Thanks Barry - that is high praise coming from a writer like you.
I have a ton of great and true stories from my mother's side of the family, but
if I ever tried to get them published, I'd have to move to the moon - we have
lots of cousins still living that would be highly offended if I told tales of
their momma's and daddies - drunks and thieves become saints after death, you
know.
--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 1/24/14, TurquoiseB <turquoi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Death Watch
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, January 24, 2014, 7:58 AM
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 wouldn’t 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.
>
