Excellent story, Michael, and beautifully told. You bring back to me so many memories of childhood in the South, and the strangely mannered (but comforting) ways that people acted there. Your descriptions of the people, always including who they're related to the way that people in the South always do, are great, as are your descriptions of the food.
Sometimes the only way we can "come to terms" with disturbing but formative experiences like this is to try to tell the story, as best we can. I think that's what made Garrison Keillor so good at what he did...he was a great storyteller, and you could tell that much of what he related on "Prairie Home Companion" were tales from *his* life, told as a way of not only sharing them with others, but coming to peace with them himself. Very nice. Deep bow. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Michael Jackson wrote: > > I have told some funny stories, all true, here on FFL. This one is not so funny, but nonetheless still true. This happened when I was about six years old. And it was, and still stands today as a strange experience. It was one of my first experiences of death. > > I suppose I might have at that time experienced the death of a pet, but I don't remember it. So maybe I was unprepared for death, not having had much experience of it, but I had never seen nor heard of a death watch. > > My great, great Aunt Ola was dying. I don't know what she was dying of, but she damn sure didn't want to go. And all her kin people were there, watching, waiting for her to die. (Most everyone I knew then called her "ain't Oler" or if she wasn't their aunt, then they just called her Oler, rhymes with roller.) > > Ola and her husband lived near a town in North Carolina called Marshville. Marshville would become known as the birthplace of Randy Travis and parts of the Steven Spielberg film The Color Purple would be filmed there 35 or so years in the future, but all Marshville meant to me was the place we went to see my great grandmother, and this time to watch Aunt Ola die. > > The community was not named Marshville because some enterprising fools had drained a swamp to build the town, but rather for a couple of wealthy benefactors named Marsh who donated a good deal of land for a community center and a couple churches back around the beginning of the 20th century. It had once been a champion area for cotton in the pre and post Civil war days, and still was devoted to agriculture here in the early 1960's. Many of my kin in the area were farmers of one sort or another. > > It wasn't my intention to watch Aunt Ola die, but like all kids have to, I had to do what my folks told me to do. So I found myself wandering around in a very large old A frame house watching all the adults behave in as strange a fashion as I had ever witnessed. > > This old house had been the nexus of many a happy gathering and many a country Sunday meal, but now it was serving as hospice. Aunt Ola was pretty old, and it seemed the entire family had gathered to watch her die. > > Ola Little, my mother's great aunt had been married for years to Lee Hill, but he had been dead for some years by the time his wife seemed destined to join him in the afterlife. All her kids should have been by her side, watching her go to her reward, but some were absent. For one thing, she and her daughter Velma had fallen out over the land upon which we were standing at that moment and over the house Ola was dying in. > > Daughter Gladys had taken care of her momma for some years at this time and was slated to receive the house and farm in Ola's will, which is why Gladys and Velma didn't get along, and the reason Velma and husband Dusty weren't there at the death watch. They did not in fact even attend the funeral. > > The other kids may have been there, but I really didn't know who they were. All my great aunts and Uncles were there. Brice and Cara-Lou (that we all pronounced Carry-Lou), drunkard con artist Cecil and his enabling wife Marge, philandering drunk L.W. and his gorgeous wife Fay, upright Hoyle who made a living running a tobacco vending route servicing the cigarette needs of the community through the cigarette vending machines that were ubiquitous in those days and his wife Ruth, Farmer Buren who always wore a tie or bow tie and raised gigantic hogs on a nearby farm and his wife Ethel. > > I don't remember but I reckon GT and Lilly were there too, GT being Ola's brother and Lilly his wife. I remember them because in later days Randy Travis would talk in interviews about going to GT's little general store when he was growing up, and after he became a famous country musician, he would always go visit with GT and Lilly whenever he went back home to the Marshville area, even after GT retired and gave up the store. > > The largest room in the house, the living room, had been converted to the death watch area. All the furniture had been removed and chairs, many of them provided by the local funeral home I reckon, had been placed all the way around the room against the walls so folks would have a place to set as they watched Ola kick the bucket. > > The room had a large fireplace with mantel in the center of one wall, and the way it was built as you faced it, there was sort of an alcove or inset just to the left of the fireplace and that was the place Ola's bed had been put. If you were on the far wall looking towards Ola with the fireplace on your right, you would not be able to see her face, unless you were standing pretty far down the wall, you could just see her torso and legs and feet under the covers. > > Of course if you were standing directly facing the fireplace, you could see her just fine and if you stepped over to the part of the room where she was, the part leading into the kitchen, you could see her fine there too, cause you were on her side of the room. > > The chairs had not been placed right next to her bed, so she had a little space around her. I suspect this was not done for her ease and comfort, given the fact she had been put on display for her death throes to be observed by all and sundry, but rather for the comfort of friends and kin folk who had come to see her so they wouldnât have to set right next to somebody dying. That would have been too uncomfortable. > > I bet if you had asked her kin why they made the decision to let everyone watch her die right there in the middle of the living room like that they