This is the first of three deaths that haunt me, nearly 50 years ago and I can see it plain as day. I can still see her blue eyes staring up at me as she slipped away.
I found myself completely bored to death in Calculus III class at university. The course was held in a big classroom filled with other business or math related majors like myself. 7:00 am, three days a week. I prepared for a lot of numbers and formulas that flew over my head.
The fact that I was usually hungover might have played a small role. Or that I was up until 3:00 am smoking weed, or doing acid or playing a gig. It happened most nights, the band getting together to practice or play music at a local bar. Lots of Budweiser bottles, tall dark glass that served as the weapon of choice in the event a fight broke out. Never hit anyone with it, but that heavy bottle served its purpose in a threat of what could happen.
But I digress.
It was during this particular class, week 3 of the new fall semester, that I packed up my books and headed to the Admin building to have them give a full refund to my father.
Then I went home immediately, packed up what I thought I needed in a couple small bags and moved out. Where I was going to live was unknown, but my father had told me the “Rule” long ago.
“As long as you’re going to university I‘ll pay tuition and you can live here at home. The minute you quit you’re on your own and can get the hell out of my house and go to work.”
The “Rule”.
I moved out quickly so as not to face his wrath, the screaming and yelling about my future, and being a disgrace to the family. He was on the road as usual with his work, Monday through Thursday in some small town auditing the bank books.
I crashed at one of the band members’ apartments, sleeping on the couch and promising to move in a couple of weeks. A couple weeks turned into 3 months.
So I went to work. I had worked the last two summers with the Parks Department as a student worker. They had a huge resource of cheap labor during the busier summer months, poor university kids. So I contacted my old supervisor there, and they were hiring a crew to build an eight foot chain link fence around the entire city zoo and park.
So I went for it. That 9 month job is a story in itself, a cast of characters, 15 in total that all became good friends. “A bunch of dropouts, musicians and partiers. Early life crisis.
When that job closed there was an opening at the city cemetery as a gravedigger. At 20 years old that sounded right up my alley, another story to tell. Who ever knew that gravedigging was an occupation? Digging graves for a living. What a hoot. A further way to rub salt in my father’s wound.
If we weren’t digging graves, then we were tending to the site itself. The grass, shrubs and flowers cover over 100 acres in a park-like setting. Old trees dotted the landscape surrounded by a century old stone wall. In the winters we moved a little snow, but mostly sat by the wood stove playing cards between people dying.
It was here that I experienced dying first hand. Death up close and personal. Not the 167 bodies I put in the ground, but the actual death of someone while I held them in my lap.
You need to keep in mind this was in the mid-70’s, way before we had cell phones or computers. Communication was through landlines, word of mouth, or in the case of the Sunset Cemetery foreman, a walkie-talkie.
No funerals that day, beautiful, bright and sunny. Another perfect Kansas summer day where you’d rather be fishing or enjoying doing nothing in the sun, anything but working. But since there were no graves to dig or funerals to attend our crew of 6 were on the big riding mowers. Actually 5 mowing, the low man stuck with the weed-eater, going from headstone to headstone. Careful not to hit flowers newly laid out at various graves. Sadly, not many flowers.
The riding mowers were big bulky things, and loud. You couldn’t hear anything when you were riding them, and only one guy was smart enough to wear ear protection. I was back in the far section, newer in respect to gravesites, but the prettiest part of the cemetery with old graceful oaks, elms and the occasional walnut tree.
Most of us would get away from the main shop before we lit up a joint, spending the next 3 hours in deep thought. Mowing was a good thinking man’s job.
As I was mowing I noticed a light blue Buick parked along the side of the road, and spotted an elderly woman standing by the fresh pile of dirt, her husband now lying underneath. A small bouquet of flowers in her hand, probably his favorite freshly cut from her garden. He had been buried on Monday, and I bet she’d been there every day out of the last 4. It was Thursday morning and she was back again.
A printed floral dress, just like my grandmother wore. Maybe that’s what kept my attention. Someone’s grandmother.
I stayed my distance, allowing her some peace and quiet, but for some reason made a point to keep her in sight. I don’t know why really. Fate maybe? A cosmic vibration. One of those “feelings” you can never quite explain.
I could see her as I made my circuit, the area needing to be mowed growing smaller with each pass. Janet, the one lady on the crew and tough as nails, mowing the next section over. We’d wave on occasion. Our only means of communication.
That’s when it happened. The old woman simply fell. Standing at the foot of the grave, looking at the small headstone she fell face down into the dirt, the flowers pinned beneath her.
The mower was slower than I was running, which is how I now crossed the 50 yards separating us. She was still face down when I reached her, her whole body seemed to be slightly shaking, shivering.
Back then my normal manner of dress was a white t-shirt, and bib overalls. Everywhere I went was in bib overalls. Kept a pack of smokes in the bibs, and a red bandana in the rear pocket, used to cover my head from the afternoon sun.
I turned her over as gently as I could. Her face was covered in the moist soil, in her nose, covering her thin lips. So I sat down next to her and used the bandana to clean her face as much as possible, brushing the dirt from her thin gray hair.
Then I waved the bandana at Janet, who somehow saw what was going on. Instead of coming over to see what was happening, Janet turned and made a direct line back to the shop. I found out later that Frank the foreman was making the rounds in the cemetery, in his dark green city pickup, saw Janet and used his walkie-talkie to call for an ambulance.
I was left alone with the old woman, knowing help would be coming sometime. How long? Minutes maybe, an eternity really.
I knew what was happening, though I had never experienced seeing it first hand. A stroke. I was absolutely powerless to help. So I got down next to her, propped up on an elbow, held her hand, stroked her hair.
I’ll never forget her eyes as she stared up at me, steel blue. She was confused, and in pain, her face slightly distorted, her body still trembling. Beseeching, begging for help? Or realizing what was happening.
Then she died, simple as that. Just stopped shaking, taking one last breath, her eyes frozen open forever.
Frank the foreman and Janet showed up a minute later, and an ambulance 10 minutes after that.
I couldn’t talk, couldn’t say one damn word. I laid her head down softly, stood up and wiped the dirt off myself. Then I simply got back on the mower and rode to the shop, letting the noise of the engine drown out my sobs. I spent the rest of the day sitting in the shop, alone with the occasional tears, the thoughts of what just happened.
She was buried the following Monday, one week after her husband was put in the ground.
I refused to dig her grave, and on the day she was buried I stayed home, played guitar and drank myself into oblivion once again.
My first of three deaths. Three deaths that I remember like it was this morning.