The Family Tree

I attended a funeral today for a man I didn't even know.

I left wishing I had.

I'm sure I've met distant cousin CA Flora in recent years. There was a reunion in the Tri Cities a few years back where Curt and I visited briefly, too briefly. And there was Dad's and Mom's funerals. And maybe even my sister's. The years are a blur, the wait by the caskets at Hagy-Fawbush Funeral Home reduced to a hazy series of flashes punctuated by Kleenex and the scent of carnations. But I'm told I met him. 

I just didn't know him.

There's a whole family tree of people I hardly know. 

Aunt Sandy sketched this up for me today before she and Aunt Dianne returned to Richmond. I learned that CA married their first cousin, Gladys Helen. There were 15 first cousins in my dad's family, and from what we can see, there look to be nearly 30 second cousins, including me. With this, I'm finally able to draw some lines in my brain, connect the cousins to the parents and then to me. I have faces to put with Facebook family. 

Which brings me back to CA Flora, whose passing drew 800 visitors to the Antioch Church of the Brethren in Rocky Mount yesterday. Today's service was about remembering a man known for absolute selflessness. (The very thing God's working on in me this season.) A child of God, brother, husband, father, uncle, cousin, friend. A servant to his church. A  Hokie, die-hard local sports fan, farmer, realtor. A man to be celebrated and remembered. A man I wish I'd known.

I'm thankful it's not too late to get to know the rest of the clan. 

420 Poplar Street

"A house that raised a family is so  much more than wood and shingles. It’s home to almost every memory of our younger lives. 
… Yes, technically a house is just a place. But at times like this, it sure feels more like a person." 

~ Steve Hartman, CBS News.

   We trekked home last month to empty the attic of the remnants of life at 420 Poplar Street. 

An assembly line of workers, 
from Curt in the attic 
to Camden on the ladder steps 
to Benjy at the bottom 
to me in the garage, 
well, what used to be a garage before Dad man-caved it, complete with an air conditioner/heater recommended by the foreman of the Holiday Inn job downtown. 

   We had it emptied in no time. The sorting is where things screeched to a near halt. And where things got a little emotional.

   I've known the house would be sold for weeks now. I'd celebrated it. No more paying property taxes on it. No more keeping up the insurance. No more worrying that the City of Norton would slap me with a fine for forgetting I had grass down there to mow. 

Michelle, Candie, and me, late 1970s

   The heart of my memories at 420 Poplar Street is wrapped up in papers imaged with Michelle and Candie and tied up with a bow that's one end Mom and one end Dad. The wrapping came undone in that garage as I freed the snapshots from yellowed tape holding them fast in their dusty frames.  

   The whole flood of memories swirled around me in a fuzzy haze of matte print Kodak 110s, faded 35 mm pix, and the occasional hazy Polaroid. 

   So real were they that I could smell the hot Christmas bulbs burning, the OFF! spray and sunscreen, the pork chop casserole and buttery cornbread. 

   And then I could see. 

   I saw Mom, scrambling eggs and baking buttermilk biscuits for weekend breakfasts, taking me shopping for Aigner sandals at Dave's, sleeping fitfully through a midnight game of tag on the roof, and lugging bags of books home from the Lonesome Pine Regional Library. (She had their phone number memorized so we could renew our books. So many were in our bags that we never finished them on time.)

 

   I saw Dad, sitting in the press box calling the plays for John I. Burton football, tinkering on his old MG in the garage (when it was really a garage), stressing over the town budget every May (and teaching me my first lessons in financial peace), and telling the corniest jokes I've ever heard. What I wouldn't do to hear a corny joke in his Andy Griffith-like voice right now. 

   I saw Michelle, insisting we name our new puppy Suzanne (she lost), playing with her Sunshine Family dolls while we watched Little House on the Prairie, dragging her appendix-less self to the prom mere hours after surgery (and looking like a star), and threatening, "I'm tellin'!" at every perceived injustice. 


   The memories faded as I untaped the last picture and added it to the stack. "I'm hungry," someone said. Yeah, I thought. I am, too. 
   
   So hungry I can smell the cornbread.