The Postlude

I stood in the back of the barn amongst a hodgepodge of sheep supplies. It was there that the smell of iodine was the strongest. Its pungent odor dominated the scent of hay bales around me. Though my barn was in Vermont, the iodine smell transported me back in time to my Grandparent's decrepit old house in Maine. It was there that I also recalled that scent, particularly in my Grandmother's beauty shop off the kitchen.

I hesitate to refer to the beauty shop, anything bearing the word beauty wasn't fitting for my grandparent's house. It was the ugliest place I'd ever been forced to visit. My grandmother as well was no longer beautiful. A combination of evil and mental illness had worked their fingers through her hair over time leaving her with vacant, cold eyes. She looked like she could easily hide an axe behind her back. The only thing that scared me equally as much was my grandfather. He had two black, golf ball size lumps on either side of his neck. He reminded me of Frankenstein.

Their house, which was eventually knocked down, was tilted and drooped severely. Cobwebs hung in the place of art, cockroaches scampered across floorboards, walls were uneven with bulges, cracks, and secrets. My brothers and I peeked behind closet doors with sweaty palms expecting to find dead bodies. But Mom dragged us to this decaying dungeon in the name of Jesus. "We have to honor our parents," she stated. And so we trudged to their house of horrors, with casserole in tote, to sit in their musty parlor so my parents could chat with my grandmother while we kids prayed Grandmother wouldn't touch us or offer us food.

If by chance my grandmother did offer us food, my mother would save us all by pulling out her casserole. We would work our way into the kitchen where Grandmother served up the food on chipped plates and silverware that had a decade of dried food stuck to it. Above our heads hung a dusty chandelier where pretty small lights had been replaced with chunky 60 watt bulbs. The whole place smelled of dead cats and decay. It was a place that only Edgar Allen Poe or Stephen King could appreciate. But we routinely came for these biblical visits so Mom could fulfill her duty of honoring her parents.

But one particular visit sticks out from all the rest. We were there on a mission. Grandfather was dying and Mom had grandiose ideas about having special time with him. Moments where we'd say Hallmark greeting card words and gain closure. But Grandfather was not the kind of person you had sentiments with. He was already as closed as a coffin. But my mother entered his room like one enters a confessional. His small room was top of the steps, five feet straight ahead. The room had a sofa, bowl of nuts, and a TV where he watched wrestling. He never spoke to my grandmother other than a one syllable response, and he never spoke to his children while they were growing up. Once when my mother was a kid she had poked him with a pin to see if he could speak. His yelp answered her question. The old geezer did have vocal cords. There in the quiet of the room I knew my mother spoke to him about the biggies-heaven, hell, death, grace and God.

When she exited she passed the baton to me and told me to go have a meaningful moment with him before he died. "Mom," I said. "Uh, Grandpa has never spoken to me in my whole life. What exactly am I suppose to say to him? I don't even know the guy." I towered over my mother at this age but she looked up at me with power oozing out her eyes and said "Get in there-now!"

A few minutes later it's just me, my grandfather and the bowl of nuts in the room. His steel blue eyes barely acknowledged me. "Hey," I said. "Go downstairs and have tea with your mother," he said. We had stood for five whole seconds in the same room with invisible strands of genetic material connecting us but our eyes were unable to meet, our hearts were unable to connect. His comment freed me from the room releasing both of us into the comfortable silence. "See ya later," I said as I cheerfully left the room. I instantly realized my mistake. I may never see him again and this was not disturbing to me.

I returned to the kitchen where the cabinetry clung for dear life to walls that were trying to kick them off. The cabinets strained to hold the dishes inside. I passed by the old black stove that served as my grandmother's personal bank. This was her favorite hiding spot for money. As I sat down at the table my mother shot me the look of death. "He kicked me out," I whispered to her. On a positive note I told her that he has officially said 8 whole words to me now. "I can die in peace now," I muttered. "Don't be smart with me," she retorted.

My mother was the essence of appropriate behavior. She had wanted the grand postlude with my grandfather. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't drudge up a postlude where there had never been a prelude or a middle. In the end the silence between us was fitting. A lifetime of things unsaid, experiences unshared. Though sometimes I still think about that invisible genetic strand between us. Does the loner in me, or my odd blood type come from him? I'll never have the answers to my questions for I left the room to go have tea and he remained in the room with the nut bowl refusing to speak anymore than those 8 meager words.