When someone you love dies, silence follows immediately. Whether it is a close friend that you love, a family member, or even a celebrity that you have enjoyed their talents, the silence follows. I don't think we realize this at first, no matter how many times we may have experienced it, but after a time of reflection it sinks in.
We are lucky if we remember the last time with the deceased before the silence fell. I can't remember the last things I heard either of my grandmothers say before they passed and I feel like I should. People who are as important to my life, the influence they had on my life, I should be able to remember. I want to remember. I can still hear their voices in my head. My grandmother Clark's slight little laugh and her "Oh My!!". I will never hear that again. I will never hear my Grandmother Hill's seemingly daily expression of "Oh, Oscar!" again.
I do remember some of my family and friends last conversation with me though, and I cherish those.
My sister Carol, on the day she and my sister Elaine left for Georgia, I remember Carol telling me "I'm going back home and we are going to beat this thing" After I told her I loved her she said with a tilt of her head, "I love you too. Thanks for your help. Bye... see ya later" I didn't see her later. I didn't hear her voice again. I won't ever hear her voice again. Just silence.
I went to see my Uncle Melvin in the hospital a few weeks before he passed. We had a talk that wasn't too long. He was tired. He took the time, maybe five minutes or so, to talk to me though as he held my hand. I told him I loved him and he smiled and said "I love you too Bill." Then I told him I was going to miss him and he kind of looked straight through me, to my soul and said very matter of factly "I am going to miss you too .... for a while". Nothing was left to be said. I couldn't muster up any more words, any that were there were caught in my throat. I squeezed his hand and left the room. A few weeks later I got a call from my mom. The silence had fallen on my Uncle.
I was with the whole extended family at my Grandfather Hill's house the last time I saw him. I spent a lot of time talking to him as I sat in my spot on the couch next to his chair. There wasn't any political talk that night. There wasn't any philosophizing that night. There was just talk. Talk about what a great family this was. Talk and joking about things that were going on around us. Bringing in other family members into the conversation. as everyone rotated in to talk to him and everyone did. I don't mean to say I was with him the whole time, I wasn't but I took my turn in the rotation to spend time with him. He always had time for anyone and everyone. Eventually It came time for me to head home. I took his hand and told him that I had to be heading out. He looked me straight in the eye as was his custom (he always looked whoever he was talking to in the eye.. and he taught all of us to do the same) and he said "Okay Bill. You take care. Bye now." and I turned and left. This time, the news of the silence falling arrived in the form of a knock on my door in the middle of the night. It was my mom and dad to tell me he was gone. I can't say I was stunned or anything. I was kind of expecting this to happen before long. Still it did catch me off guard a bit and I had to go to my room for a minute or so to be by myself before coming back to talk to mom. I learned a lot of little quips from that man like "Now you're railroading" that I still use to this day and each time I say one of those things I picked from him, I can almost hear his voice echoing mine as the words come out. As I sat next to my grandmother at the funeral home, I could not take my eyes off of the body in the casket. I would never hear that wise old voice again. The silence had fallen.
Then there was my Uncle Danial. Since he had moved back to Kansas City from the Seattle area, we had become so very close. We worked on his art together. We discussed every art form there was, from writing to music to paining to sculpture even to the beauty of a well thrown pass in a football game was an art form to him. He had AIDS and so there were a few health problems that came along with that. With the help of family members we were able to keep on top of everything and he was able to remain active and sharp and continue to do the things he loved. Then one day we found out he had cancer. At first he was determined and the family pulled together again and made sure he made appointments, took medicine and spent time at the radiology treatment at KU-Med. Then came the day that I went to take him to KU for his treatment and he said he wasn't going. It was taking too much of a toll on him and his body. He had decided he would rather spend his remaining days living life as best as he could instead of feeling the side effects of the treatment all the time. He took fifty dollars out of his wallet and told me to go by three cartons of smokes. No sense in quitting now he had said and so I did as I was told. This was when I truly found out how much of an effect he had made on people during his lifetime. Friends from Chicago and Seattle came to help out in taking care of him. Friends from his high School class helped out. The family pulled together of course and we took care of him. We took him to the Kansas City Men's Chorus Christmas concert, which had become a tradition for all of us. We took him to a couple of plays, which he loved. We spent nights ... I mean all nighters talking and reading. As his health worsened, we got