John Mack Freeman - Hello Darlin'...and Goodbye

 

My grandmother has six months to live. She's dying. She's been in and out of the hospital all summer, but now she has a cancer whose name is too long and complicated for me to remember. And so, now, we are staring at a ticking clock. And that is why everyone who can is flying up the highways of the Appalachian foothills for a birthday party. This side of my family doesn't really throw birthday parties, but we know that we have to do it now or we're never going to get the opportunity. 

 

I am nervous about going, because I used to spend a lot of time with this part of my family. I would spend a week up there every summer, but I haven't seen them in over a decade. They are exactly the kind of people you think live in the Appalachian foothills. They are conservative, redneck, blue collar, all of the above. And I am a cityfied pinko commie liberal who is bringing my husband to meet them for the very first time. I am nervous about how this is going to go. But my mother asked me to come, and so I go. 

 

We get out of the car and Conway Twitty is blaring from the backyard. My mother meets us at the door and we walk out back and there are 40 or 50 relatives in these pods of folding chairs around the backyard with paper plates on their laps. There's a pool that nobody's using and a bar that's unattended. And in the middle of it all was my grandmother, dancing with her youngest son, David to Hello Darlin’ And everybody is watching and everybody's pretending like they're not watching. They're furtively recording with their phones, but pretending like they're not, because everybody knows, but nobody wants to admit that this is probably the last time she's ever going to dance. 

 

The dance ends and the spot next to her opens up. And so, I sit down on the concrete. She looks good. Her hair's been done. It's in these soft curls around her face. She's wearing a new outfit for her birthday. But it's loose to hide all the ports and the wires and the tubes. She takes the oxygen tube out of her nose and we start talking. She asks me about the house I just bought, and I ask her how she's enjoying the party. we're making small talk in a situation that really doesn't need small talk. She pauses for a second and she turns to me and she goes, “You know, I am fine with all of this.” She sucks me in. 

 

I may not see my grandmother very often, but we share one thing more than anything else. We have a blunt attachment to the truth. And so, whatever her life has brought her, her eight husbands, running away with a fry cook, living in a school bus, this woman is the kind that they don't make anymore. And if this is what she wants to talk about, this ticking clock that's on her life, then I want to hear what she has to say. And so, she says, “I'm fine. This is just a part of life and I know that I will be okay. But it is so painful watching how much pain your mama and David are in.” I try to think, what do you say to the dying that don't need your pity or your platitudes? 

 

But before I can come up with something to say, another family member pushes their head in and goes, “Do you want a piece of cake?” in that tone of voice that people use with the elderly that they think are feeble. I want to pick this woman up and hurl her into the pool, cake and all, because my grandmother is not feeble. She is dying, but she is still here. The older relatives start to depart as the sun goes down, and this party that has felt very much like awake is turning into a little bit of a hootenanny. There's a scavenger hunt for the missing vodka. People are doing furtive shots of tequila in the kitchen. My uncles are stripping off their shirts and doing cannonballs in the pool. My aunts are doing a bad white lady line dance to the wobble off to the side. [audience laughter] 

 

My mother is pointedly taking me and my husband to meet everyone, daring them with her steely gaze for anyone to flinch at the phrase, “And this is Mack's husband, Dale.” [audience laughter] I don't know what I expected, but nothing happened because my Camo Maga hat wearing uncle grabs my husband into a bear hug and says that it's so nice to meet him and that we don't need to be strangers and the next time, we're up that way we need to stay with them. I'm never going to understand these people, but somehow my baggage fits here. 

 

I know I need to get on the road. I am working in the morning and I can't stay. I know that all things come to an end, but I go back outside one more time and sit down and look around at my family. My grandmother sitting in the middle, looking out at her kids and her grandkids and her great grandkids. This clan of factory workers and teachers and librarians and storytellers and hunters and nurses and business people and so much into the future and into the future. We are all so different. But different is just a way that we are saying that we are so unique and so uniquely suited for one another. I look at my grandmother sitting in the middle of all of this chaos and somehow, she is at peace. And I find that quite unexpectedly, so am I. Thank you.