Dear diary september
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One Day In September free porn video
‘It was getting on toward Christmas,’ Clancy bowed his head as he gripped the glass of beer in his trembling, work-calloused hands — a tear dropped with a heavy plop into it as he spoke again.
‘It snows up where I’m from, you know,’ he wiped his face and looked up at me with a tremulous smile.
I don’t remember how I got started talking to him. I guess it’s just my writer’s curiosity and my newsman’s nose. It looked like there was a story in there. My editor turned it down saying that 9/11 had already passed, but I still feel that someone has to read this, feel this man’s pain and, maybe a little of our national pain. So . . . here goes.
— — — — — — — — —
Clancy started out by telling me about his mother and how she’d died a little before Christmas several years ago. Her illness had been short, although not quick, but for myself, it seems to me that it was painless. I was glad when he told me that she’d probably had ample time to make her peace with her illness, her Maker, and to say her last good-byes to friends and family, and she was gone. That much I gathered from what Clancy said to me.
— — — — — — — — —
Clancy’s story —
She had lain in her own bed, which was her wish. She’d said that she didn’t want to be among strangers when she left to meet her husband, their daddy Elbert. They’d been married for sixty-five years. They’d all taken turns standing the death watch, the drawn curtains had only let in a dim light, but it was just enough to see by and not enough to bother her.
Clancy sat in the chair by the bed, at times tilting it back, leaning his head against the wall, sometimes resting it on all fours his elbows on his knees, his chin cupped in his hands, watching his Mama breathe. He sometimes cried and always wondered what he was going to do without her. She’d doze, sometimes murmuring in her sleep and whisper words that he sometimes understood, but usually couldn’t quite make out. She’d open her eyes and smile at whoever was beside her bed, and maybe say a few words of love and encouragement.
Meanwhile she ‘waited for Elbert to come get her’ so they could ‘leave together,’ and they waited and watched, waiting to say their last good-byes so she wouldn’t have to wait alone. She was a Christ-believing woman and she knew that sooner or later she’d wake up cradled in the arms of Her Lord. But, God in all His Glory knew that she was already sorely missed — and she wasn’t even gone yet — so he wept anguished, lonely tears at the thought of her leaving.
‘Take me with you, Mama,’ he whimpered just as he’d cried when he was a spoiled-rotten little toddler, ‘take me with you!’
‘You’re a big boy,’ she’d answer, ‘and big boys are brave and don’t cry.’
She’d awaken every so often, and they’d talk a little, remembering the good memories as well as the bad. Talking about the many funny things they’d seen and shared — well he did most of the talking, he confessed — and about the many other sad things and people they’d seen and known. They talked about the time he’d tried to sneak into a ball game and ripped his pants on a bent nail, and how she had covered for him, knowing full well that Poppa would have laid a good tanning on his rear if he’d found out that he’d tried to cheat the ball park people out of the price of admission. He was death on crime and theft, no matter how small. About the time, poor old Mr. Nelson had fallen into the pond and drowned — in four inches of water — because he’d been too old and frail to roll onto his back. We talked about how beautiful Elaine had grown, ‘and such an ugly child,’ she chuckled in memory.
Elaine had been a late bloomer, she was almost sixteen before her flat chest had begun to fill out and her bony, angular body to round out. Her hair, had often been compared to dry straw, ‘lacking only a match to start a fire,’ she’d chuckled, of how it had suddenly taken a luster and shine and float in the air, almost like the Little Mermaid, her favorite comparison. Elaine’s quick ungraceful moves had smoothed out as she grew more graceful and, suddenly, her house was full of boys and young men. Then one day she picked one and it all quieted down. No more bees buzzing around the honey-pot.
I saw the pain hit him suddenly, as it suddenly hit him that his Mama was now gone. The remembered pain of her leaving echoing and re-echoing through him. She’s gone, he’d moaned. His gut level recognition bent his head to the bar.
‘I’d known that she was dying,’ he continued, ‘but it just hadn’t registered, and it still feels as if I’ve taken a sucker-punch in the gut.’
He’d been in combat, spent his time in Viet Nam, a Ranger at that, been wounded twice, and had seen many men, good men, die. He’d killed just as many good men himself, but still, it wasn’t the same. It had never hit this close to his heart and he was once more, suddenly breathless and weak. Then he said that an idea came to him, an idea that had been back in the recesses of his mind, and he knew he’d better ask now or he’d always regret never having asked. It took him a few minutes to realize that he wanted to ask it of Mama, he said, and another few minutes to figure out how to ask it.
‘Mama?’ his voice quavered through his remaining unshed tears.
‘Yes, baby,’ she’d answered, it’s the most common phrase throughout the south, and we’ve both heard it many times from many women at various times in our lives, in situations from the deepest throes of passion all the way to the cool dispassionate tones of the waitress at The Waffle House taking our orders for coffee, but — when Mama said it, it meant something. It meant that he was her baby, and it meant as much to him as it did to her, because . . . he was her baby.
