- Potter's Field...
-
- I'd never given much thought to funerals. Some people,
such as those in war, are unceremoniously dumped in mass graves. Others,
in prisons-institutions and the poor of the nation are shuffled out of
sight to Potter's Field, with no obituaries, no sign that they'd ever lived.
-
- The rich go off in style, much as they had lived. My
friend explained to me that these funerals (for the rich) are private affairs,
not meant for the general public. Proper and ordered, by invitation only.
Well, in the end I figure, dead is dead, rich or poor, press board box
or rare rain forest wood coffin, with brass handles and silken cushions.
-
- Dead is dead, equal in the end; even though the pretense
and ceremony pretend otherwise. There was no fancy flowers, no moneyed
casket, no invitations that January day long ago. It was bitter cold much
like today. Snow, tons of snow with the wind chill factor at 30 degrees
below zero.
-
- We'd moved to Connecticut from Appalachia, with the intention
of sending for my brother when we got things settled. Things settled, meant
moving out of an old hotel filled with transients and starting over. That's
what happens when jobs dry up in a place you might want to spend the rest
of your life , but have no choice if you want to live. Nobody's going to
care how you eat or how you survive. People; work-work-work, paying rent,
electric, medicine, fuel, food, etc, and then they die. Many, never even
having a vacation! Some work at better jobs than others, safer-cleaner,
and maybe even something they enjoy; but still they work if they want to
eat. There are few exceptions to this indentured slavery. Some inherit
a life of ease and creature comforts, never having to labor, except if
they choose to break the bordom of their lives, but not many.
-
- There was never the chance of sending for my brother
and having him reside in a smaller more caring residential facility. That's
because he was killed by those who were supposed to be caring for him.
Oh, they didn't say that on the phone. The priest lied and told my parents
that my brother had pneumonia. The first call informed them that there
was no need to worry he was doing fine. The next one, a few days later,
said he was dead. Then another lie, "He died with a smile on his face."
A smile on his face after residing some eight years in a Gothic-cold-despairing
institution! What a crock I thought to myself at fourteen.
-
- And so, the journey by bus through icy hours began over
several states. No way our clunker car would make it those many miles,
especially over narrow sheer iced roads. Just me and my mother and father,
much as it had always been. My brother and sister were somehow kept out
of the trauma and crisis of my brother's life. They never went to the institution
to visit, and it wasn't even suggested that they'd attend the funeral.
They were the "kids". Go figure, I was the same age but never
really a "kid".
-
- My parents worried all the time about what would happen
to Jerry after they were gone? Who would see to him, visit him, advocate
for his care? I assured them I would. Now there was no need to worry, he
was dead. The trip was forever, the bus ride freezing, and the landscape
white in a forever nothingness. Nighttime was the worst as we traveled
through the lonely miles in pitch blackness; through a black hole to the
past.
-
- We arrived in the small mountain town in the early dawn.
We checked into the old hotel on the corner of Main and 13th Street. This
hotel, once a gathering place of oil men, with its velvet curtains and
sweeping staircases, was now much like a worn rouged whore, with her sagging
breasts and black net stockings over varicose veined legs. One last hurrah.
-
- My parents went to the funeral home. Thankfully, they
left me at the hotel to wander through the empty hallways, with the gas
fixture lights still on the walls now wired for electric. I heard the murmuring
the crying upon their return. They had refused, at first, (the funeral
director ) to open the coffin suggesting that it might be better that my
parents remembered him (my brother) as he had been. My mother insisted.
This, her first born, was not going anywhere without her goodbye. Just
as I had thought, the priest had lied. No last smile but a battered boy
beaten to death.
-
- Poor people don't hire investigators or detectives like
the movies. My parent's knew they'd never get the truth. Not even from
the lying priest. In an institution setting, it is convenient for staff
to lay the blame on the residents; who after all couldn't speak and tell
the real story. "So and so got violent, there was nothing we could
do. We tried but help arrived too late etc." Some variation of that
story.
-
- We drove over the twenty miles of mountain road in the
funeral parlor Cadillac. The hearse followed behind, with the priest, who
had a home on the institution grounds already waiting. Up around the mountain
we drove through drifts six feet high. A narrow path had been cleared,
in the blizzard conditions, and I was sure we'd all end up frozen on the
back side of the mountain, in Potter's Field. This was the place where
they buried the residents of the institution. Far from sight, beneath a
grove of hundreds of pine trees. This day they were all dressed in white
shrouds-their heads bowed low under the icy blasts.
-
- The pine box, covered with cheap gray cloth stapled to
it, sat beside the cavernous hole. The four of us, the priest, my parents
and I, all in black stood in the howling wind. My black was an old lady's
coat someone had sent in some charity box. It's collar was some dead animal-I
think mink? Then the priest started some dreary, tedious, funeral dirge.
