Life and Death

My Aunt Cleeda had cerebral palsy. We were not close. She lived with my grandmother and I saw them a couple of times a year as I was growing up. Less often as I found my own way in the world. As a youngster, whenever I saw her, I was anxious about her, well, not her exactly, but my own inadequacy at not being able to interact with her very well. But, it was always fun to go visit Grandma and Aunt Cleeda.

Little kids are always afraid of things that they don’t understand and I certainly didn’t understand her very well. She was an adult and required respect. She could make herself understood (better than I could I thought), but she could not talk. She had a wheel chair that helped her get from place to place, but she would rather get out of it and sit in a regular chair whenever she could. She looked amused when my sister and I played in her wheelchair. She could walk with help and my dad would always help her and take her on walks when we would visit. I usually went along, but was not able to contribute to the process – and, it was a process.

She was one of seven surviving children born to my grandparents. This generation was born in the decade beginning before World War I and extending into the 1920’s. There is no doubt that life was hard raising a bunch of kids in the Great Depression. My grandma was a strong woman who made things happen. Like a lot of good men in that era, her husband was able and willing, but that was seldom enough to sustain a family living in the dust bowl of the early thirties. As a family they moved from Missouri, to Nebraska, to Colorado, chasing work. My grandfather died from some respiratory disorder sometime long before I was born, felled by a virus as unrelenting as the economy.

Despite the uncertainty of their day to day existence, they were not so unlike so many other families in the 1930’s. They were uprooted and displaced by the fortunes of time and place, tossed about by the economic winds that swirled and eddied in the great plains of the Midwest. As these conditions persisted, this family found a way to exist and thrive. The children were all productive, cheerful and despite their circumstance were all well educated.

Of course, Cleeda had special problems that may have prevented her from participating to the same degree as the other kids, but otherwise she was treated no differently. Her brothers showed her no mercy. They were unmerciful in neither their demands, nor their good natured chiding and Cleeda gave as good as she took. She was not stupid, just trapped in a body that wouldn’t cooperate. She was expected to do her chores just like everybody else, but, just like everybody else she got to play just as hard.

The brothers all used to wear denim overalls, those one piece pants with bib and suspenders. Cleeda used to latch onto the straps in back of one of the boy’s overalls and she became his shadow. She would run behind in tow, laughing all the while. Her smile was undeniable and ever present. It was good to be a child in this family, even one with cerebral palsy.

When Cleeda began to creep into my consciousness, I was a kid and she was middle aged --whatever that was, perhaps a year younger than my dad. Her smile had faded and been changed by her disease and the weight of her years into a grimace of sorts. It was not frightening by any means, but it lacked the innocence of youth and bespoke of a life of broken promises. Despite whatever hardships she endured in her life, there was no malice in her smile. Once I began to understand her, I realized that her sense of humor was rich and clever. Her laughter was always bountiful and genuine. She lived with my grandmother and they were strongly bound, the way only a mother and daughter could be.

Cleeda’s older sister had married a farmer and stayed close. In the tradition of her era she had a multitude of children. All of my cousins were comfortable and welcomed in my grandmother’s home. They all grew up with Cleeda and introduced her to their friends. As they grew up and got married, Cleeda’s circle simply widened. She was just like a second mom to many of them. When Cleeda scolded you, you knew exactly what you had done wrong and you never did it again in her presence. When other people around you were laughing, but you felt like you didn’t get something, you could bet that you had just become the butt of one of Cleeda’s jokes.

Grandma and Cleeda lived across the street from a small two room church. For many summers we held our family reunions there in the social hall. Our reunions were not particularly interesting if you weren’t a family member, but often they were visited by the pastor and neighbors who were invested in these two women, and because of them, us.

In our summer visits, I would often have time to roam the neighborhood and play with whomever was out. They were always friendly to those who visited Grandma’s house. Visitors were always “good people.” One of the neighbor boys, Verne, with whom I played marbles in the fine dirt in front of the garage across the street, eventually became the pastor of that little church.

There came a time when Grandma at the age of almost 80 could no longer take care of Cleeda. It was a sad day when Cleeda had to go live in an assisted living environment. It was a small facility, not too far from Grandma’s, but since Grandma didn’t drive she was dependent on others for help to visit. There were always enough friends, relatives and church family willing to volunteer for the drive over. Nobody wanted to miss a visit with Cleeda.

Cleeda was the perfect resident at her new home. They enjoyed her sense of humor and willingness to help to whatever extent she could. They could sense her optimism in life and yet her frustration with its constraints.

It was a tradition in my father’s family that each sibling would write a letter to the family and mail it to the next sibling. That brother or sister would write their letter and include it in the envelope along with the others and send it along the line. When the envelope came around again, the previous contribution was replaced by the newest. These family letters were the source of great entertainment to Cleeda and the rest of the home. Everybody who had time was invited to sit with Cleeda and to read her the family letters again. As they learned about her family, they learned about us.

Grandma just couldn’t take care of the house anymore. After 4 or 5 years on her own, Cleeda was joined by Grandma at the same facility. Through a stroke of luck, fate, or God’s almighty hand, they were once again united as roommates.

I hail from hardy stock. Grandma lived until just a few months shy of her hundredth birthday; Aunt Cleeda was in her eighties when she died. All her siblings survived well into their eighties and nineties – except for the one smoker in the bunch. He was the youngest and the first to go.

Time catches up to all of us. There is no one strong enough to resist it. One by one her siblings, my aunts and uncles, began to die off. With the youngest, the smoker, Cleeda was saddened not only by the fact that his choice to smoke had shortened his life, but that she could not go in his place. When Grandma died, Cleeda’s cry was “Why not me?” When her older sister died, again she asked, “Why not me?” Cleeda was almost 82 when death knocked at her door and she welcomed him in.

Cleeda was not obsessed with death. If anything, she was obsessed with life. Her buoyancy in the face of the very real hurdles that beset her in just trying to live her own moments drew people to her like no other thing could. In life Cleeda was a true winner, in death she was unbound.

Her funeral was stately. The church was full. Most remarkably, her assisted care facility had to hire extra nurses that day because the entire staff came to her service. Verne officiated. Since he had grown up with Cleeda as his second mom his remarks were particularly poignant. If anything, I regret that she could not have experienced the freedom in life that she found in death.

The Great Depression shaped a great many lives. Albert Brumley was born to a cotton farmer in Oklahoma in 1905. He wrote this tune in 1929 and it became widely popular almost immediately as a Baptist Hymn. It was sung in churches and front porches from one corner of our nation to the next. It is an optimistic song about life after death that echoed the emotional despair that many in the depression were trying to escape. Cleeda had a special affinity for this hymn. It was sung at her funeral.


I'll Fly Away


Some glad morning when this life is o'er,
I'll fly away.
To a home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away.
I'll fly away, O Glory, I'll fly away.
When I die, Hallelujah, bye and bye,
I'll fly away.


When the shadows of this life have flown,
I'll fly away.
Like a bird thrown, driven by the storm,
I'll fly away.
I'll fly away, O Glory, I'll fly away.
When I die, Hallelujah, bye and bye,
I'll fly away.


Just a few more weary days and then,
I'll fly away.
To a land where joy shall never end,
I'll fly away.
I'll fly away, O Glory,I'll fly away.
When I die, Hallelujah, bye and bye,
I'll fly away.


And so she did.