Goodbye, Mom

This past week I took part of my mother up to Kentucky with me.  I took her to my grandfather's gravesite, eulogized her . . . and then I told her goodbye and I left her there.

Now that you are totally confused, let me explain.

My mother died back in November, 2017.  She asked to be cremated, probably because she'd had enough emotional turmoil dealing with my father's funeral, my grandmother's, and my aunt's (her sister) over the last several years and she didn't want my sister and me to deal with that sort of turmoil.  My sister honored her wishes.  She asked if I wanted a small urn with some of my mother's ashes, and I said yes. 

This past July, I visited my sister briefly and she gave me the urn.  It's about 3-4 inches tall, blue-green in color, with a dolphin decorating the front.  I thought it was appropriate because green was my mother's favorite color, she lived in Florida (famous for dolphins) and my very first favorite TV show was Flipper, about a dolphin. 

I decided that since my mother was born in Kentucky, I would take part of her ashes and scatter them at the cemetery where my grandfather--her father--is buried.  In a sense, it would be bringing her home. 

It took several months to arrange this trip, mostly because I didn't want to drive up there during winter weather. But I finally figured out a time I could go, which was this past week, made reservations, and started getting ready.

The weirdest part was dealing with the actual ashes.  When I'd first gotten the urn home, I twisted the top to see if it would open, or it if would be hard to open.  The top twisted . . . but I could not bring myself to lift the lid and see what the ashes looked like.  Instead, I put the urn in my china cabinet. 

Last Monday, while I was alone in the house, I took the urn from the china cabinet.  It was heavier that I thought it would be, probably because it was full.  Then I took the top off and found myself looking at what is best described as sandy gray ashes.  I put a portion in an old medicine bottle.

I left last Wednesday, driving up I-75, the road we'd travel when we'd head for Kentucky on vacation.  I'm old enough to remember when you had to get off I-75 in certain places and use US 41 in Georgia and US 11 in Tennessee.  I can also remember a handmade sign on the side of the road marking the exit to Plains, Georgia, the hometown of Jimmy Carter.  These days, there is no missing the exit to Plains. 

My cousin Susie used her iPhone to keep track of where I was.  When I stopped in Knoxville for lunch, I saw her message that "I think you might be lost."  I said, "I'm not lost.  This is the way we always came on road trips."  She said, thank God because my map shows you heading to Nashville!

I drove up State Road 33, up through Manyardville, New Tazewell, and Tazewell, over the Clinch River and near Norris Lake, where we've gone with our cousins on our mother's side, where they've waterskied (and I've tried and failed), where we've gone swimming, picked blackberries, and camped out. 

In Harrogate, I made a pit stop (after a previous stop for gas in Tazewell and at a Walmart across the street for three pots of flowers).  That pit stop was the Scott Cemetery, where my mother's maternal grandparents are buried.  I left flowers, which was not the easiest thing to do because a) the cemetery is a small rural one which is maintained by donations and is "cataloged" online by volunteers, and b) my mother's grandparents are not buried together.  My great-grandmother is buried next to a baby.  There was no room for my great-grandfather.  So he's buried apart from her.  He was easy to find.  She was not.  Just as I feared that I would have to leave both sets of flowers at my great-grandfather's grave, I came around the side of a gravestone and found the woman I was looking for.  One pot of flowers sits on top of my great-grandmother's grave.  The other pot sits on top of my great-grandfather's. 

I drove through the Cumberland Gap Tunnel, which wasn't there during the years when we made our road trips.  We had to climb 25E through Virginia, past Cudjo's Cavern, then past a large sign announcing, "Welcome To Kentucky" with a picture of a horse on it. 

When I got to my hotel in Harlan, I dropped off my stuff and then drove out to Rosspoint, about 10 minutes or so from where I was staying.  I went looking for the cemetery where my grandfather was buried, and I found it almost by accident.  This is not the first time I've ever been to my grandfather's grave.  I had visited at least once before, back in 1989; but I also remembered going there as a very young child.  I don't recall anyone telling me that "we're going to where your grandfather is buried", and since I would have been about four in this particular memory, I doubt if it would have registered.  My maternal grandfather died in October of 1962.  I was born in October of 1963, so I never knew my maternal grandfather. 

Rose Lawn Cemetery, where my grandfather is buried, is another small, rural cemetery with no formal upkeep.  The area around it has changed over the years, but the two landmarks that have not changed there are the two statues of Jesus.  One is at the front of the cemetery, Jesus standing with his arms at his sides, his hands spread out.  The other is in the middle of the cemetery, and it's Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Engraved underneath are the words "Not my will but Thine be done."  I remember playing on that statue while my mother and grandmother were over at my grandfather's grave.  (My grandmother's brother and sister, along with their spouses, are also buried here.) 

When I saw the statues of Jesus, I knew I'd found the right place.

So I pulled down a dirt and gravel road, parked, took my mother's ashes, the third pot of flowers I'd bought at the Walmart in Tazewell, and a copy of her eulogy (posted here), and went to my grandfather's gravestone. 

I put the flowerpot right above the gravestone, and then, opened the bottle with my mother's ashes and scattered them on the grass. 

Then I took Mom's eulogy and read it aloud. 

