One Month

23 September 2007 ~ A Family Changed Forever

It’s 22:30, and I was just getting ready for bed but I wanted to jot down some thoughts while I’m in the “writing mood”. One month ago tonight everything was fine as far as I—and most of my family—knew, but then the calls started making their way around to each family member until finally, my call came. It was just past 1AM on the 24th of August and I was just getting settled into bed when my cell phone rang. “Who the hell’s calling me, now?” I thought to myself. As soon as I saw “Dad” on the display window, my heart dropped. I just knew something was wrong because for starters, Dad never calls. He always makes me call. Secondly, when someone who never calls, calls in the middle of the night, you KNOW it’s not just to talk about the current Trade Policy in Kazakhstan.

At any case, I took the call and immediately asked what was wrong. My dad did his trademark clearing-of-the-throat before speaking; his voice was calm as he asked me what I was doing. I said, “Who cares what I’m doing. What’s wrong?” Then my dad said (and these still words echo in my head), “They think Shondell’s dead…” I think I, as well as my entire family, was covered in a shroud of disbelief. How could this happen to us, and to someone in our family? This is the kind of thing you hear about in the news, or from a colleague, or even in the movies, but not in our family. How inane is it to think that we can be impervious from the full gamut of the human continuum?

The long, dark and endless journey of sadness began that night and no doubt continues through to this day.

***

The trip to Illinois was the longest trip of my life; I decided to drive rather than fly because I wanted the time on the road to just reflect and try to build some inner strength before facing the inevitable: a flag-draped casket. My partner, Nathan, and my cousin, Adam, came to IL as well. Ironically, the trip was a bit comical in that my dad—who lives in Pascagoula, MS—and I planned our individual trip so well that we left at the same time just to see who could get to IL first! Obviously we had previously calculated that we were about equal distance from our destination. My entourage and I arrived at the hotel (about 6AM) then my dad, step mom and younger brother, David, showed up about 30 minutes later.

For most of the 12-hour trip, I sat quietly in the passenger seat of my Jetta and jotted down some random thoughts I could use to compose my brother’s eulogy. Skipping ahead just a little: On the 29th of August, I stood at the front of the chapel-like room and delivered my brother’s eulogy. It was both the most difficult and the most important act that I have ever done, being my brother’s pallbearer and pulling the flag-draped casket from the hearse was the second most difficult thing to do. Besides burying my brother, I think the hardest thing of this entire experience was having a closed-casket service. Granted Autumn, my brother’s wife, and I decided to have it open for immediate family during the visitation evening, we decided to close it prior to anyone else arriving; the site was just too traumatic for most people to handle. Just before the staff closed the casket, the family was given a final moment to say goodbye. My dad approached the casket and leaned in closely. I stayed my distance. As my dad came up I saw something that really brought a sense of finality to this entire menagerie: I saw my dad cry for the first time in my life…but as he stepped away from the casket he quickly removed any physical evidence of tears, or the likeness thereof!

Anyway, I don’t want to hearken on this theme for the entire blog, but I just want to vent some of the things going on in my head while they’re still fresh. I think it’s important to laugh a lot if life and have fun, but then there comes a time when we need to redraw our attention and focus on what’s going on internally in our lives. I am the type of person who generally hides beneath the masquerade mask and makes others laugh all the while I carry with me the same types of burdens and troubles as everyone else in this world. I love making people laugh, though, because if we can laugh and just—even temporarily—forget about our troubles, then we can carry on in this journey and become stronger and pass on our knowledge to friends, family and future generations. At least that’s my take on survival.

I need to get to bed because it’s 23:40 and I have to get up at 0300 to get ready for work, but I’ll leave you with this quote from Enya’s song “Long, Long Journey”.

“Through the darkness and the shadow, I will still go on…”