Roll Me Away

Damn it!  I forgot to start my car this morning and it is cold! I go off to school looking through frosty hastily windows. I slowly drive by to look day at my dream home and in the front yard stands; Grayson was in his normal post. Standing in the front yard, hands in his pockets, staring at what I am never sure; some days I think he sees me and other days he is a statue made of stone...staring off into another time, another place I do not know, but he was not with us in the present. The sad truth is he would be there some days when I would come home at lunch and then when I would return home after school at four in the evening. 

Silver Spoon might be the way some folks would have described Grayson’s life, he was the son of one of the major farming family that founded our community. He lived on a beautiful, fertile farmed that he inherited from his father.  He attended college, Virginia Poly Institute that later became VA TECH in the 1900’s.  Sometime around 1920, he married his first wife and built his home on Loves Mill. They had one daughter Sue Anne.  I am not sure why his first wife passed away so young or how long he was single before he married Carrie.  I am not even sure how long he was married to Carrie before she passed away.  The second wife, Carrie, had kind brown eyes and was so kind to all of us kids when we would wander up on her front porch for an icy cold Coke.  

The State of Virginia funded the completion of a highway connecting the town with the foot of the Appalachian Mountains in the early 80’s. The road split his farm right down the middle 50 acres on one side of the road and the house, barn and 50 acres on the other side of the road.  He protested the route right up until the surveyor’s stakes went into the ground. 

Change comes much like an asphalt roller, flattening everything in its path and he was in a direct path.  Grayson and Preston’s father lived across the river divided the family between the two brothers Grayson and Preston, giving each brother 100 acres.  The land came with a stipulation that when one brother died the land would go to a child, not a grandchild, wife, but a decedent if a decedent was not living then the land would go to the other brother.  

Realistically speaking this probably would not be that big of an issue for most people, but Grayson and his first wife had only had one child, a daughter named Sue Anne.  Sue Anne had attended college in Tennessee and moved away like the wind without looking back. When her mother had passed away she rarely came back to visit.  She had made her life in Atlanta raising a family giving Grayson the grandsons that he wanted so badly.  

Sue Anne contacted Grayson and came home for a much-unexpected visit during the ground breaking for the new highway  This visit she told him that she had cancer, ovarian and it was in the final stages, she came home to say good-bye.  

This was something of course that Grayson shared with very few people, actually only one other living person in his hometown, his community that his family had founded.  He had shared this with his physician Dr. Greever, an old childhood friend, who attended church together, the very church that Grayson's family, had donated the land to build, and was named after his family. He shared this with his physician, his friend after all Grayson was dying.  He too was dying from cancer, cancer just like Sue Anne.   

Depression was not something that was discussed or taught in health or public service announcements and even in the 80's the after school movies did not address the topic. There were no antidepressants or anxiety medication, therapy was not accepted.  People just suffered.   I had no idea as a teenager that Mr. Grayson was suffering from depression from the loss of his wife and disappointment in his government or maybe he was just trying to decide what to do with the stipulation in his father's Will. I was 16 and I had no idea that he was in a crisis spiraling out of control.  I had no clue.  No one did.

I put my 1973 VW in second gear and waved at  Grayson, he stood motionless with his hands in his pockets of his worn farm coat moving only his head as watched me drive slowly by with Bob Seger blasting on the cassette player. I jammed my little bug into third gear and headed to school.  This was my life in 1982.  I was a junior in high school, working a part-time job, worrying about my boyfriends, my Grandmother, and I was a beauty queen.  My world was right.

Later that week between 5^th and 6^th period, Hope told me as we walked to our last class of day that someone had found Mr. Grayson dead. He had committed suicide.  I honestly thought she had punched me in my stomach as her words registered in my mind.  Details leaked out slowly and I do mean slowly, I only learned the details of his suicide 20 some years later after we purchased the house.  I was told that he shot himself in the living room on the couch and was found days later.  I cannot imagine what pain he must have been in mentally and physically to take his own life.  

Seriously Mr. Grayson would be rolling in his grave was the first thing that I thought as I walked up the steps behind the Realtor.  The smell of urine and musty basement was the welcome as she opened the door. She immediately began explaining that the house had been rental property for 15 years and that the grandchildren lived in Atlanta. They had not been back to the house for several years and it was evident. I paused on the porch totally taken back to that day when I was eating green beans pretending that I lived in this beautiful house and there right before my eyes was the white porch swing. The house was in horrible shape. The trees were overgrown and some were even growing on the roof, it needed love. 

                           

I stood in the kitchen remembering the smell of green beans cooking, the smell of lemons, and I knew I was home.

In the attic, after all these years with all the renters unsupervised I have found history.  I have found boxes to fill in the void.  I do not know if it is really my story to tell. At the closing with the realtor and the grandchildren who are adults, I told them about the attic.  I told them about the storage boxes of books but they were not interested.  They were interested in dividing the farm, subdividing the farm, the very farm that their Grandfather took his life to ensure that they inherited. Is this my story to tell?  I do not know.  Does anyone want to hear this story is probably the question? 

Sue Anne’s mother kept every single letter that she wrote to her from college and kept in chronological order. The letters are so sweet and such a window into her life as a young girl growing up, going to college, and falling in love.  They plan her wedding. This was available to Sue Anne’s daughter but she was not interested in having them.  So is this now my history or I am just the keeper? 

   

Every day is a treasure hunt in the attic. I have found worthless but priceless books to me of literature and poetry, boxes of correspondence during the construction of the house, and cars that Grayson purchased.  I found boxes of Christmas cards and a box of sympathy cards from when Ms. Carrie passed away. I found report cards, lunch boxes, car manuals, detailed car and tractor maintenance, and the one important small black well-worn Bible that held newspaper clippings of obituaries of family members that had passed away years and years ago. Inscribed inside this bible was “From Mama to Grayson Dec 25, 1913.”

This is my home now, I have raised my family here, and we have our memories living in the attic. The porch is our favorite room in the house and we always have a barn full of kitchens.  Occasionally, I look into the living room and I wonder if Grayson is there with us, I know if he is, he is happy because he knows I will probably die here too… of old age.