Foothills of Childhood - Part 7

Perhaps the death of my Grandma Earley was the first lesson to me on how a loved one's absence effects those left behind.  For myself at that time, my attachment to her, as to most people was one of some detachment, an observer who never got too close, close enough to let anyone hurt me.  

I was eleven when she left this family and the earth.  While she suddenly died, Grandpa was already in the hospital and he was not told of the event.  I do recall everyone talking about Grampa in the hospital asking about "Cora."  

"How is Cora? ...I know she isn't well enough to come up to the hospital to see me...  It is just too hard for her to get around with her legs the way they are.  Tell her I miss her, and I love her."

They were old, typically old.  Not the kind we see today, where you can't guess the age of the overdressed, over exercised, over-indulged senior citizens.  These people were the grandparents who were allowed to be grandparents; who were allowed the privilege of gaining some weight, getting soft, going white-haired or even bald, wearing 'work around the yard' clothes.   They were a comfort zone.  

And to each other - you knew they looked forty years younger.  Some people see each other through the memory's eye only, as well as the heart.  And that is how it was with them.  We never told Grandpa the woman he loved and missed and waited to see was gone, until he had to come home.  Imagine the sadness and the overload that impact must have had.  He wept like there was no tomorrow because there truly seemed to be none - for him.

Somehow, Grandpa Earley had the strength to recover without going into deep depression.  He did live with us in that small trailer for awhile, and my brother Charles was still with us at that time, and we kept Grandpa occupied.  In fact a few years later, he went to live with Gramma Cora's sister a county or two away.  Her husband had recently died, and since they were related by marriage and good friends of a lifetime already, they lived out his few remaining years together - good friends in a most beautiful comforting closeness.

When Grandpa died, I was living in my own apartment a few miles from my Reno home.  One night I came home about 10PM (uninformed yet of his death)  to see my Dad standing under the street light by my apartment, obviously waiting for me to return.   I had learned from a very early age that Dad's temper was not something to trifle with at all.   He was a gunsmith and a hunter, and a number of times he hunted for me, armed.  

That scene of him under the lamp post frightened me.  I never went home that night, and worried about why he was there like that the entire night.  Later I found out that he was there to inform me of the death, and to let me know that he and Mom were driving to Florida for a couple of weeks to visit family,  as of the next day.  It was an ambiguous relief, but I felt so guilty at having Dad stand there waiting for me for God knows how long, while I had been hiding.  

He could only have gotten angrier at the thought of me not being home, at a decent hour after-all!  The funny thing about that night was, it so frightened me that I never went home the whole weekend.  When I did get back, I found that I had inadvertently knocked the refrigerator's electrical plug out of the reciprocal.   The freezer was full of venison which now was really ripe from the long thaw.  All the ice and water - and, yes, venison blood - had run out and gone down through the walls into the ceiling of the apartment below.

The occupant of the downstairs unit, was one old woman of undoubtedly high moral character, and obviously no fun at all.  She must have had mold in her crotch, making her so crotchety.  The woman, who I never even saw one time, was my nemesis.  She hated me passionately, occasionally leaving letters in my mailbox telling me what a slut I was for staying out late, having visitors late, making noise...    After-all, I provided her the only interesting aspect of her life, intrusive as I might have been.  

Anyway, she deserved the smelly stuff in the ceiling, as far as I was concerned, something to break up the monotony of her sterility.   Finally, after many escapades at that slum joint, which it was, I was evicted, the house subsequently  condemned and consequently burned to the ground.  I don't know if she was in the place at the time of the burning, I was out of town, far away with an alibi.