UnHappy Thanksgiving. . .

Diary - Entry 6

Because I have been sleep deprived for more than two weeks, catching 2 hours here, 4 hours there, mostly stuggling with the memories that flood my mind when I do close my eyes, I feel addled, like I got through into the middle of a scene that I have no idea whats goint on.  I keep looking around for some kind of reality check, that does not exsist.

I fell asleep yesterday morning around 4am, only to dream of Todd vomitting all that blood and bile, while looking helpless and scared.  Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I could here Todds voice. . .it was like he was when he was young and didn't stutter.  He said "Sis, you have got to pull yourself together, this is not good for you. I will always be with you, just not in the same way anymore. I am not in pain, look at me", he sounded so close, I rolled over in the bed, and there sat my 10 week old pit bull terrier, by my face, with his head cocked to one side, just watching me.  He is never allowed on the bed, and he is always crated at night.

So, now, I am fairly certain, that I have lost what was left of my mind. I stared at Knox and said "Todd?" , then the puppy jumped off the bed and ran downstairs.

I will go to the cemetary on Sunday, which would have been his 46th birthday, lay the wreath I made and light his candles. 

Although from an analytical sense I know that the only thing that is in the ground is a body that once housed a
terribly misunderstodd loving heart and endless soul, it does not make the pain of seperation any less, no matter how temporary that may be.

Diary - Entry 5


Tomorrow is my birthday. . . yes, it is Thanksgiving.  It will be my first in 47 years without my brother.  He would have celebrated his 46th birthday on Sunday, but when we were little, we always shared the day and always celebrated it together, complete with brown frosting, turnkey and pumpkins in icing on the cake.  There will be no cake this year. . .

When Time Is Not An Option. . .

Diary - Entry 4

"Will you be able to come tomorrow?". . . that was what I was asked on Saturday morning in regards to Todd's funeral arrangements, by my stepmother. Yes, I responded. . .what else was I going to say.  Then I got the run down!

While I have tried, time and again to leave this particular entry alone, I simply can't.  I close my eyes and my hands fly through the keyboard.  I just cannot justify a 45 minute ceremony, front to back, for 45 years worth of humanity, kindness, illness, courage, loving, responsibility, regret,and wishing that Todd had my strength and steelness, with Victors dream factory and Michaels tenacity to hold on to life. 

There would be a 15minute (can you believe that crap) "family viewing" following graveside services.  There was no Obituary listed for the Kernodle Funeral Home in Wynne, his "memorial cards" were a joke! To add insult to injury. . .(which I have mentioned before) they buried him the next day (on Sunday the 15th), which was our mothers birthday.  My father later complained to those around us (including my boss who had come out of respect for me). . .that "who knew it cost an extra $550.00 to bury on Sunday. . . Little did my father realize that he probably (even though it was from the grave). . .paid for my mothers crossbow that she had wanted for years. . .  She would actually call my father in the middle of the night in her insane, drunken, drug induced stooper and demand that he send her money for a new crossbow. . .it mattered not that my mother, by this time, was fucking blind as a bat!!!!!!!!!!

They picked a lavender colored coffin (Todd would have hated that - now pick a NASCAR color along with his favorite number, and he would have been fine!) and the only thing on top (as I have said before), was ferns with fake wheat stalks and a recycled John Deere tractor.   Aunt Delore (Uncle Johnny's wife) and Aunt Doris (her sister), arrived, I had sent Rich on ahead with my boss, Dianne, because I knew that she would wanted to speak to me. . .Aunt Delore said to me. .  "You and I are here for Todd because we loved him the way he was, not for anything or anyone else and I helped raise you and I know the ugly things that got said, but you pay no attention. . .I don't won't you disappointing me!  What they done too, did too or didn't do don't matter anymore, he left early yesterday and we both know that.  I love you."

I, dressed in black dress, with my head covered out of respect for Todd . . .as did my husband and my boss. I met with Billy Kernodle and I said, " I am here to see my brother". . . Uncle Johnny was the only one in the room, other than Karen (my grandmothers assistant who came to take family pictures. . .yes, I know, they always have and always will take pictures of the dead in their coffins. . . yes, they keep a photo file of the dead. . ) and I could tell that he was terribly upset, he had been crying, maybe remembering not so long ago that my cousin lay in much the same position. I touched him on the shoulder, he turned and hugged.  He was the only person I hugged at that disgusting dispay of a "family veiwing", I don't even think my father was there.

I looked down at my brother, whose beard was trimmed back, no traces of the blood and bile that had been in there only a couple of days before, and although he was stiff with embalming and his hands rested on his chest, his overalls seemed new, so did his shirt. . .and even his farmers cap for that matter. . .  I leaned down, kissed him on the forehead, as I had done so often when we where growing up,  I slid my hand under his, held his hand and completely lost it.

