Hello From the Other Side

A Samhain offering to this gnarled family tree

Though most of the elders I grew up around are gone now, I think of them often. I keep photos of them around my home. I keep a jar of dirt from my childhood yard on the altar in my office. I delight in opportunities to share family memories. It’s this time of year that they feel closest, as the proverbial veil thins and the smell of chimney smoke lingers in the air, calling back memories of my granny filling the wood stove on a cold November morning.

Tonight begins the festival of what some ancient Celts would have called Samhain, a celebration of the end of harvest season and the start of the long, cold, dark half of the year. It’s a dark night, a night when death and the spirit world feel close. For many, it’s a night to honor ancestors. Some set out photos. Some pray for them at altars. Some put an extra plate on the table at dinner. I do all those things some years. This year, I simply want to talk about them.

So here’s my offering of sorts to two gone but not forgotten souls I’m thinking of today.

My granny, Nadine, was pregnant with the first of seven kids here. She grew up the oldest of two sisters, the latter being her mother’s favorite. She’d occasionally mention how her mother told her she wasn’t pretty, a sentiment that stuck with her her whole life. But my papa loved her dearly. He said he knew right away she was the women he’d marry. They lived most of their lives in a tiny shoebox of a house with no toilet, bathtub, or heating and air conditioning. They had little but gave a lot to us grandkids.

My granny was the kind of cook you expect an Appalachian hill woman to be. She’d get up just before the sun on Thanksgiving morning, put a few logs in the woodstove, then start prepping the big family meal with nothing but an outdated stove and zero counterspace. No fancy tools or kitchen island. My favorite was her chicken and dumplings.

I remember her bedroom dresser covered in products. Elizabeth Taylor perfumes, blushes, lipsticks, Aqua Net. She knew how to put a face on with a limited budget. Many of her beauty products came from the yard sales she’d hit every Saturday morning.

The back room of the house was filled with shelves of fabric and multiple sewing machines. She sewed the costumes for the church Christmas play and a couple for my school events. She’d hem our hand-me-down clothes and make floral shirts for herself.

Her life was tough from the start, but since she’s passed, all people who knew her have to say was that she was a good woman. When my aunts post about her on Facebook, that’s all anyone has to say. “I miss Nadine. She was a good woman.” And she was. We had some years where we rubbed each other the wrong way, mostly due to the mental illness consuming her daughter and my mother. But she’d do anything for her family. Even when I was distant, there would be a Christmas present for me, something she’d saved up money working as a seamstress in a factory for.

She was tough as nails but endlessly loving. She loved her grandkids. She loved sewing. She loved cooking. She loved picking up books for my papa at yard sales. She loved being with family. I wish I had been better to her. I wish I’d gotten to know our beloved matriarch better while I had the chance. I miss you, Granny. You held us together.

That’s my papa. His name was William Carl but everybody called him Luvie. It was a nickname his mother gave to him when he was young that became like his given name to not just those close to him but the whole community. I never questioned it as a kid. My papa was a beautiful combination of tough and soft. Like my granny and most people back then in rural Virginia, he also came from so little. His father died when he was young. He worked as a logger. He was an alcoholic for many years. My mom used to tell me the story of how one morning when he came home drunk after leaving my granny alone with seven kids all night, she went out to his truck, stripped off his clothes, and left him passed out with all the truck doors open in the dead of winter. My mom cried and begged to be allowed to bring him some clothes or food but my granny forbid it. At one point he went to jail for selling moonshine. He wrote my granny the sweetest letters during his time there.

He was gruff and quiet. He’d go outside when he was mad. Though he didn’t say much, you could tell there was a lot going on inside of him. He missed his mama his whole life after she died. He was her favorite. He missed playing music, one of his biggest loves. When he was young, he and his cousins traveled Virginia playing music, my papa on guitar. He loved blues and bluegrass. His favorite was Elvis. Before meeting Granny, he went to an Elvis concert when it came to town. He caught Elvis’s sweat rag and gave it to his date, an error in judgment my granny never let him forget. I’ve never known how much of this is true, but my mom told me he was set to audition to be in Elvis’s early days backing band, but an accident with a saw took part of two fingers and he wasn’t able to play guitar anymore.

He loved listening to the stereo. He loved reading. He loved being out in his workshop on a nice day building birdhouses. His kids adored him. I think he was a secret sensitive artist. One time my mom outed me while I was sitting next to him on the couch. “Jess saw a photo of you when you were young the other day. She said you were so handsome she’d marry you.” He smiled and blushed.

He passed six months after my granny in 2012. He couldn’t continue without his bride. I hope they’re together, wherever they are. I send them a hug through the veil today. I send love and gratitude to all my ancestors. Thank you for getting us here.