Memorial Day…

It was a little scary driving my mom home this Memorial Day weekend. I’m wondering if there is some sort of curse on us with all that is going on, you know. While there I drove out to the cemetery to clean my father’s grave. I don’t know if it is tradition to clean graves for Memorial Day, for me, it was just coincidence. Just time for Mom to go back and since I was in town and knew it needed to be cleaned, I had to get that done.

While driving out there, on the highway shoulder was a man dragging this huge wooden cross and about 30 people following him. I don’t know who these people are or why they do it, but they are really begging to have an accident.

I wondered if these people are suffering. Or recruiting. It seemed a bit blasphemous. Strange. Especially on that day.

Anyway. The cemetery is in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. It is behind St. Charles Catholic Church which was built in the late 1800′s.

It is not the town where we grew up, just a nearby town. In my town the graveyard was full and there was no more room for any new graves, so we had to find another place. My husband’s family being in the funeral business suggested this place, it is where their family members are, so they must know something, right?

It is a gated community. No worries about grave vandalism as with the cemetery my dad was in (we moved him recently).

There are moss covered treed pathways. A peaceful place.

And see, they do bury people above ground in Louisiana. Some of them. They do this because the water table is high in South Louisiana. Dig a hole, you hit water quickly.

That is the older part of the cemetery.

My family is in the new section. It looks pretty empty, but most of these plots are sold. The owners just haven’t died yet. It is too soon.

Way way too soon. Candace and Shane are on the right with the taller headstone (two in one vault), my dad in the middle, and Lorne (Pumpkin) in the yet unmarked grave. All four of them should still be alive. Should.

I don’t write this stuff for sympathy, in case you are wondering. I don’t like that, sympathy. Or pity. I pack light, remember?

I do pity those who abuse alcohol or drugs. And those who live with them. It is a miserable existence. I am blessed I do not have this disease.

The reason I am writing this is because three of these deaths were related to alcohol or substance abuse. (Some would count Candace, too, although she did not have drugs or alcohol in her blood, she was partying most of the night before her accident).

You use, you lose. All of it. And the people who love you also lose. Because once you check into this place, you are not coming back.

A Million Kinds of Crazy

Yes it is true, there has been another accidental death in the family. That makes three in seven months. My brother Lorne died on Friday and although we don’t have the results of his bloodwork, word on the street is he took too many muscle relaxers. This is the exact same thing that happened to Shane, my other brother who died last October. That was the word on the street for him too.

Louisiana is broke and is not doing autopsies as they should. They did not autopsy either of my brothers and I hear Soma (muscle relaxer) does not show up on drug screens. What comes back on these death certificates is “probable heart attack.”

So we have to rely on “word on the street.” I don’t like having to interview and interrogate friends and family, a good chunk of them addicts for information to figure out how my brother died.

I have another brother (still living) who is strung out on drugs. At the funeral home, there were stories circulating that he had gone to my mother’s house and ransacked it looking for money to buy drugs. First, the story was he had torn my mother’s room apart. As the day and evening progressed, people were saying he had turned the entire house upside down. It kept getting worse and worse, this story. We didn’t tell my mother any of this, got a hotel room for the night and kept her there.

After the burial services I brought my mom home but told her to stay in the car while I checked the house. Now, I didn’t really believe those stories, and I’m not afraid of much. But. When I opened the front door, I smelled a horrible odor, like something dead was in that house. It was dark and very still. I got this feeling that maybe my strung brother or one of his friends had gone in there and died, and I tell you my knees were knocking. My heart raced as I turned every doorknob and flicked on each light.

Much of my adult life has been like this regarding my brothers. If you’ve had alcoholic or substance abusers in your family, you know that feeling, that late night phone call or knock at the door, the shit that races through your mind. You never fucking get used to it. And when you do get that dreaded call, the nightmare come to life thing, it’s a sorry ass feeling. A fucked-up one. On the one hand you are devastated about the loss, on the other, you don’t have to worry about getting that call again. Unless you have other substance abusers in the family.

About my mom’s house and that rotten smell, I didn’t find a damn thing. No dead body, no ransacking, no nothing. Unless Snow White came by and cleaned that house. Turns out my mom had left some food out and since she was in a hotel for two days, it went bad. So much for word on the street.

About my brother Lorne, he didn’t use drugs all the time, wasn’t strung out on them. I never really thought I’d get a call like that about him. I thought for sure it would be my other brother who is out walking the streets right now doing his thing. Trying to get him into rehab is like trying to keep water cupped in my hands.

“Comfortably Numb”

I went out to the tracks yesterday in a spot where my brother and I used to throw rocks as children. I asked myself what everyone has been asking this week, “How are you feeling?”
I felt comfortably numb.

“Hello?
Is there anybody in there?”

My brother was lying on the floor with his eyes wide open. He wasn’t breathing. His lips were black they say, but I think they were probably the darkest blue. He had been listening to music on his computer when he fell to the floor. I wonder what it was, that last song he heard? What was he looking at as he lay dying?

“Well I can ease your pain,”

The coroner took a bag of his prescriptions when they came get his body. My mom found these later and asked me to scratch his name off and throw them out.

I stacked them by month starting with April of ’06 (far left). The tallest stack is what he took in August. Over a thousand Lortabs prescribed by the same doctor. He took Soma and Valium too. Hundreds of them. September would be the tallest stack, but as I said, the coroner took a bag of medicines.

I wondered why my brother kept all these empty bottles of the pills he took over the last six months. I see it and it tells me a story of a man who suffered greatly with substance abuse. Maybe he kept these to remind himself of his problem? Or maybe he knew they’d kill him and he wanted us to know how bad it had gotten? We decided not to throw the bottles away, to keep them to show people and scare them off drugs.

“There is no pain, you are receding.”

Seeing him in the coffin all I can think is that his pain is gone. I see his children in the parlor. They are suffering.

“Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re sayin’.”

I kiss his cold face goodbye. I tell him thanks for cooking for me when Mamma was at work, for letting me listen to his records. His Pink Floyd I remember the most. That “Animals” one he scared me with. But I don’t feel anything by the casket. I don’t feel his spirit; I don’t understand that he is really really gone.

People say stuff to me and I have to ask them again what it is they said. I hear a real voice exactly like my dead brother’s and for a flash my brain says, “see, he’s not dead,” but I look and see it is one of my other brothers talking. They all sound alike.

At the burial the sun is blazing hot for October. No breeze. Everyone is sweating. At the very end of the service, someone hands me a rose from his casket and at that very moment a chilly breeze passes over me, it lifts my hair and I close my eyes. I thank him for the cool air as I feel my brother leaving.

Edited Note: We still don’t know the exact cause of death for Shane.