Homefires (28 page)

Amid the hazy recall, the next two days stand out with crystal clarity. I wanted to select Krissie’s burial gown. Kaye Tessner called several children’s boutiques to describe what I wanted. She located a shop in a nearby town that had three or four selections, which fit the description nicely, then drove me there mid-afternoon.

One of the dresses was perfect, a soft feminine white, spattered with tiny red Swiss dots, featuring a high lace collar and long lace-trimmed sleeves. A fitted bodice joined the long full skirt with a dainty red waistband, from which identical, slender red bands ran up over each shoulder, giving the impression of a peppermint pinafore. Mid-way, it hit me:
This will be the last time I’ll get to deck out my little girl....
I swallowed back tears and gave close, close attention. I would not relinquish this precious homage.

I asked Mr. Jones, the funeral director, to arrange with the florist to keep a fresh long-stemmed red rose in her hand until the time of burial. Later that afternoon, Kirk took my hand and we walked to the cemetery to select Krissie’s resting-place. “Someday,” I said, “we’ll move back upstate and – I know the wise thing is to bury her there. But Kirk,” I gazed at him, “I can’t part with her.”

“I know,” he murmured. “Neither can I.”

Then, I saw it. The perfect spot. A lovely grassy slope beneath the regal oak tree with its softly swaying shawl of Spanish moss. “Here she can remain close to us.” Kirk looked at me strangely. “What?” I whispered.

Tears gathered along his lower red rims. “This is the exact spot I chose – in the event I died while here at Solomon. This was where I wanted to be buried.”

The following day, we made the solemn pilgrimage to the funeral home. Then I saw her. How beautiful she was. So
heartbreaking beautiful.
New pain lanced me, hurt as I’d never known existed...the flawless complexion...the fine,
delicate
bone structure of the sweet face.

That little face. So peaceful. So innocent. I took her small hand in mine and kissed the cool soft cheek. “Ohh, Krissie,” I whispered, “I’m so sorry. Mama’s
so sorry
. Please forgive me for allowing this to happen. I’ve failed you.” I began to weep – for her, for the life ended too soon.

In the background, I heard a man crying brokenly. It was Kirk.

Toby stood near me, peering into the casket with a glazed expression on his small round face. “She looks like she’s asleep, doesn’t she, Mama?” he whispered.

“She is, Toby,” I murmured, pulling him into my embrace.

Heather slowly approached the quiet little form. She stood there for a long time, holding her sister’s hand, touching her hair, her face. She turned to me and burst into tears, “I love her so, Mama...and I
never told her!
Oh, Mama – ” I wept with her, knowing her remorse.

She leaned over and kissed the dear face. “Oh, Krissie,” she sobbed,
“I love you so
.”

I chose a funeral service that befitted our daughter’s extraordinary tenure on earth, selecting only those who loved her to participate. Krissie’s still-fresh trust in me gave rise to purpose, one that blazed and spurred my mind and limbs to do what needed to be done to ensure her earthly departure be one of honor. We asked Trish’s husband Gene to officiate, with Pastor Cheshire assisting. Both adored Krissie. Gene, though feeling he’d not hold up well, consented when he saw how much it meant to us.

I chose Krissie’s favorite songs and asked Julian Grimsley, a dear friend from the college choral group, to sing the joyful selections.

“But Mrs. Crenshaw,” Dixie Tessner sobbed when I asked her to play other Krissie-favorites on the organ, “I don’t t-think I can do it. Krissie was s-so special – I
feel so close to her.”

“Exactly,” I replied. “That’s why it has to be you. Your love will shine through as you play. God will help you. Together, we can all get through this.”

Moment’s later, Heather slipped her hand into mine and joined me in my room for a short private interim. When the door closed behind us, she turned to face me and grasped my hands in hers. Her fingers were icy. I rubbed them gently. Her eyes, tear-filled, beseeched me in some way. “Mama,” she swallowed back a sob, “I was so afraid....”

“Of what, honey?” I put my arms around her and pulled her to me as she burst into tears.

“Th-that you and Daddy would b-blame me. I should have been watching out for her a-and – ”

I closed my eyes and swallowed back a bubble of alarm. “Oh, Heather, Heather.” I blinked back tears. “We don’t blame you, sweetheart. We don’t blame anybody. Please – ” I held her back and gazed into her eyes, “don’t
ever,
for one instant, blame yourself. Promise?”

She gulped and nodded and I held her close. Her weeping began to subside and, with it, the quivering. Poor baby. What a load she’d carried.

Not until I felt calmness overtake her did I release her and return to greet guests. I watched her rejoin her peers, whose vigilance sustained her through this lowest point of her short life.
I’m glad I got through to her.
In no way was her sister’s death her fault.

It was
mine.

I awoke early the morning of the funeral, having slept very little, if any. That was the most difficult time, when sleep’s cocoon vanished, when I suffered raw reality. Loss tidal-waved and battered us into each other’s arms, Kirk and I, to sob out our sorrow together until we could arise and face going on. This would continue for days, weeks and months to come. But this morning, we knew: we must say goodbye to our flesh and blood Krissie...
our Krissie.

