The People That Leave Us

My father was one of five children. He had two older brothers and two younger sisters.

My father's youngest sister was named Lisa. She was born with numerous birth defects and was not expected to live past the age of 1.

I imagine my beautiful grandma holding that broken baby in her arms. I imagine her heart being broken for this child that she had been looking forward to meeting all those months of carrying her. I have never talked to her about this, it is just what I imagine, knowing the woman she is now. I assume until the day Lisa was born they thought they were having as healthy a baby as the first 4 had been. Strong, athletic children. This was the 60's. The technology was not there to predict something like this.

Not that it would have changed anything. My grandma has never quit a thing in her life.

Lisa was born with her legs backwards. She could fit in the palm of your hand. To get her legs facing the correct way the doctors put tiny little braces on them and slowly moved them back, centimeters at a time. I imagine the pain of that little baby, imagine what it must have been like to enter a world that must have looked so cruel to her. I cannot fathom how my grandma and grandaddy did what they did, how they were able to watch their most precious little baby girl go through what she went through that first year of her fragile life. How badly they must have wanted to tell her It gets better without truly knowing if it would.

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It is now 1981. My mother tells me Lisa loved me from the moment I was home from the hospital. I would be propped up in front of the television to watch Sesame Street. Lisa's favorite thing was to push me over and laugh at my helplessness. I would coo and giggle. I didn't mind.

Lisa had lived at home mostly, making cameo appearances in hospitals over the years. She was truly busy. There is camera footage of her running with her braces in the Special Olympics. She was a poster child for March of Dimes. One of my earliest memories is being at one of the Children's Network Telethons jumping in a bouncy house. Lisa was on TV. I asked some little boy with a cast why he was bald and his answer was to whack me in the head and scream "I HAVE LEUKEMIA, DUMMY!"

I remember sitting on the floor of my grandma's living room watching her put a pair of stretchy pants on Lisa who was not much bigger than I was when I was five. She was small, and freckled, with blond hair. I would imagine how Lisa would have looked had she never been born this way, what she would have turned into. My little cousin Lauren is my answer. I think she would have looked a lot like her.

Lisa would sit in her wheelchair in the side yard with me while I played. We would hit the tetherball. Back and forth. One time Lisa's brakes on her wheelchair came off and she coasted down the hill in the back of my grandma's yard, fortunately landing in a pile of wet leaves.

She didn't cry. That kind of pain must have been nothing to her.

By the time I was six or seven Lisa had to stay in the hospital full time. The hospital was in Norfolk, a 2 hour drive from home. Every weekend Grandma and Grandaddy would pile my brother and I into their Lincoln towncar and we would go see her. We would stop halfway at Stucky's and eat tuna on pita bread. Sometimes my grandma would let me get a key chain or fake license plate with my name on it. Of course, I always had to settle for the ones spelled with two L's instead of one. Not a lot of Alisons out there in the world. Just a bunch of Allisons. Or Alysons.

The hospital smelled as all hospitals do. Withered men would sit in the hallways in their wheelchairs, their feet dry, their heels hanging over the metal footrests. The sound of Sally Jessy Raphael hummed through the halls. Lisa had a roommate who was always sleeping.

We would bring her balloons and smiles. My grandma would make my brother and I sing her a song called "Love in Any Language" that we learned in school with accompanying sign language. We would sing it at least 4 times. Grandma said she could tell it made Lisa so happy to hear it. After we were done I would go to the bathroom and cry.

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That little baby that was not suppose to live past 1 died when she was 25 years old.

Lisa is the reason I believe in God.

Which is a weird thing to say, I guess. Because the sane human being would say "Are you crazy? Why would God put a human being through that? To make us more aware of ourselves? What a bunch of bullshit!"

I wouldn't even disagree. That thought has run through my own mind, many times. Particularly since losing Dad and my Grandaddy.

But then I remember... She lived 25 years. And no one knows how. How is it possible?

How could there be any other way?

God is not a choice for me. If I don't believe in Him I have to believe I will never see her again. I cannot bear that thought.

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The day of my father's funeral is blurry except for this.

It was a double funeral. My granddaddy's casket was one side, my father's on the other. We had two sets of military people there since they were both veterans. The Army was there for my granddaddy. The Navy, for my father. Imagine that! I don't think I will ever go to another funeral where such a thing happens. They played taps twice. They folded two flags.

My brother got my dad's flag. It was so hard to watch. My grandma got my granddaddy's. She sat stoically. I couldn't handle that this was happening. My heels were stuck in the soft earth under us. All I could think about was how I hoped this would never happen again. How I hoped I would never have to be what my grandma now was.

Not just a widow. But a mother who had buried two of her own children.

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Day 6: Something You Hope You Never Have to Do


(Note: I apologize that my posts have been kind of depressing. The 30 Days of Truth just brings out that side of me I guess. Anyway, I'll try to be funnier/lighter next go round.)