Christmas journey, with detour

[franksolich]

note: something similar with this first appeared on conservativeunderground a couple of years ago, but then there was a "crash" at that site, and the story was irretrievably lost, as I generally don't keep copies of stuff I write.

Christmas journey, with detour.  It was the late afternoon of December 16, the year I was nineteen, and a junior at the University of Nebraska; the week of final examinations for the semester, and I had just one remaining, in Spanish, for 10:00 a.m. the following day.

It was snowing greatly that day, in Lincoln, and in the rest of Nebraska, silver-dollar sized flakes drifting down, covering the ground to several inches, and causing the trees to sag from the weight.

I had just gotten done eating supper with classmates, who were all agog and excited about going home for Christmas.  I had my own plans, to go to my grandmother's home in northeastern Pennsylvania.  The deadline was getting close for reservations with an airline, but I figured I would deal with it after dealing with Spanish.

Returning to my room, I looked with foreboding at the Spanish exercises.  There seemed no way I was going to pass the course, a requirement for a degree, but as the University of Nebraska had made some, uh, exceptions already for my being deaf, I had never bothered asking for another one.  One can after all ask too many favors.

Speaking and writing Spanish were my stumbling blocks; I had however proven stellar in reading (interpreting) it.  Well, okay, I thought; speaking Spanish was too much to expect, writing Spanish was somewhat much to expect.  But as I was good in reading Spanish, I would concentrate solely on that, hoping to be good enough to pass the course, even with a grade of "D;" at least one got the three credit hours.

So I concentrated upon books in Spanish borrowed from the library; a treatise in chemistry, the diaries of the Infanta Maria, a book about the geology of the Pyrenees, and some recent "newsmagazines" from Spain and Argentina.

The snow outside the large window kept coming down; softly but enormously.  Christmas lights blinked in both the darkness of the world outside, and inside my room.

A friend came into the room, telling me that "someone" wanted to see me downstairs.

I put aside the books and magazines and went downstairs, where I encountered a Nebraska state patrolman, which caused me to pause.  I had never been of a felonious nature, but I did have a habit of underaged drinking, and perhaps had been caught at something.

It was not until later I realized the patrolman had his hat in his hand, not on his head. 

The patrolman apologized for disturbing me, but there was no other way to contact me, via telephone being out of the question.

He told me that only four hours before, that same afternoon, in the same pelting snow, 400 miles to the west, my younger brother, then 17 years old, being careless about the lack of visibility, had driven head-first into a Greyhound bus on Highway 30.

I absorbed the news, kindly thanked the patrolman, and walked silently back to my room.

[franksolich]

My younger brother and I had been born, two years apart, at the tail end of a large family, all the other brothers and sisters being much older than us.  Our parents had been old when they had us, and our father had died two years previously, our mother the following year.

In appearance, we were very different, he being blond-haired and brown-eyed, myself being dark-brown-haired and with grey eyes.  He had been born with an exceptional sensitivity to the sun, while I remained white as a sheet, sun or not.

Our personalities were divergent, my younger brother being of an outgoing but reticent manner, while I was timid with a strong streak of hostility.  As such, my younger brother was especially close with our older brothers and sisters, while I, with the exception of the parents, tended to be a lone wolf.

However, even when toddlers with no distinct personality, others had thought something about my younger brother; that while he was okay and all that, there seemed a certain wistful lightness, a serene fragility, a quiet impermanence, about him, suggestive of a short destiny.

(For the record, my younger brother had been born with a tendency to develop melanoma, which of course he did--it was always caught in time--but not many people knew this, and made such comments based upon simply how he looked or seemed.)

"The other one, the deaf one, is as tough as nails; he'll most likely endure anything."

After our mother died, while I was in college, my younger brother, still in high school, had "boarded" with friends of the family.

After getting back to my room, I approached a friend, who made telephone calls for me, to the older brothers and sisters, so as to learn what they proposed to do--they were much further away than I was, in important jobs, with small children--and if what I proposed to do was okay with them.

Then I went back to the Spanish books and magazines.

There was nothing to be done for the moment; the streets and roads in the entire state had been closed because of the snow, and it was going to take some time for the rest of the family to meet in central Nebraska, 200 miles away from where the accident had happened, and 200 miles oppositely away from where I was, Lincoln.

