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| My sister and I, when we could share a chair |
As Memorial Day
approaches each year, I remember an incident that faithfully describes the
relationship I had with my sister.
I was very young, maybe
four or five. Our family was at Bakers-Forge cemetery in Lafollette Tennessee. We
were observing Decoration Day, as we called it in the south.
I found these small colorful
strips of cloth attached to sticks poking from the ground to be very attractive
and so I began collecting them. Many of them had red and white stripes with a
corner of white stars on a blue background. Many of these colorful pieces of
cloth had red backgrounds with crisscross
stripes of blue on which white stars rested.
Yes, age five, Decoration
Day, I, thinking it was appropriate, was taking flags from the graves of deceased
heroes, loved ones, and remembered ones.
As I continued my quest
of gathering these flags, by this time an armful of them, I heard my sister,
Vickie, yell words at me. Much like the Doppler effect of an approaching train, her voice seemed louder with each uttered syllable... “ Mikie, what are you doin’!”
It was not a question.
It was an accusation…a proclamation
of some cultural incorrectness in which I was engaged.
Given the intensity of
her yell, I knew that some form of sisterly violence was impending.
And she did not betray her
predictability!
As I turned to face her,
she tackled me as I were carrying the football and needed to be felled before
crossing the goal!
The flags, those pretty
colorful pieces of cloth, bounced from my arms and landed helter-skelter on freshly
cut grass and I too landed with them also helter- skelter in my disorientation
and subsequent response to her!
Once I had had my say
with her, she then calmly explained to me the reason for her attack upon me. It
was to save me from further cultural incorrectness, or insult to the deceased.
Vickie was one year and
five months older than I was.
It was she that taught me
to read, to understand things in life. Vickie was larger than life to me. She
protected me.
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| Bakers-Forge Lafollette Tennessee |
And when she died on
August 20th, 1962…four days after my birthday, I felt an unfillable
hole in my heart.
It was then, in the
absence of my sister, that I committed myself to this…when school started in
just a couple of weeks, all the girls in school would be my sisters!
I have held that
sentiment since that year. In school, at work, in church, at a concert,
wherever I am, all the women present are my sisters.
They fetch my respect as
if they were Vickie!
As Memorial Day
approaches, I shall not be stealing flags.
I will take a walk
through the rows of gravestones, flags pushed into the grassy ground, and
recall the incident in which I learned about respect for the dead, from Vickie.
Still, I look forward to
Heaven in which I will get even, ferociously!
