blessed in a number of ways on that Spring afternoon. He had landed half on and half off the sidewalk. His hip hit the concrete and that’s what broke it but the top half of his body had landed in the grass. Most important, the place his head had hit the ground was a mound of wet leaves.

The second blessing was that Miss Gladys had heard him fall, though she swore he didn’t cry out, and had been there beside him almost immediately. In fact, her face was the first thing he saw when he came to. The doctor wasn’t quite sure what had knocked him out, they ruled out a concussion, there was no real lump on his head but he had sure enough woken up, which meant that he had sure enough been knocked out, somehow.

Miss Gladys had made him promise to lay very still while she went in the house to call the ambulance. It isn’t like he was going to go too far on his own anyways. He could tell that his hip was broke before they did any kind of x-ray. And though he was pretty sure no other bones were broke, he knew he was hurt. Bad hurt.

He and Miss Gladys had only been dating at the time. She had been over for the day and was inside fixing lunch. After that day, though, she had never really stayed at her apartment again. She spent most of her time at the hospital as long as he was there, then the nursing home and then slept on the couch after he was able to come home.

Bernard had argued with her about that, it wasn’t right for her to have to sleep on the couch but he couldn’t manage the couch, even if she had agreed, and she never did. That actually played a large part in him asking her to marry him. He had told her that it was inevitable anyways and his “Spring fall” had thrown a wrench into his courting plans, they might just as well go ahead and get married, so at least she wouldn’t have to sleep on that couch anymore.

He hadn’t thought out how that would sound until it was out of his mouth. He stood there waiting for the explosion that was sure to come. Miss Gladys stood facing him for a full 30 seconds with a look of shock on her face, just when he knew he had loused everything up, she started to giggle and then laugh. Soon they were both laughing so hard they could hardly catch their breath.

Yup, they laughed now and then about his “Spring fall” but they laughed on a regular basis about his fancy proposal. He figured out real quick that he would never live that one down but somehow, the ribbing didn’t bother him, it just made him laugh and made him glad that no matter how he had proposed, he was just glad he had and that Miss Gladys had taken it the way he meant it and said yes.

It never really bothered him to sit and wait on Miss Gladys while she was in a shop searching out a special gift for one of their friends. He knew how much it meant to her, he even thought of it as her calling, almost like a ministry to make others smile and be happy.

Just now, though, the sun had slid behind the shop, leaving him in the shade. It was late Fall and it cooled off quick without the sun. He’d left his jacket in the car. It had been fairly warm when they had gotten there, how long ago? It seemed like it had been pretty long He thought he could see her at the cash register, through the window. He hoped she had found what she was looking for. He also hoped Miss Gladys didn’t spend too much time talking to the cashier, his shoulder was starting to ache.

I’m the Ugliest

I feel like I should be writing something about you, Jay. That’s what I do. I write to express emotion, I write to stay sane and, among other things, I write to grieve.

Usually, things will start to formulate when something needs to come out, I’ll get snippets rattling around my brain. When I’ve amassed enough snippets that stick, then I sit down and try to sort through them and put them in proper order. But I’m having trouble with you. Big surprise, right. Most people who knew you thought that “Trouble” might have been your middle name. And they loved you for that.

I know when I’m sitting here trying to think of more to say, I’ll feel like I haven’t done you justice and that will be true. I’ll do my best, though and hope you already know all the things that I don’t mention.

I believe I met you first when I went to work at the courthouse in the Civil Division. You instantly took me under your wing, you never made me feel like a bother, but like I was doing you a favor by letting you train me. You took me over to get my work car from the person I was replacing. He was dying of cancer and you made what could have been a most uncomfortable situation, much more comfortable.

You did things like that. You made things easier for people on one hand, even while you were razzing the hell out of them on the other hand. Teaching seemed to come natural and easy to you. I never felt like a bad student, even when I asked you the same question over and over. Yes, you razzed me about it, but in such a good-hearted way that it never stung.

You told me who to trust and who not to trust. You were right on every one. You showed me how to drop serve someone, and I still laugh at the look on their face.

I wish I could do a traffic stop on you, just to talk. The same way you used to do to me, and others when you saw us driving through Williston. I wish I could know that the next time I’m eating breakfast at Hilltop, you’ll come walking in and comment on how it’s nice that there’s a restaurant in town that will serve anybody. The waitress will ask you if you want coffee and you’ll say, “No Ma’am, I’m driving.”

I wish we could be sitting down on the end of Fourth Street using the Laser Radar to clock dogs, or trees, or people on bicycles or just about anything else that was moving.

I wish we were sitting on your porch up in Cherokee, watching the creek go by. I know you loved that place.

I will always wish I spent more time with you. I’m sure I missed out on so much by not making more time for you. That will be a sadness I will carry for a very long time.

You always called me “Ugly” and some of the times I remember most were arguing over who was the ugliest. Well, it turns out you were right, I was ugliest, because you Sir, were a beautiful man. I love you and even though we haven’t spent a lot of time together lately, I miss you already.

Just so you don’t feel weird about all this, let me just say……Damn, you’re ugly!

Rest in Peace, Brother.