Part 2: Death, Divorce, and Disappointment
- thehealingriverllc
- May 2
- 8 min read
It looks a lot like home to me
Richard got sick in June of 1942, a few weeks before Mama’s birthday. His symptoms were mild at first an’ because his mother had survived the same disease as a young child, an’ had immunity, he remained at home rather than bein’ isolated in a polio ward.
Quarantine signs were placed on each door an’ along the white picket fence that surrounded their yard. Their big black letters were a wall Mama couldn’t climb, keepin’ her from Richard when he needed her most.
Even though she couldn’t have a real visit, Mama rode her bike to Richard’s house ever’day. Standin’ just on the other side of the quarantine signs she’d call out his name.
Those first few days he’d call back through his bedroom window left open for just this purpose. They’d talk for a few minutes pretendin’ ever’thing was right with the world, even when they knew it wasn’t. Then with a promise to return the next day, she’d say goodbye an’ ride that mile-long straight line back to her house.
Richard was a strong, handsome boy, two years older an’ four inches taller’n Mama. Bein’ the tallest girl in town, already five foot eight inches, she liked havin’ to look up when he stood next to her. But now, when they talked across his yard, with him in bed as she stood next to the fence, he sounded weaker an’ smaller with ever’ day that passed.
She could feel him leavin’ her just like Daddy an’ Dickie Lee had done.
Then one day when he didn’t answer Mama’s call, his mother came out an’ said Richard had taken a turn for the worse in the middle of the night. Things didn’t look good. She stood all alone on that porch holdin’ her lace handkerchief over her eyes.
Mama wanted to go to her, cry with her an’ make it all a little easier to bear. Instead, all she could do was get on her bike an’ cry all the way back home.
Then just three days later, on August 14th, one month after her fifteenth birthday, the knock came at their door. Mama didn’t have to ask. She just stood there, frozen, as Granny answered.
Richard was gone.
It’d be weeks before she could visit his family. Homes under quarantine had to be thoroughly cleaned an’ disinfected before recievin’ visitors again.
When that day finally came, she left her bicycle at home choosin’ instead to walk that mile down the sidewalk that used to be hers an’ his. She walked in silence, the sound of cicadas buzzin’ in the early September heat, her heart heavier than she ever thought it could be.
Mama spent most of the afternoon sittin’ on Richard’s porch with his mother. They held each other an’ cried; hardly any need to talk. Tears were more’n enough.
Richard wasn’t just her best friend or the first boy she loved; he was proof that not ever’thing in life had to be painful. Until now. She thought she could never hurt that deep again, not after Dickie Lee an’ Daddy. But on a hot September day in 1942, Mama discovered a whole new kind of heartbreak an’ now she’d have to mend it on her own.
In the space of four short years, she lost ever’thing that really mattered. Hardenin’ parts of her heart she didn’t even know existed, teachin’ her how to carry grief like a shadow that never lifted, this loss changed her forever.
Anger an’ resentment welled up inside her heart where she once held only love; love for her Daddy, for Dickie Lee, an’ for Richard. Life had taught her a valuable lesson. If God actually existed, he didn’t exist to love her like her church had said. He existed to make her life miserable.
She didn’t talk about it much, but her anger simmered just beneath the surface. Ever’ time she heard a hymn or saw someone bow their head in prayer, it threw salt on a wound that wouldn’t heal.
If God was real, an’ if he loved her like the preacher said he did, then Daddy’d be livin’ at home with Mama an’ they’d both be watchin’ her an’ Richard ride down the sidewalk with Dickie Lee.
Sometimes she’d close her eyes an’ imagine her Daddy’s laugh ringin’ out over the hum of her bike tires, Richard grinnin’ next to her, with Dickie Lee’s baby giggles dancin’ on the breeze. An’ there’d be no war. Not in Europe or any other place. Not if God was real.
But that world was make-believe.
The only way she could reconcile her losses an’ the state of the world that she lived in was to make a decision: God is nothin’ but a big, fat lie.
An’ that’s what she did.
In her anger, she couldn’t see that her rejection of God was the first step on a path that would lead her somewhere she never expected to go. It’d take a miracle an’ another twenty years for Mama to change her mind, but right now, that was somethin’ she couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Right now, God was dead to her.
Her Mama’s God wasn’t lovin’ or kind an’ my Mama had just ‘bout enough of him for one lifetime. She was done. He had disappointed her for the last time.
I guess you could say Mama was shunnin’ God.
Believin’ in God, however, wasn’t a choice in Mama’s house. It was a requirement. So, she never told anybody. This was her secret. She an’ God would be the only ones to know she didn’t believe in him anymore.
Even though her secret was weighty, she was happy to bear it. This was the only thing that was hers alone, somethin’ no one could take away.
Pretendin’ nothin’ had changed, she went on with life. It wasn’t easy, but keepin’ her secret safe felt like a small victory when Granny would start harpin’ at her, arms crossed and eyes narrowed sayin’, “Quit mopin’ around, Darline. You don’t know what real troubles are."