I decided I would remain where I was until after the examination in Spanish, and then take off.  Per my request, the friend who had made the telephone calls for me told no one else until I had left circa noon the next day.

The evening into the night was long, but not unbusy.  As always happened during mid-term examinations and final examinations, I got urgent requests to type last-minute hurriedly-scribbled papers, which I did.  In college, I always made good beer money typing papers.

Late at night, it was proposed to have a beer party, for which I chipped in some bucks, but declined participation based upon that I had an examination in the morning, and the examination was in.....Spanish.

At breakfast the next morning, I mentioned that my plans had, uh, slightly changed, and that I was leaving about noon that day, going back to the town in the Sandhills of Nebraska where my younger brother and I had spent our adolescence.  There was some skepticism about whether I could possibly make it without a snow-plough in front of me, but most in the end assumed I would make it somehow.

We all wished each other a Merry Christmas and a happy homecoming, and that was that.  I took the examination, of course flubbing the speaking and writing parts, and being stellar in the read (translating) parts.  Then I took off for the old home, it taking eight hours to go 200 miles, arriving there in mid-evening.

[franksolich]

Even though it was 8:00 in the evening, the funeral director was there, to receive the body being delivered from the opposite end of the state, similarly hindered by the snow and closed roads.

He knew me, of course, and so skipping the formalities, we got right down to business.  As if dictating to a stenographer, I rattled off the wishes of the older brothers and sisters, and my own wishes, along with all of the statistical and obituarial data.  While writing it all down, he seemed impressed (there were to be many future similar occasions, after which he got used to it) when I recited my younger brother's social security number and even the hour of his birth.

I said I would take care of the church arrangements myself, and after those were approved, the proper people would get back to him.

I selected a casket, and that was that.

But one more thing; I insisted upon seeing the body.

There is always all sorts of trauma associated with death, much of which lingers long afterwards, because of regret, denial, and delusion.

But when one actually sees Death, one knows that's it, it's real, it's over with, it's final.

Of course, to be able to do such a thing without profound disturbance, one must first have a firm and inarguable faith in the Mercy and Compassion of God.

The funeral director argued a bit with me, but I was stonily adamant, and so then he asked me to "step outside the office for a few minutes" while he made a telephone call--forgetting that even while sitting in front of him, I would not be able to hear what was being said anyway.

I stepped outside of the office, not knowing who he was calling.  Later I learned he had telephoned both the old family physician and the Roman Catholic priest, in a high state of concern.  Apparently both thought the demand was peculiar, but in the end agreed it would be okay.  I was allowed to see the body.

I thanked the funeral director, and went to the home of a friend from high school, where I was to stay as long as I had to.

Given the weather and inaccessibility, an exact date could not be set for the funeral; one had to wait until the rest of the family--or at least part of it--could make it through.

[franksolich]

I went to see the priest, who was expecting me, the next morning.  He had known my younger brother very well, myself less so.  I outlined what the older brothers and sisters wished, in regards to the funeral Mass--the basic standard stuff--and then my own wishes (which complemented, not contradicted, theirs).

The priest was surprised by my requests.

In the sparsely-settled Upper Great Plains states, it has long been a tradition to hold concerts of Handel's Messiah around both Christmas-time and Easter.  Such concerts have always been popular, and are put on by "local" talents.

My father, for example, for years sang the bass solo parts for many area high-school productions of the Messiah, teenagers not yet having attained the richness of that voice.  And not only high schools; churches, small colleges, secular community efforts.

There had recently been a big performance in Grand Island, 80 miles away, one of those secular community shows, which had featured talents living in this town.

What I wished to have was the "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill laid low; the crooked straight, and the rough places plain" sung at the processional, "Oh, thou that tellest good tiding to Zion, arise, arise," in the middle of the service, and for the recessional, "The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be saved."

Each entire aria, not merely excerpts.

The talent, both vocal and instrumental, was right here in town, and would not even need a rehearsal, already having things down pat.  I had the money; I could pay the stipends for about 24 of them, and the choir loft in the church was enormous.

Being deaf, I had never heard any of these pieces, but they struck me as eminently reasonable ones.  (Music critics, or appreciators of good music, please weigh in on this).