might have said it was because they didn't want a constant stream of folks going in and out of her room disturbing her, when they came over to pay respects, and the place was damn shore full of kin and friends who were doing just that that. At least that's what they would likely have said about it, but as a six year old kid, it didn't look much like respect to me. Mostly what the grownups were doing was ignoring Ola. > > It seemed every chair was accounted for, and the relatives and friends were all talking very quietly to one another as Ola lay apparently sleeping. But if she was sleeping, it was not a very restful sleep, for at unpredictable intervals Ola would begin to moan and cry out. > > "No, no don't take me Jesus! No, please don't take me now, I'm not ready to go yet!" > Ola would shout aloud, surprisingly loud for a five foot tall woman who might have weighed maybe 90 pounds. > > "No don't take me Jesus, don't a make me die now! I'm not ready! I don't wanna die now!" > > These pleas for life were accompanied by a good deal of thrashing. Her arms and legs churned under the covers as she flailed around from side to side. Had the covers not been there her gyrations would certainly have landed her on the floor, but the covers kept her firmly nailed into the bed. > > Each time Aunt Ola would begin to plead for her life, the quietly murmured conversations around the room immediately dried up. Everyone clammed up. Yet no one ever the entire time we were there got up to check on Ola. No one went to hold her hand, or talk to her, no comfort, no words of kindness or encouragement. No one wiped her brow, or asked if she needed water, nothing. Maybe they did when I wasn't looking, but they sure as hell didn't when she went to thrashing around, not when I was there. > > What the adults in the very large death watch room would do when Ola went to thrashing and praying for life was to get quiet and look around. They would look at the floor, the ceiling, they would look out the window, anywhere but directly at Ola. They would look at each other too, but not directly. They would kind of cast glances at each other out of the sides of their eyes and then look at the floor again, but no direct looks at each other. > > I had no idea why they avoided looking at her or each other. I reckon they thought death might come for them if they looked at or made connection with Ola, and if they looked at each other whilst she was thrashing around, they might have to talk about her thrashing and impending death, and they didn't want to do anything so extreme. > > Not even the preacher was there to offer her comfort. He might have come before momma and I and my siblings arrived, but if so I didn't know about it. The preacher never showed up when I was there, if he had I would have spotted him immediately. A man like preacher Baucom was hard to forget. > > I saw preacher Baucom many a time at the Cross Roads Baptist church, the church great grandma, aunt Ola and virtually everyone on the death watch attended. We would always have to go to preaching at Crossroads Baptist Church when we went to see grandma in Marshville. > > Time spent in any church was generally a tiresome thing for me, but not the visits I was forced to make to the Crossroads Baptist Church. Watching Preacher Baucom was a sight to behold because that man shore could preach. I was kind of fascinated with Preacher Baucom and his preaching style because there was nobody like him in the Methodist churches I attended back home. > > Preacher Baucome was of middling height, with whip cord muscles for he was a part time farmer in addition to being a full time Baptist preacher. His head was bald as an egg and his head and all the rest of him you could see in summer time when he wore white cotton short-sleeve shirts was as brown as an acorn from all the time he spent in his farm fields, planting, plowing and such as that. > > Preacher Baucom would begin his sermons sedately enough, but pretty soon his subject matter began to animate him, and the motions would begin. At first he would gesture with his hands, often letting them both float out to the sides and above his head as he denounced various forms of sin. He was a bona fide hell fire and brimstone preacher and he let it all out at every sermon I ever heard him preach. > > His hands would whip this way and that, and when he lifted his hands out to the sides making his robes billow out, he looked like some enormous nut brown bald headed avenging angel bat, come to earth to hunt down sinners and make 'em know they had done wrong and were going to pay for it one day soon to come. > > He would stride from side to side in the pulpit, waving his arms and shouting. When he came back to center behind the podium he would slam his clenched fist on the wood, sometimes literally pounding the Bible itself as he hammered home a point about the wages of sin, that being the Lake of Fire all sinners would be thrown into come Judgment Day at the end of times. And he was very, very vocal about what kinds of sin he thought people in the Marshville community were committing. > > He preached against most every kind of sin there was, but he particularly railed against fornication, lying, cheating, stealing and drinking moonshine whiskey. He vowed during his sermons that there were people right there in that church who were doing all those things. > > The vast majority of his parishioners were well into their seventh and eight decade of life and I doubt a one of them had committed sins like that anytime in the last twenty years except maybe the moonshine sin, but preacher Baucom preached like there was no tomorrow, and according to him there would be no tomorrow in the afterlife for folks who sinned the way he claimed we were all sinning. > > As the sermon went on he moved more and more. As he shouted and strode back and forth in front of the congregation, sweat would pour off his bald head, staining his black robes, but he didn't care, he had sinners to save. > > As I would sit there watching the show I was stunned and fascinated in a bizarre sort of way, for in my young mind I felt like I was watching something I really shouldn't be watching but it was too entertaining to turn away from. I cannot remember a single sermon from Preacher Baucom that had anything to do with anything other than sin, and the old folks who were his church members lapped it up like a