a hospital bed to put in his living room for him. His last Christmas was filled with family and friends for a big tree trimming party. His friends and neighbors, Rick and Dan, catered a dinner for the party that night. What a joyous evening it was. He slowly weakened and soon the pain became almost a constant for him. A nurse from the hospice house began coming by once a week to check on him and to be sure he had medicine to ease the pain. His mind began to lose track of things and soon it seemed like I was the only one he would be totally honest with about how he was feeling, even though mom and dad, my Aunt June and Uncle Jack, cousins Pete and Susie and my wife were always by his side. I stopped by his house after work one afternoon and he was in a lot of pain. The hospice nurse was there but he was having nothing to do with her. She gave me the medicine that would ease his pain and I tried to give it to him. He asked "What is this?" I told him it was okay, this was going to help with the pain. He looked at me and said "You're lying to me." I smiled and said that I wasn't, this would help. Then he said the last words from his mouth to me. "Yeah... well ..." and he took the medicine. The next morning I got a call at the office saying I had to be there now. I got to his house and he was doubled over in his bed. His friend Brian was there, helpless. My mom was there and the hospice nurse was there. The nurse told my mom and myself that a decision had to be made. Mom looked at me and I looked at my uncle. We made the decision to take him to the hospice house where they could control the pain easier. He lasted almost a week in hospice without ever falling asleep. He was gasping for air and breathing hard the whole time. One night, I guess it was around two in the morning, the hospice nurse on duty came out of his room and I asked her what had been on my mind all that day, that was if he knew I was even there. She looked at me and smiled "Oh he knows. He knows" and she went about her work. The next morning I went to get something to eat in the lobby of the house. I noticed a piano there. Now you got to understand that I NEVER play the piano in front of anyone. It raises my anxiety level to the extreme. Dan had asked me many times over the years to play for him but I never did. That morning though, I asked the nurse at the desk if I could play a song or two and she encouraged me to do so. I played a couple of hymns then got up and went back to my uncle's room. As I was sponging his lips with water I told him about the piano and that I had played a couple of songs for him. His eyes widened a bit and though he could not talk I heard what his eyes said. Those eyes said "Thank you". He died the next night. The silence had fallen again but in this case, his eyes had said those precious last words to me. "Thank you".
Lastly, one of my best friends went silent. I was not prepared for this. Dennis and I had worked together for many years. After he left the company, we kept in constant touch. We went to races together. We went out to eat a lot together. He became an uncle to my son and a very good friend to my nephew. He went to Thanksgiving with us to my sister's house in Alabama one year. It seems like my whole adult life was spent with Dennis. He eventually moved to Mississippi but we kept in constant communication almost on a daily basis. Aside from my mom and dad, brother and sisters and my niece Kelly Lynn, his birthday was the only other one I could ever remember and that was because he shared his birthday with Elvis. I would call him to tell him happy birthday and he would always reply, every year with "thank ya... thank ya very much..". Last February, a few weeks after his birthday, I got an email from one of his friends down south. He had left a list of people to contact just in case. He had passed suddenly from heart failure. The last thing he said to me was "okay... catch you later". That was three days before the email arrived. The silence had descended on my friend. I will never hear "Thank ya... Thank ya very much.." from him again.
There is an upside to the silence of death though. The upside comes with hearing new voices that with time replace the ones gone silent. Mei, Joshua, Hayden, Conner, Samantha and Jesse. Emmet and Will, Andrew and Abbey and Mags and Heidi's Oscar. Jayden, Talia, and Kiki and even though I have never met her, I hear Georgia on Facebook all the time and she has a WONDERFUL giggle. New voices that are so fun to hear.
The other upside comes when the silence of death falls on me. No longer will I hear those last words of those that I loved and miss them so much it hurts at times. Then there is the upside for everyone else. No longer will you have to put up with my sarcastic sayings, my dry sense of humor, or my passionate positions on political issues. There will be no more wondering how I am doing with my mental issues. No longer will people stop when something is said and wonder "oh no, what is going to come out of Bill's mouth on this?" The one thing that I hope for and I am very sincere in this, is that when the silence falls on me, my last words that are remembered are nice and pleasant, hopefully with a little of that dark sense of humor mixed in. I don't know when that will be. Dennis taught me that lesson. We just never know.
I am going to try very hard, just in case, not to talk mean or treat anyone mean as I age. I am going to try my best to leave everyone with at least a fond "good-bye".
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