Kirk joined Dad for coffee at the kitchen table just as MawMaw and Papa arrived.

“We had to come,” MawMaw’s mouth wobbled on the raspy words. “She was so sweet. Papa always got her to giggling – ” I nodded as she and Papa silently wept. We had visited them, on occasion, during the years. And they had, sporadically, popped in for weekends, as well. Not as often as I’d have liked, but Kirk and I had made sure the children knew their great-grandparents. I hugged them both, thankful for their presence. They joined Kirk and Dad at the table and for once, their relationship to my father didn’t matter.

I walked out onto the tiled front porch with its white columns.

Alone. I needed time with God.

The air was mild, the sun rising as though nothing unusual had transpired in the past forty-eight hours. I gazed up into the clear blue sky and shivered despite solar’s golden warmth. I tried to pray. Words would not come. Only memories...Krissie trying on Heather’s make-up and adult beauty filtering through –
Oh God! She won’t ever grow up....
And with each surge of memory, pain’s dark chasm snarled and deepened.

I need you, God. You said you’d be here.
The accusation was listless and weary
.
Desperate.
Pray. I need to pray....
What? How? No thoughts formed – the need was too vast. Beyond articulation.

The next time I opened my mouth, language I’d never before heard issued forth in a flow as rich and smooth as nectar and I knew from whence it came and from whom because a supernatural strength began to enter me that lifted me above human debilitation and with it came courage and calmness I had encountered only once previously.

Six years earlier, my Aunt Mary, Daddy’s older Pentecostal sister, took me into the
privacy of her bedroom during a family gathering and insisted on praying for my migraine and me.

Aunt Mary was the most flamboyantly religious person I’d ever known, marching to a drumbeat so far out I was embarrassed at times to acknowledge her as kin. Yet I loved her and refused to join in when her Bible Belt, hard-shell Baptist and Methodist siblings lightly poked fun at her unorthodox stance. Underdogs always draw my sympathy, Mary being no exception. But that day, I groaned and sank down onto her red bedspread, determined to humor her then swallow three aspirin and get the heck out of there.

I tried not to recoil when she lowered her hand on my bowed,
throbbing
head.

“Lord,” she commenced praying softly, “heal this headache.”

Aunt Mary stopped for a long moment, then hissed, “You’re a
liar
Satan! Get outta here, you scum. You’re not gonna cheat Neecy out of what God’s got for ‘er. Ya hear?
Scat!”

Goosebumps scattered over me and my mind stopped thinking.

“Now, Lord,” said Aunt Mary in her that’s-taken-care-of way, “heal Neecy from the top of her head to the soles of her feet.”

She removed her hand from my head and immediately a force, like a solid slab of lumber, slammed into my crown and moved slowly, slowly down my body, not missing an atom, synchronized and level, in smooth sustained passage until it reached my feet.

At the tips of my toes, it stopped.

My eyes popped open and I marveled at the
rightness
of what I felt. It began to move back up my ankles, calves, over my hips up my torso, shoulders and reached the base of my skull, where the wildfire, knotted pain threatened to rupture into a cerebral hemorrhage. Then, in two heartbeats, perhaps three, the phantom-slab hoisted the infirmity out my crown, tumbling my head forward with relief. I reached up to grope for proof that I still had a head.

“It’s gone, Aunt Mary.” I gazed at her, astonished. “It’s gone!” I sprang to my feet and strode about grinning, then
laughing
and bubbling with joy and the certainty of a holy presence.

Aunt Mary smiled. Suddenly, she didn’t look peculiar. She looked intelligent and saintly and compassionate. “Neecy,” she said softly, extending her palm, “God’s not through yet. My hand is still warm.” She placed it on my head again. “Now, Lord, fill Neecy with your Spirit.” Again, she stepped back.

An invisible gate flung open above me. I felt it with every fiber of my being and something like a vacuum drew my gaze, my hands, my arms, the whole of me upward, upward in mystical expectancy until I no longer felt the floor beneath me and I was alone in a golden realm with this incredible energy.

Quietness settled over my new realm, so silent that a faint brush against crystal would sound as cymbals and the tug grew more powerful and complex, with the open window a two-way channel, hurtling us together: Me and IT. What IT was, I still didn’t know except that it was Holy and good and I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. Anticipation and joy crescendoed like harp arpeggios as my upstretched fingertips connected with it. From it, something quite like honey
began to pour over me and into me until I felt submerged and floating, filled with a calm serenity that surpassed anything I’d ever encountered. It was a warm, warm thing that permeated everything ME: the physical, emotional and spiritual.

“I am here.” I felt the words. My eyes popped open, my gaze still drawn upward. The aura above had no face, only brilliance and soothing warmth and peace and in that instant, it touched my throat. A physical touch from invisible fingers, at the base of my tongue – much as the phantom-slab, only now localized in that tiny speech area. And my tongue, of its own volition, began to move quite freely. I felt no fear. Calmly, my gaze sought and glimpsed Aunt Mary’s serene face through the ivory mist. She nodded and smiled. “
Give Him your voice,” she said softly. And I did.