starving hound would lap up a bowl of beef stew if you put it on the floor where they could get at it. > > After each sermon as the choir sang and the piano player jangled out the closing hymn on the old out of tune piano, Preacher Baucom walked purposefully down the center aisle to stand as guardian of the church entrance. > > As the notes of the last song died down, people began rising from the pews and collected their belongings to form a line down the aisles to exit the church through the front doors. This pathway led everyone to pass before the preacher who was waiting to shake their hands and pass a word or two with them. I figured he was watching to see which sinner was the worst and he would jump on them and wrassle 'em down right then and there but it never happened. > > I also thought one or two of those farmers or their wives might take issue with the preacher for accusing them of fornication and other heinous sins. I was always kind of waiting for that to happen after the sermon, but time after time when those old folks made it to the front door they would grasp the preacher's hand and slobber all over him for what a fine preacher he was. > > "Oh, Preacher! That was a wonderful sermon, just wonderful! We are so lucky to have you here with us!" my great grandmother and plenty of others would say. > > This was the part of the whole experience that really freaked me out, because in my mind Preacher Baucom had spent the last forty minutes or so denouncing all of us and people seemed to just love it. But there was no Preacher Baucom at Aunt Ola's death watch, just a house full of people acting like she was already a ghost. > > This odd behavior put me off my feed. As a scrawny kid who was always hungry, I should have been inhaling the vittles that filled Ola's kitchen. Much like a family reunion where everyone brought homemade food, the traditional Southern proprieties were being maintained. Normally in the South, when someone died, all the visitors who came by the house would bring a cake, or a pie, or some fried chicken. This was not yet a funeral, but I guess folks knew the family would not be so keen on making food, being burdened by the weight of Ola's impending death, though from the attention they paid her they might as well have been making biscuits and gravy. > > I wandered into the kitchen from time to time, and the place was laden with a mighty array of food, some of which I only got once in a blue moon. There were chocolate cakes, there were apple pies, sweet potato pies, lemon pound cakes, and brownies. There was meat loaf, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, yeast rolls, sandwiches, pickles, and so much more. But none of it really appealed to me as I was feeling the weird vibes in the place and trying to ignore them. > > Even in the kitchen I could hear the imprecations of Ola to Jesus, her Lord and Master. "No, Jesus, no! Help me Jesus! Please don't take me now Jesus, I'm not ready to go! Please don't kill me Jesus!" > Evidently Jesus didn't answer her, because she kept shouting about it from time to time as day wore into evening. At no time as I wandered around the house and outside too, did I ever hear any of the adults talk about Ola and her death to be. > > They talked about the weather, about the crops, about the kin folk who were not there. They talked about those who had passed on like Beecher, Uncle Bud and Aunt Lee Ola's boy who had died 30 years earlier when a saw he and his brothers and their daddy had been running a big saw cutting wood out in front of their farm house, when the saw broke and the blade tore loose from the saw and cut Beecher half in two right in front of his daddy and siblings. It must have been a mighty saw. > > They talked about everything other than Ola's death throes which were prolonged and evidently not to be discussed. The evening dragged on and even as a six year old, I knew this was not a thing that was normal or good for me on some level. Finally as night deepened, Momma took me, brother and sister back to grandma's house to spend the night. Jesus apparently was willing to acquiesce to Ola's pleas until we left her house, because sometime in the night, Ola gave her last gasp and Jesus snatched her up and out of her body. > > Three days later the kin folk planted her in the cemetery at Crossroads Baptist Church. The three day turn around was the traditional time for burying someone after death in the South. The origins of that timeframe go back to the days before embalming in the South, it was simply a matter of health and esthetics since a human body begins to smell pretty bad three days after demise. > > And since the kin were mostly present when she died, there was no need to wait for folks to see her obit in the local paper so she was buried and Preacher Baucom delivered the eulogy. Since he was not preaching a sermon, he was calm and relatively sedate in his delivery. He didn't even mention the Lake of Fire as he gave Ola her final send off. As the service concluded, and the gravediggers lowered the casket in the grave the family began to straggle off to waiting cars and we made our way out of the cemetary. > > From the church we rode back to Grandma's as everyone spoke very well of departed Ola and we had a meal, I don't remember what it was, but I expect it had some pork in it somewhere. The next day we piled into the white Plymouth Suburban Station wagon we had come in and began the drive back home to South Carolina. > > I was pretty quiet, turning the events at Aunt Ola's home over in my mind, still wondering why no one had sat with her, or talked to her when she was pleading with Jesus not to kill her yet. > > I never did make peace with that experience, I just walled it off in my mind and tried to forget it. Most everyone who was in that room that day is dead now themselves. One of my great aunts, Fay claims she doesn't remember the event at all, and my mother says she remembers the death watch but can't recall the reason no one tended to Ola that day. She thinks that it just wasn't done back then, but she's not sure. It was fifty years ago now and its hard to remember such details. > > There would be other visits to Marshville to see Grandma, with platters of her fried apple pies and ice cold milk, but that death watch visit was by far the strangest thing I ever experienced in my youth, and Marshville was never the same for me after that. >
