Country music gets under your skin
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
It certainly wasn't my father's idea to come back to Kansas to spend another day in the country. He was already living out his country-living dream on a little acreage in Oregon. "Why would you want to go back to Ramona," he'd say, "when I worked so hard to get out of there?" It was a mystery.
But it was plain to see that our parents needed to be living near us and guess where we were? Ramona.
To some degree Dad came to terms with this — once he was here. His health was critical and he spent many hours sitting on the edge of his bed looking out the window on once familiar territory. He watched Ralph drive off to get his mail. He watched Aunt Naomi step to the door to retrieve her newspaper. He watched the Hare's putting up their Christmas decorations.
One day he said, "I've been thinking about all the people I've known here in Ramona — good people, salt-of-the-earth people," and he proceeded to name the family names that are so familiar to us all in this part of the country. He had tears in his eyes as he recited the list of people and I wished fervently for a pencil and paper to write them all down.
Another day he said, "When I'm here in Ramona I half expect to see my dad. This is where he always was and I feel that any minute he'll come to the door. It seems so strange that he's not here."
When I repeated this to Dad's sister, Naomi, she said, "It gives me a funny feeling to hear him say that — as if he's expecting to die." And he was! Five years ago, the doctors had told him to get his house in order. But, Dad had so many near-death experiences — where one minute we'd be planning his funeral and the next minute he'd be up trying to build a house — that my sister said she was going to call him "Lazarus."
And then this morning Dad died. By the time he took his final breath, we were relieved that he had been released from his suffering.
On the way back from the hospital in the black of a prairie night, I thought of all those who had gone before. My grandfather, Solomon Ehrhardt, died on the job. Grandpa died helping a friend lay brick. Dad would have liked to have his life come to an end in that fashion — unexpected, doing something you love and it's over. He would have liked to have been driving his tractor or walking on his land. Instead he lingered and struggled in a hospital bed.
My grandmother, Auguste Bentz Schubert died when she was cleaning out the china cabinet. The day Grandma died, is indelibly imprinted on Uncle Hank's memory. "Olga Schneider was the telephone operator and she called me in Herington at work and told me that my dad had called a doctor and she said she thought I'd better come home," says Hank. Her death was a surprise to her family and to her — she had potatoes peeled for dinner sitting in the kitchen.
We retell the family stories around death and dying at a time like this — how Grandma Ehrhardt, in a coma, raised her eyebrows when she heard Aunt Naomi's voice, how Uncle Kenneth went so quickly on a cold winter day.
My dad loved to tell the story of his grandmother Glantz's death. The whole family had gathered at my Great-grandma's bedside and while the adults stood watch, the children — my father, his sisters, and cousins — scampered around the yard, in and out of the house.
One of my father's aunts was known as "the crying aunt," because as he put it, "she carried on so at funerals." And this crying aunt was kneeling close to the head of the bed, intently watching her mother for signs of life. Suddenly, Great-grandma took a deep gasping breath, exhaled and lay very still — not breathing. The family assumed it was her last breath and the crying aunt started wailing, whereupon Great-grandma opened her eyes and said, "Did you think I was dead?" And then she died!
As we stood at Dad's bedside, several days ago, and he struggled to talk, I was reminded that whatever needs to be said should be said today! Life is a strange and wonderful gift and death is part of this package. Today, as I spend another day in the country, I'll rejoice in life. Maybe I'll get Dad's tractor out and drive it around town!
