memoir

When I was twelve, I read the Bible standing. I stood until my limbs were numb and then I leaned against the wall. I don’t know why, I just felt like I had to. I prayed and I read and I cried and I hurt. Sitting down felt like falling into hell, into the pit of fire with the snakes and the sinners and the wailing and the skeleton ghosts cold and hot screaming “Help me! Help me God!” These were the thoughts that consumed my mind, and I was afraid. Of course I was afraid.

The day I told my dad I liked girls he told me it was wrong. He told me it wasn’t God’s will. Later that night he came down to my room and saw my Bible open on my desk. He asked me if I tore the pages on purpose. I didn’t, it was an accident. I told him that, but I knew he didn’t believe me, the skeptic with his fingers on the ripped page, Isaiah 44:21 through 24. I hid. We talked about it twice, and never again, but we talked about God again. I asked him if he thinks that He’s happy, up in that sad throne in the sky, and he told me I’m smart. My father thinks I’m smart, my father thinks I’m a sinner, our holy father, Holy Father, loves us very very much. Cue piano.

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

I hide from myself and I bark my orders and I stand and stand until my legs give out.

When I was fifteen my grandmother died. I wasn’t close to her, I didn’t feel much, and we all expected it. She was cancer prone. But death is hard, no matter what. The day she died, my dad had gone over to her house in the middle of nowhere to visit her. I had sewn a sock cat to give to her, because I knew she was sick and I thought it might be the last nice gesture I could do for her before the end, but he forgot to take it with him. My gesture missed the last train out. I wasn’t there, but I heard she died peacefully.

Eventually, her funeral came. We all loaded up in the car and drove to the old church where me, my sister, and my cousins used to go to vacation bible school. Those were some of the best days of my life. Staying up late with my cousin in grandma’s guest room, doing coloring pages, singing stupid little hymns on stage and watching boys play soccer outside the church. I wanted to join, of course, but I never did.

Her funeral was boring, not much of substance. A lot of biblical spew from a priest to a room full of people who I doubt even cared enough about grandma to be there for anything other than the food. I was mostly there for my dad. She was his mother. He sat in the front pew with all his brothers. (Pews. They’re weird, aren’t they? Cold and hard. You’d think a church would have more comfortable seating, maybe a cushion. Maybe people that build churches think discomfort is devotion, or vice versa.) They were four men, all middle aged, in a row from youngest to oldest. You could tell because, when you sat behind them, they were also in a row from least balding to most balding. My dad was least balding, the 44-year-old baby of the family. After the speeches and all, we went into the dining room to have dinner, then we all loaded up in solemn black cars in our solemn black clothing to a solemn, but not black, cemetery to bury her. The cemetery was decrepit and ugly, a yellow field in the middle of nowhere with some fat, unbothered cows right across the fence. Usually, cemeteries at least make an attempt at being pretty, but this one didn’t. It was utterly depressing, terribly depressing. It felt disrespectful to bury somebody in such an ugly cemetery with yellow grass and cows and flat gravestones and absolutely nothing beautiful at all to honor her, but I guess that was her wish. The cemetery was bad, but the worst part of the whole ordeal was seeing my dad. My dad is a strong man. Not strong in the way that steel is strong, but strong in the way that a flexible tree branch is strong, a branch that bends in the wind but never snaps. At the cemetery, he was bending. She was his mother. I could’ve sworn his face was sunken, sallow, like he had also died a few days ago. I wanted to comfort him, but what am I to say? What do you say to a man whose mother had just died? So I hugged him, and he hugged me back, hard, like he was trying to hold onto me and keep me from blowing away in the wind, from slipping through his fingers like ash.

We are from dust and to dust we shall return.

After the burying, we all loaded back up into those solemn black cars and were shipped back to the church. This part was uneventful and I would omit it altogether, but something happened when we left. We all walked out the door and down the old, concrete steps, into the unforgiving white light of the afternoon sun, and there were butterflies. Not flocks, but a noticeable amount. Beautiful, colorful butterflies. They swooped down on our heads like tiny angels trying to bless us. And maybe they were. I remember the sight, two or three of them fluttering around my dad’s head outside of that terrible old church. People that survived the Joplin tornado, children and adults alike, say they saw angels with butterfly wings in the wreckage, helping people. The butterfly angels. Maybe they were real. Maybe God was there. I had all but lost faith by that point in my life. When I was younger, God was a drill sergeant to me, a source of deadly fear and unrelenting hellish guilt. I recovered from that, but I never really knew what to do from that point on. Who is he if not something to fear? Merciful? That’s what people say, and maybe they’re right. Grandmothers still die and strong men still bend, but there are butterflies.

After we left the church, we all went back to her old decrepit house in the country. This house is steeped with memories, memories like fogged glass. Late summers under the mulberry tree, collecting the dark, syrupy berries before they all fall to the ground. Fourth of Julys in the backyard, sending off lanterns, new stars, new wishes, into the big, black sky. Christmases in the kitchen, eating cookies and opening presents and listening to grandpa preach about the miracle of the virgin birth. Easter egg hunts, tire swings, tree climbing, scrambled eggs and piano hymns. But it wasn’t that house anymore. The trees along the edge had been cut down, the tire swing was decaying, the house was now filled with medical ephemera and emptiness. I don’t know how a house can be filled with emptiness, but it was. It was like a void, a black hole. It was terrible. How can something so full be emptied out so fast? How can you be a child laughing and playing and climbing trees one day and nearly eighteen, worrying about college the next? I don’t know. That’s how death is. Grandma died and took the house with her. But there are butterflies. There is sun shining through that fogged glass of memory.

That night, I prayed. A heartfelt prayer, not out of obligation or fear. I asked for grandma to be safe and happy in heaven. I never had any doubts that she’d get into heaven, if there is one up there in that big, unforgiving sky full of stars and lanterns and butterflies, but I wanted to be sure. She told me once that she had a dream she was stuck sinking in a swimming pool full of sticky black gunk, but a big, shining hand came and pulled her out. When I’m sad, I imagine those hands, golden and bright, lifting me up from under my armpits into a big, golden sky made of light. I am held there, floating, suspended like in a womb, and I turn back into a child, then a baby, then a fetus, then nothing. Then I am the golden sky. I hope that’s what death is like, I hope that’s what it was like for her. I hope God isn’t a drill sergeant, but a pair of big, golden hands. I’m done with hell. I’m done with fear. When you’re dead maybe you become a butterfly, maybe you become the golden sky, maybe you become a lantern flying up into the stars. But you do not suffer, and you don’t have to suffer today for the privilege. God made butterflies for a reason.