I sat and I listened to the buzzing of a bee, felt the warmth of an April afternoon.  The weather cooperated with me nicely.  The forecast had called for rain during the days I planned to be there, and then the forecast changed.  I got warm, dry weather.   

And then I left my mother's ashes behind and went back to the car. 

There were other things I did in Kentucky this past week, but none as important to me as this was.

I don't know if my mother ever wanted to come back to Kentucky.  She didn't have as much of a tie to Harlan as my father did, because her sister lived first in Ohio and then in Florida, very near us, and her brother also lived in Ohio.

But for me, I thought that at least part of her needed to come home. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

No, she did not say yes

My son was two months old on an April day 20 years ago when I decided to go shopping. 

I'd heard about a shooting at a high school in Colorado, in suburban Denver, called Columbine High, and I'm sure I thought something like, "How awful!" before I went about my day.

I remember coming home and while stopped at the stoplight at the CVS near my house, hearing on the radio that the kids were coming out, running out with their hands raised.  I thought, thank goodness it's over.

Then I went home and turned on the TV.

Later, I saw the first report of  "25 dead."

I felt sick. 

Later, the figure was revised to 12 dead.  The twelve included the two shooters. 

"Columbine" is actually the name of a flower.  Since April 20, 1999, "Columbine" has become synonymous with "school shooting".

My son has grown up under the shadow of Columbine and the other school shootings that have since taken place.  I don't think we'll ever shake that shadow.  Once a Pandora's box of evil is opened, there's almost no way to shut it.

There's one myth, however, that I wish we would lay to rest:  the myth that Cassie Bernall was a martyr for Christ. 

In the first reports of the Columbine shooting, it came out that Cassie, who was in the library--where most of the killings took place--was asked by one of the shooters, "Do you believe in God?" She answered, "Yes," and she was shot and killed.  (I heard this story on NBC the day after the shootings.)

Evangelical Christians seized on this story because it embodied everything they love:  someone standing up for the cause of Christ who was not ashamed to say "yes, I believe in God" in the face of death, and who was killed for their belief. 

There's just one problem with this story.

It's not true.

Craig Scott, whose sister Rachel was one of the twelve who was murdered, was in the library that horrible day.    Investigators took him back into the library and asked him to recreate what happened, and when asked, where did the voice come from that said, "yes", he pointed away from where Cassie Bernall had been hiding under a table and toward where another student, Valeen Schnurr, had been. 

In addition, a teacher in the library who'd called 911 left the phone line open for eight minutes.  Events in the library were caught on that 911 tape. 

What actually happened was that Eric Harris looked under the table where Cassie was, said, "Peek-a-boo," and shot her.  It was a few moments later, when Valeen Schnurr began screaming, "Oh, my God?" that Dylan Klebold asked her if she believed in God. She said "yes" and when asked "why", she said, "because I believe and my parents brought me up that way."  Valeen was shot but ultimately survived.

Cassie's mother, Misty, wrote a book about her daughter, titled "She Said Yes".  Misty described her daughter as a teenager who'd become rebellious and nearly suicidal.  But in the last year of her life, she turned back towards her faith.  Cassie's father said that after Cassie attended a weekend church retreat, that she'd come back a completely different person. 

I don't believe that anyone deliberately set out to tell a lie about Cassie Bernall.  I've long believed that the events of that horrible day played out like a game of "telephone" where something is repeated down a long line of people and details are changed with every repetition.  It takes time and effort to gather up all the pieces of evidence and lay them out in order to figure out what really happened.  I think that by the time evidence was sifted through, arranged, and the final report written, Cassie's supposed "martyrdom" had so embedded itself into public consciousness that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to correct the impression that she truly had "laid down her life for Christ". 

Later in 1999, Family Christian Bookstores came out with a line of T-Shirts and keychains with the slogan, "Yes I Believe In God".  That was the moment I developed a distaste for Christian merchandising (known also as "Jesus junk".)  To me, that line of merchandise was a blatant attempt to capitalize on a horrible event. 

Ten years ago, journalist Dave Cullen published his book "Columbine", which is considered the definitive account of the Columbine shootings.  He devotes several pages to Cassie and the story of her alleged martyrdom. 

Between Cullen's book, the final report on Columbine, and the testimony of several witnesses (including Cassie's friend Emily Wyant), the evidence shows that it's time to lay this myth to rest, once and for all:

Cassie Bernall did not say "yes" when asked "do you believe in God".
Valeen Schnurr said "yes" when asked "do you believe in God".
Cassie Bernall was not martyred for her faith in God.
Cassie Bernall was murdered by a sociopath who also shot many other people before finally killing himself.
Cassie Bernall discovered faith in the last year of her life.  She did say "yes" to God.
Cassie Bernall is not a martyr. 
Cassie Bernall did not say "yes" and die.
Valeen Schnurr said "yes" and lived.
People did not initially intend to lie when reporting that Cassie said "yes, I believe in God".
Some people did, however, refuse to correct the impression when the facts proved that story wrong. 

Cassie deserves to be remembered as a daughter whose life ended too soon.  She deserves to be remembered as the person she was, a girl who lost her way for a while and who found it again. 

But despite what some people--and unfortunately, some of those people are Christians--would want you to believe . . . no, she did not say yes.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.