That’s Mama’s name, Darline, spelled with an e at the end an’ an i in the middle. Her Daddy did that. I guess you could say spellin’, among other things, was not his strong suit.
I suppose it was easier for my Granny to think that her daughter couldn’t know real heartache at such a young age.
But that’s not true. Sometimes the worst heartbreak of all happens when you’re just a kid. You feel it strong an’ deep an’ you don’t know what to do with it. So, it just sinks down into the dark spaces where it goes to hide, waitin’ for the day when it creeps back up to the surface, right when you least expect it.
Mama’s heartbreak wasn’t somethin’ you could see, but it left its mark.
Psychologists say that an adolescent’s experience of trauma an’ its effect on their brain can make what appears to be a minor incident, an earth-shatterin’ event. Clearly, what happened to my Mama was not minor. But when her world came apart, Granny, like many people in the 1940s, had no understandin’ of how to measure that pain for its true worth. Most ever’body mushed it down into somethin’ more manageable.
They really didn’t know what else to do
In 2008, Mama shared a poem with me that she wrote right after Dickie Lee died. It was my first glimpse of what she’d gone through seventy years earlier as a heart broken twelve-year-old girl.
Mama died in 2018 an’ that gave her ten years to tell me a few more stories of her life in Iowa. I’s always enthralled by her recollections an’ now I’d give anything to have her here to tell me a few more. I guess I need to be satisfied that I’ve got this little poem.
When I first read it, I’s taken aback by how much pain a twelve-year-old could hold in her heart, wrapped up in simple words an’ bows of bias tape.
My twelve-year-old mama ended her poem like this:
All afternoon I colored old newspapers ‘til they were full of
Santa and elves and snowmen, too
When that was all done each gift, I wrapped and tied with a beautiful bias tape bow
I’ll always remember, I know, with tears, but maybe someday a smile
Christmas of ’39, for ‘twas the only one we ever had
With our sweet Dickie Lee, blessed child
In her heartbreak, Mama found a way to hold on to the good parts, even if they were tied up with sadness, somethin’ I’ve tried to learn from her as well.
Readin’ those words, I felt closer to Mama than I ever had before, like she was still speakin’ to me across the decades, sharin’ a part of herself she’d never said out loud.
The terror an’ trauma, the death an’ disappointment, ever’thing Mama an’ Daddy experienced, things I never knew about ‘til I’s grown, resonate in my life like a bell that won’t stop ringin’.
Knowin’ a little ‘bout their story an’ feelin’ some of their pain an’ humiliation helped put my childhood in perspective that makes a whole lot more sense now. It doesn’t make the way they treated me or how I’s raised any easier to look at. But I suppose that’s not the goal, is it? It does, however, give me a lens to look through an’ believe it or not, that’s the same lens I looked through on January 6th.
That perspective allowed for a much greater degree of compassion than I might otherwise have employed when confronted with the kind of fool hardy misbehavior we witnessed that day. No excuses though. I’s as shocked as anybody an’ we’re all adults here; we gotta take responsibility for our choices. But it does help clear the fog an’ to some degree, at least for me, it levels the playin’ field a little bit.
I mean, I don’t know anybody that doesn’t have some kind of trauma in their past that they’re tryin’ to work through or maybe just ignore. My experience, however, is that you just can’t run fast enough to get away from what’s chasin’ you down.
When religious fundamentalism an’ the conviction that you are doin’ the work of God is woven into the trauma that led you to believe you have no voice or real power to change things, an’ then you empower a man like our 45th president to make those very same folks believe he’s the only one who can give ‘em a voice, you are gonna get January 6th.
The January 6th moments in my own life were not unlike that. I’s swept up in a tide of righteous certainty, only to realize later how fear had guided my steps. Oh, they played out on a much smaller scale with far fewer witnesses an’ thank the baby Jesus, they were not broadcast on national television or streamed live on social media. They were, however, exhibited on the stage of my life, an’ I always had plenty of company there. We were people with similar fears an’ anxieties gatherin’ around a common purpose that was too hard to ignore.
Lookin’ back, those moments taught me how easy it is to mistake fear for righteousness, an’ how dangerous it can be when you let one guide the other.
Thankfully, to my knowledge, no federal laws were broken during my January 6th moments. Lucky me; embarrassed an’ humiliated, for sure, but no need to contact the FBI.
An’ there it is. Get enough fear-filled folks together in the same place an’ offer ‘em a big enough lie that feeds the monster rattlin’ in their secret past an’ what do you get? You get somethin’ that looks a lot like January 6th.
Most of the time you get it in unknown places, with unknown faces on unknown stages. Unfortunately, on January 6, 2021, that was not the case. We got to watch it play out on the biggest stage of ‘em all—
—an’ it looked a lot like home to me.
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