‘Mama? Remember that skinny little girl, Ma?’ he whispered, laying his head on her pillow, almost touching her head, feeling the few wisps of her hair on his forehead, ‘that skinny little girl I married?’
‘Shame, sweetie,’ she whispered, breathlessly chiding, ‘she’s a beautiful girl,’ her head crinkled the pillow cover, but her eyes remained closed.
‘Remember those long shapeless pigtails she wore?’ he told me that he’d felt breathless then and felt it even now after all this time, as he’d ignored her sweetly chiding voice, ‘those buck teeth and all those brown freckles in patches all over her face and shoulders?’ he’d smiled as the memories flashed back, going back to their first time, years later.
By then she’d been quite a good-looking woman and those big ugly freckles were nothing more than a light dusting of fine brown sugar all over her slim shoulders. It was a fine sprinkling of sweetness on her baby smooth satiny hips, so wonderfully pliant and smooth under his rough, work-calloused hands.
‘Remember when we were kids and she split her foot half-open on a broken Nehi bottle and I piggy-backed her home?’ she smiled and nodded slightly, ‘I cried because I didn’t want her to die,’ his voice was a whisper as he told me that.
‘I knew … then,’ she’d whispered, gently smiling.
‘Mama,’ he began sobbing again, ‘I know you gotta go see Daddy soon.’
He’d gulped, desperately trying to dam up the flood of tears, as he realized that his entire world had changed and died in front of him once before, and that it was doing it again. The tears streamed down his face through his moustache, as he desperately swiped at them, trying to catch them with his handkerchief.
‘Mama, do me a favor?’ he whispered through his wracking sobs, ‘please,’ unable to keep the desperation out of his plea.
‘Yes-s-s, Sweetie,’ she whispered, ‘I will,’ she already seemed to know the favor Clancy was about to ask her as her breath came softer, shallower.
‘Tell her . . .’ he whimpered, ‘tell her that I’ll always love her,’ he could feel hs guts knotting then, at first, then finally unknotting as he let her go in his mind, acceptin
g the finality of her leaving, ‘tell her I wish I could go too, to be with her, but I gotta stay. Tara and Bobby Joe are gonna need someone here to get them through. Someone to love them and patch up their scraped knees. Someone to that really cares for them.’
Her breathing grew slower and shallower as she nodded.
‘I love you, Mama,’ he pushed the Nurse’s Call Button to call his brother and sisters.
‘I love you too… my sweet baby,’ she answered so very, very faintly.
‘Go meet Daddy, Mama,’ he’d finally whispered between sobs, ‘we’ll be fine, but we’ll miss you so very, very much.’
His tears slowly ran down his face as he tried to hold back the wracking sobs. She nodded imperceptibly.
‘Elbert,’ she whispered sighing, ‘you’re here.’
‘Yes, Mama,’ Clancy had whispered back, ‘he said he’d come back for you.’
James, Jean and Millie crowded into the shadowed room, bumping gently against each other, dim walls and barely seen furniture. The room was very small for this crowd, but they all came in and knelt around the bed, crying and sobbing quietly. They each said their good-byes to her. Clancy, the youngest, the baby of the family, was openly crying, muffling his sobs in his handkerchief, his chest and shoulders heaving as he tried to be quiet. Jean and Millie each took one of Mama’s hands as James stroked her forehead and as they did, she opened her eyes and looked around at all of them.
‘Don’t cry,’ she whispered smiling, ‘Elbert’s here to take me home,’ she’d looked at Clancy and, even in that darkened room, her eyes were bright and clear, lucid and shining with the inner glow of her spirit.
‘Elbert’s fine,’ she repeated, ‘and Elaine is, too. I promise I’ll tell her.’
She leaned back, the effort having sapped her last little bit of strength. She took a couple of short breaths with long spaces between, then she took a final, long quavering breath and slowly sighed it all out. It was almost a sigh of relief after all her years of work and worry. She sighed that one last time, the last bit of air rattling from her lungs, and her frail, thin body slowly, ever so slowly, collapsed in on itself like an empty balloon, letting her spirit fly free to meet their Daddy.
She was gone.
‘Good-bye, Mama.’ Clancy whispered, openly crying with his brother and sisters, ‘good-bye.’
They huddled together as the orphans they now felt themselves to be. Clancy lay his head on the pillow by her head, sobbing as he whispered, ‘thank you Mama.’
The hospice nurse slipped in through the door, apologizing for the necessity of the intrusion, did a quick cursory check, ‘for the record,’ she apologized, and left them to their anguished good-byes.
‘Elaine!’ Clancy called to her, crying it aloud, ‘Mama’s coming.’
