How we say good-bye and how we go

The miles rolled by as my siblings and I crossed the bridge into Kentucky, dodging through Cincinnati traffic into the bluegrass of our past. Five of the six of us had piled into Brother's brand-new Ford Explorer right after church service Sunday morning and headed south. I had shown up at the last minute, unannounced, unsure until then I'd be able to make the trip. When I saw how full the car was with travelers and luggage, I tried to make a no-fuss exit, not wanting anyone put out by my late arrival. It had been a very long time since we'd been together and I didn't want to impose. No, they insisted, rearranging bags in the magic of road-trip Jenga to make room for me: come. An old friend hugged me in the parking lot. His wife, my best friend in childhood, died unexpectedly just before Thanksgiving. We talk sometimes on the phone, wondering why, missing her so much there just aren't words. "I know you didn't ask me for advice, but you need to go with your family," he said. I slid into the car and we headed into the land of memories to pay our respects to our aunt Nola, who'd passed away just 36 days after her husband. Her death was the last tether to our dad's 11 siblings, the end of the old guard. "This one feels different," my sister Connie said. "Even if I wasn't particularly close to Nola, it's just — different. They're all gone. All the people in my childhood, are gone." As we left the interstate and crawled into the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, the stories flowed like sweet tea. That's the county where Teresa was born. That's the curve where Connie fell out of the car. That's where Ted Dickerson's store used to be where Mom would send us for milk, walking all that way when we were little. That spot right there used to be a Ford dealership, believe it or not. Grandma's house, a terrifying place to me since all of us kids grew up knowing the story of cousin Sonny getting bit by a copperhead hidden under the kitchen sink some 50 years ago, burned down years ago. The house my dad built, which everybody still called the "Matthew house" long after he moved his family away to Cleveland years before I was born, was torn down years ago but the pile of rubble is still there, unmoved. At night I slept next to my sister, the first time we'd shared a bed in decades. I thought of the cousins we'd see the next day, who'd lost both parents in such a short time. We were used to being orphans, but I, the baby of the family, still felt unmoored and unsettled by how often I caught myself reaching for the phone to call my mother, gone three years this Mother's Day, to ask her a bit of family lore, the best roast to buy or share a tidbit about my daughter, the delight of her life. We visited my cousin's horse farm before the funeral the next day. Standing in a stall with a newly born colt, I eased my way closer to the foal while keeping my eye on his momma. I rubbed my hand over against his bristly new mane, in wonder of new life coming into the world as others leave it. There were ghosts at the funeral. Not remnants of the living, but who we were, once; I looked around and saw in the faces of my cousins the children we had been, before adulthood and parenthood, before losing our own parents had changed us all. I held my cousin Vicky tight, telling her how sorry I was for the loss of her parents. Once, when I was maybe 10, her daddy was a long-haul trucker who'd stopped at our house in Ohio and didn't have a load on his way back to Kentucky. He'd offered to take me back with him, which was high adventure to me. "I remember somewhere along the way, about 4 a.m. in the morning, we had to stop at a Shoney's Restaurant off the Interstate. I'd never even heard of a Shoney's. He said they had the best strawberry pie in the world, and he had to get one for his sweet baby girl because it was her favorite," I told her. "I never forgot how he loved you so much to do that for you." A bright-eyed woman I never met before waved me over. She recognized me by bloodline; she figured I must be part of the family because I look just like an uncle I don't remember ever meeting, dead now more than 40 years. She is 88 years old, and drove herself there from Alabama. By the time we finished talking, I knew all about the two husbands she's outlived, her children, and had an invitation to come visit. The week before I'd been to the funeral of a lifelong friend, a good man who lived for his wife and family. "Dad was so quiet, but his integrity and his wisdom speak so loudly," his daughter Denise told me. How we grieve, and how we honor those who came before us, set our foundations. What we carry with us when we go is what matters. Contact Chronicle-Telegram columnist Rini Jeffers at rinijeffers@gmail.com.