elizabethtown

I loved Elizabethtown from the first moment I watched it. It always amazes me when people say they don't like it. Maybe it's just because there's some magic captured in that film that you can't see unless you've lived it. I see my family in that movie. I see endless pictures of other people and think of my own aunts and uncles long gone. I hear Elton John singing when Drew Baylor is surrounded by his family for the first time in a long time, and sometimes it makes me ache for old stories. Maybe it's because Louisville, Kentucky is a special place. Maybe it's because freakin' Paula Dean is in that movie. Maybe it's because they deal with loss the same way we do: with lots of people and lots of food.



That morning I sang at my papa's funeral only to be congratulated by shadows of people that I had grown up looking at pictures of. They were older and more ragged now, and so I ended up walking away from a dream like a child does when they are faced with reality. I don't even think Papa liked the song "Amazing Grace." As far as I was concerned, he would have enjoyed me singing something from the Grand Ol Opry more. I can't say I ever heard him hum anything more than that.
The worst part of the morning was scooting into that overstuffed limousine the funeral company had sent for the women who were left behind. My mom and aunt helped my grandma in, and I slid in last. As the man shut the door behind us, he looked at us like he knew and understood our loss, and I believed him. I wondered how awful it must be to have to make your face look like that all the time. I couldn't handle it.
We were silent in the backseat besides the exchange of gum and the subsequent popping of that gum that my mother always does. We were criss-crossed over each other, holding hands for comfort and something familiar. I took a break from staring out the window to steal a glance at my grandmother. She was breathing slowly, staring out the window like I had seen her do so many times before. Her slightly underturned lips were the same. The little mole on her nose that I played with when I used to lay on her lap was still just as prominent. It was her eyes that stopped me. You could fall into them and drown if you weren't careful. I knew that day she saw the world differently. The man she had stood beside for sixty-six years was gone, and she was once again left behind. The light on the trees didn't hold the same joy. It was replaced by this new lump of aching that I could only feel a fraction of. Her sorrow was incomplete, though. I didn't know it then, but the half of her that was his had already gone with him in that grave. She only lived two years after that before she would join him. Even then, sometimes I think she stayed just because she knew we wouldn't have been able to handle missing two people at once. Even though she was dying, she lived for us. That's the kind of lady she was.
After the funeral was over, we went back to the house to be greeted by some plate or dish of something covering every inch of counter space. Grandma gingerly touched the corner of the counter and looked around as if she didn't deserve to be loved in this way. I vaguely remember her making some comment about all of this being "too much."
We sat down and made our plates and ate something because we had to. We didn't talk about papa, which made it more miserable for me. I wanted to tell stories and keep him living, because I couldn't think about him dying. I knew it wouldn't sit well with Grandma, though. I just ate my ham sandwhich in silence, but I trudged through it as you would trudge through something when you're on the brink of tears.
We helped Grammy get ready for her nap and pinned the toilet paper around her hair that she was convinced helped her perm stay longer. I thought she looked silly, but at the same time, she looked like home. Mom and I lifted our battered bodies into her old bed in her old room and sank into too many covers. The last thing I remember is the hum of the air conditioner as we dozed off.