— — — — — — — — —
Elaine, the largest part of Clancy’s heart had been very physically torn from his body when she’d died. Killed by cowardly bastards, as he called them, who felt it their religious duty to kill any and all Americans. Clancy had thought to go to her, but she wouldn’t have liked him leaving their kids alone.
— — — — — — — — —
September 11th, 2001 had ripped his, as well as my world, into little pieces and tossed our country into this vengeance seeking monster.
Elaine, was one of the unremembered, her body scattered throughout a Pennsylvania field, their kids her only memorial. The hole in the ground made by that airplane, was her only other marker. When she’d called, he’d been too busy to answer the cell phone at the time, his hands full of muck and, thinking he’d call her back as soon as this stubborn stopped up commode was cleaned up and he’d let it go to voice-mail.
Elaine’s message was short. She said that there was a problem on board, that it might be hijackers. She didn’t know what was going on, but that two other airplanes had already crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City. They had just heard about it. Some of the men were planning on doing something about this hijacking, although neither she nor they had yet figured out what to do. She asked that I give her love to the kids just in case she didn’t make it back, then he heard a loud voice somewhere close to her yell, ‘Let’s Roll!!’ and she said good-bye, she loved him and to take care of the kids.
He let me listen to her message, he still had kept it on his cell phone’s voice mail.
‘Baby,’ she said, her voice nervous and distracted, ‘Baby, this is me, I’m still in the plane. Now, I don’t want you to worry, but, I think we’re being hijacked. These guys have gotten into the cockpit and taken over the controls. They said over the P.A. not to worry, they’re turning the plane around and we’re heading to Washington, but I don’t think they’re planning on doing anything rash. However, we did hear that an airplane just like ours had been flown into one of the twin towers in New York. Some of the passengers seem to think that these hijackers are planning the same thing, and since we’re heading to Washington, it may be the White House they’re aiming for. A few think that if we leave them alone, they’ll do what they’re going to do and then let us go. I’m worried, but I’m sure it’ll work out for the best . . . but, just in case I don’t make it back, I just wanted to call you and tell you that I love you and the kids. Take care of my babies for me in case I don’t make it back . . .’ her voice came off speaker and a man’s voice mumbled something unintelligible, as if trying to keep his voice low, ‘okay, okay,’ she responded to the unknown voice, ‘they just told me that I’m supposed to help and sit on any hijackers that may come my way,’ she chuckled drily, ‘and you know my big butt, it’s practically immovable once it’s planted on something.’
‘Let’s Roll!’ echoed a man’s voice behind hers.
‘I love you!’ she called out a last time, ‘mind the kids!’ and the connection clicked off.
‘I love you, too,’ he answered the empty air again, ‘I’ll take care of our kids.’
He had taken care of the kids. That last crack about her big butt, he said, was a running joke between them. However, he continued, to him she had the cutest heart-shaped butt, and he loved getting his hands on it. He said he’d call it his ‘two handfuls of Valentine,’ and she’d call him a dirty old man.
‘The kids are something else,’ he smiled through the tears, ‘Tara’s just as freckled as Elaine was, way back when, and I believe she’ll grow up to be just as beautiful as Elaine. And Bobby Joe, well, Bobby Joe is all boy, and hopefully, he’ll look something like me when he’s all grown up.’
‘Wait for me Lainie,’ he’d whispered into is beer when he thought I wasn’t listening, ‘I’ll be there sooner or later. You left me in charge of the kids and, I promise, as soon as they’re grown and on their own, I’ll be there with you.’
‘So far, no one has managed to substitute for her,’ he continued to me, ‘and that’s all any other woman would be, just a substitute. Ain’t no one will ever replace her.’
He hadn’t even finished his first beer as he lowered his head on his arms and wept. He didn’t drink more than the one before he got up and said that he had to go home. Millie had the kids and he’d already been gone too long. He apologized for bending my ear and, as he reached for his wallet, I stopped him and told him I’d put it on the newspaper’s tab. He grinned and said it must be nice, waved and left.
What tab, I thought sadly. I’m supposed to be a hard-nosed SOB, but I leaned my head atop my hands and finally let his pain run through me. I can only imagine his.
— — — — — — — — —
I ran into him again at Wal-Mart yesterday, and asked him how he was doing. We’re coming up on Thanksgiving 2010 and he said that he still misses her tremendously. I could see the pain in his eyes. Nine years plus and he still grieves. Do those monsters know what kind of havoc they wreaked
? Do they care?
‘Elaine,’ he’d cried softly, ‘how have I managed without you . . . please, Mama,’ he’d whispered to the empty air, ‘tell her how much I love her and how much I miss her.’
September 11, 2010 has passed. It’s almost Thanksgiving Day. Should we thank those ‘martyrs’ for the grief they’ve caused us?
Libbie
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