The first thought that I had that came to my mind. . .Todd looked like the Cook side of the family.  His resemblence to Grandaddy Cook (our great-grandfather) was uncanny.  I momentairyly flashed back to his funeral in 1979 and how thankful I had been that he was dead (I was only a teenager, but I even then, (as I have always loved hats. . .) wore a white hat, in celebration . . .(which, the rest of the family had no idea what was behind the white, but they just figured it was part of my eccentricity.) . . I had spent many years, as the 'object of his affection', for like my grandfather the good preacher,  he too, was a pedopheliac. . .shall we say, because after a certain age, or your ability to fight off the advances, you would be left alone.  I shuddered. . . and brought myself back too the face before me.

The little man that I had loved, had worried over, sent secret money too, bought clothes for, sent Christmas gifts that I new he would actually eat (summer saugage. . .) no matter how he reguritated afterwards, was lying still, cold, and as if a bad cosmetology student had spunge painted him. . .(yes, I realize he was jaundiced, but come on now. . .) and he looked 'over-embalmed', if there is such a thing.

There is something among siblings, born so close together, they are considered and are considered amoung many to be "Irish Twins"  that I cannot explain.  Especially when part of that sibling responsibility is forced upon you in a more adult manner at a very early age.  In many ways, I was his sister, his mother, his friend and most of all his keeper of secrets and the voice that he used to listen to at night to drown out the monsters.

I felt as if it wasn't real somehow, like it was something out of a really bad dream.  I kept waiting for him to open his eyes and sit up.  He had always been good at gags and games when we were little.  He once told me that he was really Peter Pan and that I was Mary Poppins. . . yet he was the one that got me to climb the tree, open the umbrella to see if I could fly. . . when I jumped out of it, he started laughing.  Only with me and only in the early days when we where alone, did he not stutter.  I took a whack at him with my Tinkerbelle umbrella, which was now broken, and he ran up on the porch and as I chased him to the end and he fell off. . . we both got a beating, simply for being kids with an imagination.  This was our time at the Jones Place, that my family owned.

Although he had no formal Obituary, we had 75 people that came to say goodbye. . .why?  Because people loved Todd, he was unique, some felt sorry for him. . .maybe because of his drinking. . .his stuttering (which, as I said before, was not as bad when he drank. . .it embarrassed him) and his lack of education, but overall, they came out of respect for him, which was never acknowledged.

While I personally believe in creamation, as did Todd,(contrary to what others might think), as well as our mother. . . it was turned into a burial in the family cemetary.

When you are young, you think that you have forever.  One day you are two, the next day you are 46.  Time flies. . .they say.  Yet, if you could turn back time and reverse the effects of decisions that others had made for you, as well as your own choices. . .would you, could you. . .forever changing the course of not just your fate, but those that enteracted with you? Cremation or burial, does it really matter when our bodies are only on loan to house the souls that we are given at birth?  Does not that soul return to the sender when you take your last human breath and how many of you know when that breath will be?

The Worst Of People. . .

Diary - Entry 3

My wonderful friend, Catherine, who's constant rocks we have been for many years and without whom I could not have gotten through the last couple of days had this to say:

" We all know that death either brings out the best in people or the worst in people and that grief is a slave master,unlike any other. How we each choose to grieve is different from one person to another, as the day is to night."

Another friend said " I hate the bulshit platitudes and sympathies that are common place when someone dies. "Sorry for you loss",  "Had he be ill long", "He is in a better place. . ." and the list goes on. So, he left me a verse from one of his favorite songs.

Others have sent cards and flowers.  Mostly, out of duty I think, but while it is appreciated now, while the pain and anguish is still so fresh. . .but will he be  remembered in six months? Six years? . . .

In addition to the fact that Todds death has brought out the worst in me (because I remember every ugly thing that was ever said about him , how he was made fun of in school and by our own family members).

I remember how my family could not stand his wife, they thought she was trash.  How my step-mother, on the occassion of my birthday (which was being celebrated at the Peabody Hotel with drinks in the lobby) started saying horrible things about Todd to the point that she reduced me to tears.  Another time she said he "creeped her out and never wanted to be alone with him".  Yet,  these were the two that made all of Todds medical choices and his wife 'fixed it (her words, not mine) " to keeep me from talking to the nurses,  getting information from the doctors and finally from not letting me be with him in his final hours.

The odd thing was, I had never said anything unkind to her, been unkind to her and I supported Todds choice when others didn't.  When she was in a severe car accident two years ago, I sat by her in ICU, when my brother had a seizure because of alcohol withdrawls and was in the same hospital, I went and set with him, brought clean clothes and I even went to my sister-in-laws mothers funeral to represent our family.  I did not understand her sudden animosity towards me, her screaming at me, calling me names and other horrible things in front of hospital auxillary members. 

My only reaction at the time was that I broke down in tears.  I told my stepmother what she had said, and that she said she would talk to Jaye, but whether Jaye told the truth was another matter.  She did not, she denied saying any of those things to me.  That just added fuel to the fire.  It took me 2 1/2 hours to get home, crying all the way.

I had not been able to sleep most of the night and lain awake thinking about him as a child, I did not go back the next day, but stayed in bed, crying, and shortly before 4am, I felt a gnawing deep within me and a brief rush of panic. . . I knew he was gone.  They did not call me till a 8:45am with all of the arrangments already made.