"He was a teenager.  You want to give him a state funeral.

"And besides, to compress that into an hour, there wouldn't be any service other than the music."

I insisted an hour-and-a-half service would be a dignified length.

What I did not say was, if given a choice between an all-musical service, or an all-spoken service, which one is one most likely to appreciate?

"You want to give him a state funeral.  He was a teenager."

After which I explained to him the details of the funeral of Emperor Franz-Joseph of Austria-Hungary in 1916; those who come into the world in an elevated status must leave it humbly, while those who come into the world in a humble status should leave it exalted.

There was some back-and-forth on this, but ultimately I got my way, and rounded up the soloists, general singers, and instrumentalists.

[franksolich]

Incredibly, it was still snowing, large snowflakes tumbling down, no wind.  But half the older brothers and sisters and their families made it to town later that same day, with the others reasonably expected to make it the following day.

The service was held two days later, and went exactly as I had wished it to happen.

Even these many years later, I still do not know what the honest reaction was to the funeral Mass; one person later said, "Well, it was certainly unusual, what you did for your brother," but I never knew if she meant "unusual" in the sense of a pleasant surprise, or "unusual" in the sense of "hmmmm....."

That accomplished, I remembered my Christmas plans, those of spending the holiday with my grandmother in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Problem, however.

This was already the afternoon of the 20th of December, and all flights were booked.

Each of the older brothers and sisters and their spouses offered to take me in for the Christmas break from college, but my heart wasn't into it.  My older brothers and sisters had been raised by the book, specifically the book of Dr. Benjamin Spock, after which the book had been tossed out.  When my younger brother and I came along, the parents had to resort to raising the two of us by instinct, rather than by book.

I loved all the brothers and sisters very much, but they always struck me as being negative, and I wished no negativity in this, one of the two most Sacred Times of the year.

A former neighbor, a long-distance truck-driver, hearing of my plight, approached me, offering to take me as far as Chicago late that night, and since he knew a lot of truck-drivers, perhaps perhaps perhaps he could inveigle another one to take me to some point further east.

So we took off.  I of course am not much company under normal circumstances, which don't allow me to indulge in idle chitchattery, and of course these were worse-than-normal circumstances.  However, he had always been a good neighbor, a veteran of the war in Vietnam, modest and unassuming, the salt of the earth, a family man, and so he kindly let me sit in glum silence as we went our way.

At Chicago, he approached a truck-driver who was going to Cincinnati from Chicago, who thought he could get someone else there to take me from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh.  And so I changed rides.

I have always been a light traveler; all I was carrying was a briefcase, and a small briefcase at that.  Best to travel light and carefree as air, and to have the money to buy things if needed.  Money doesn't need to be packed in a suitcase; a pants'-pocket is adequate.

At Cincinnati, the expected truck-driver going to Pittsburgh was not to be seen, but the second truck-driver matched me up with a driver who was going to Cleveland, who might find me a ride from there to Pittsburgh, or even more ideally, further than that.

I mean to say that these drivers, every single one of them, spent a lot of time and energy keeping me going my way, themselves going out of their own ways; I have since had nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for truck-drivers; may it please God that all of them, every single one of them, flourish and prosper.

The whole country seemed to be covered with thigh-high snow.

At Cleveland, the third truck-driver found someone who was going to Harrisburg, which was better than Pittsburgh, and so I rode that way.  At Harrisburg, the fourth truck-driver found someone who was going to Wilkes-Barre, and even better, was actually going through the small town where my grandmother lived.

I got to my grandmother's house at suppertime on Christmas Eve.

God has always been good, always more good than what I deserve.

[rich_t]

Thanks for posting that Frank.

I needed to read something uplifting.

 

[franksolich]

An excerpt of this cross-posted at

http://www.freerepublic.c...chat/2406869/posts?page=1

if one wants to read other comments, if other comments gotten.

[FGL]

Thanks Frank. I always like your stories.

[longview]

Sorry you lost your brother at Christmas.  Losing a family member near the holidays does seem worse to me.

But, I thoroughly enjoyed your story.  I heard it said once that when the angels are all busy God uses regular people. 

[michael123]

I AM also feel very sorry for your loss, please dear be patience,Trust in God,
May God fulfill your weaknesses ,