On and on and on he read from the Book of the Dead. Page after boring page,
as if any of it mattered. Not now it didn't. I stared at him, wondering
how he could play so holier than thou, after lying to my parents about
how my brother had died? He could have helped or spoken out. He didn't,
but then his job at the institution was pretty cushy. His own house, a
salary, and no congregation to bitch at him and nobody to whine to him
about their dreary lives.
-
- I wasn't exactly in a religious frame of mind. Mostly
I was angry. I looked at my parents all worn out with their cheap rag clothes
on. They'd searched high and low to find out why my brother had disappeared
one day never to speak or communicate again. A beautiful little boy had
been taken for his last set of booster vaccines, ran a fever of 104 degrees
for a week, and never returned. Back then, nobody spoke of vaccines, supposedly
to save kids from various diseases as maybe being the culprit. Nobody questioned
teachers, priests or doctors for that matter on anything. Foolishly people
trusted. Too late they learned otherwise. Autism is a brain disorder. Those
stricken have trouble communicating, forming social relationships, and
often engage in repetitive and other obsessive behaviors. My parents were
told that my brother had a hearing problem, that he was just slow, or that
they just didn't know. The relatives and neighbors saw him as some curse
due to the obvious sin in my parents life. I'm sure that even today, many
spooky fundamentalist's hold this same bizarre view.With vaccines containing
many chemicals, including mercury why would anyone blame the medical establishment
or pharmaceutical companies? Why does the "Patriot" Act protect
them (the pharmaceuticals) from lawsuits having to do with autism?
-
- I was freezing. With no gloves I fingered the holes in
the old lady coat pockets. No flowers, no relatives, nobody but us caring
that Jerry had lived and died, never becoming the gift he was meant to
be. Well he was a gift. Just much different than what was ordered. I was
growing colder and angrier remembering my relatives whispering in our kitchen,
that Jerry needed to put away in an asylum, a place for crazy people. Finally
at age twelve, due to Jerry's unpredictable violent outbursts, his Godfather,
a U.S. Congressman, made it possible for Jerry to be admitted to a state
institution-high in the mountains away from proper society. That's where
they put those they kick to the curb and label other. Then started the
years of trips every weekend for the next eight years to visit.
-
- As the priest read his meaningless words of the dead,
I was offering up my own unique prayer. "So what was this all about,
what? For all these years I asked You to heal my brother and now he's dead.
Just what was this all about? What? Never mind it doesn't matter now. Thanks
for nothing. All I want now is some sign that he's indeed happy and free
from pain. That's all I want." The priest was now into reading psalms
etc. It was snowing huge heavy flakes. The priest took the cheap crucifix
from the cheap gray cloth coffin and handed it to my dad, saying whatever
special prayer went with that. I was cold, shivering, angry, hungry and
tired. I felt poor, and patronized by this priest, who I knew could care
less about us, or my brother's death. Him with his condescending lie, "He
died with a smile on his face". The gray cloth was gone beneath a
couple inches of snow...except for where the crucifix had laid. That was
a stark gray against the white.
-
- At first I gave it little thought, but as the minutes
passed and no snow fell on the gray cross, my heart started to beat just
a bit faster. I remembered my accusatory prayer, "Thanks for nothing........"
Great, I was thinking--He's real (God) and I'm telling Him what to do.
-
- The final ten minutes of the Our Father and Twenty Third
Psalm- saw no flake fall on the now totally white coffin with a the gray
cloth cross. Then the chit chat, small talk, so sorry stuff- and we were
off down the small incline to the warmth of the waiting Cadillac. I tuned
once more, and there on the white mountain side was just a stark gray cross.
I thanked God for letting me know my brother was safe. I also told Him
not to pay any attention to my anger, as I was cold and didn't mean it.
-
- When we got back to the old hotel my mother pulled me
aside and asked, "Did you happen to notice anything odd at the funeral
service today?" I said, "Why don't you tell me what you saw and
I'll let you know if we saw the same thing." She then went on to describe
the gray cloth cross that would not be covered. I told her she'd seen right.
-
- My parents both died a few years after this. Just worn
out from worry and work and poverty. Like my brother, their funeral , though
not a Potter's Field affair, was not your private by invitation only affair.
Just my brother-sister-and myself. I wore yellow.
-
- As for autism, vaccines, small pox, and various drugs
being given to children? It behooves every parent in today's age to protect
their child and not subject them to any vaccines or shots that they haven't
fully investigated. In California alone, there is an alarming increase
in autism. In four years, from Dec '98 through Dec. '02, the number has
doubled from 10,360 to 20,377 and still no major outcry across the nation.
If the health of one's child doesn't awaken people to outrage and questioning,
I fear they will never awake from their stupors. Will people feel consoled
to hear "He died with a smile on his face?" My brother looked
like your next door neighbor's son-only forever lost in a distant world
forever.
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