As Welcome as the Flowers

Do you ever have a song pop into your head and get stuck there? Sometimes last week “Mockingbird Hill” came to me from out of the blue. It had been years, maybe even decades since I’d heard the song, yet I remembered most of the tune, and fragments of the lyrics, but only fragments. I thought about looking up who sang it, and perhaps the lyrics that I couldn’t remember, but hadn’t gotten around to it when I heard the news of the horrible shooting at the synagogue in Pittsburg. There are not words to express all that I felt upon hearing the news. I still cannot find a way to say something about it, yet I feel compelled to do so, of how it brought back memories of when I felt a similar sadness.  

            I grew up in a small town in Alabama, and knew only one Jew, the husband of a dear family friend, so dear that I always called them Aunt Grace and Uncle Leonard. When I was a teenager we moved to Montgomery. In the large high school that I attended I made many new friends, some of them Jewish. One morning, as I walked down the walkway to the school I was handed a pamphlet, which I stuck in my books without looking at it. When I took my seat in homeroom, I realized that the girl in front of me was crying. Our teacher asked if any of us had also gotten the pamphlet, then walked up and down the rows collecting them before most of us could read them. She tore the papers as she disposed of them saying “I’ll not have such anti-Semetic trash in this room.” It was my first exposure to anything of that kind. Why would someone hate anyone because they were Jewish? It made no sense to me, but I knew this was very hurtful to my friend in front of me, in a way I couldn’t imagine.

            In 2008 a fatal shooting occurred in a Tennessee church that I had visited. Until then I had never been concerned about my safety. In my home church, I sat near the back, across from the doors leading into the sanctuary. For many months following the shooting, when someone unknown to me entered those doors, I became anxious, even fearful at times. Gradually that fear went away, but hearing the recent news has been unsettling. Even more disturbing has been the suggestion that we need armed guards at the places where we worship, our sacred spaces. If we are not safe there, where?

            I was thinking about all this when the song popped into my head again Sunday afternoon. The fragment of the lyric that I hadn’t remembered until then: "…there’s peace and good will. You’re welcome as the flowers on Mockingbird Hill.”

            Would that it could be so – that we could make our country a place of peace and good will where people are welcome, as welcome as the flowers on Mockingbird Hill.

Lament for a Store

I hadn’t expected my eyes to fill with tears or to choke up, almost unable to express my thanks to the person behind the pharmacy counter. Such sadness was unanticipated, yet there it was.

            I don’t remember exactly when or where I met the DeBortoli family. But it was about forty-four years ago around the swimming pool at the South YMCA where our young sons proudly showed off their skills learned in the Tadpole swimming lessons. It wasn’t long before I learned that Jim Debortoli was the pharmacist at a neighborhood pharmacy. Not only because of the friendship, but also because he offered something special: free delivery of prescriptions, I immediately transferred our business there. I usually went to the store, but after sitting through a doctor’s appointment with a sick child, it was a wonderful to be able to take said sick child home, knowing the medication called in by the doctor would arrive at my door shortly.

            Over the years the name of the store changed as Jim’s independent store was bought by larger drug stores. The store even changed location within the same small shopping center at some point. But the one constant was that our friend Jim remained the pharmacist, the smiling face behind the counter. Others joined him as the business grew, and I came to know many of them, especially after Jim’s untimely death several years ago. But to me it was always Jim’s store.

            In recent months, the pharmacy department was bought by Walgreen’s. The transition seemed to go smoothly. I still went to the same counter where I was waited on by the same staff. Today that all changed. I’d received the letter welcoming me to Walgreen’s, explaining the transfer of my records, et cetera, so I knew that as of today I would no longer go to Rite-Aid because it was also closing, but to Walgreen’s in a different location.

            What now? What happens to our neighborhood shopping center now that one of the main anchors is closing? I’ll adjust. I’ll drive a little farther away from my house. I don’t have a choice. Some might say “It’s just a store.” But to those of us who’ve been going there for over forty years it wasn’t just a store.  

            The Walgreen's pharmacist at the new location welcomed me today and explained the things I would need to do to be fully registered in their system. I’m sure the service there will be fine, and I’ll get to know her, and if I hadn’t gotten so emotional I might have been able to tell her that I was crying over the loss of a relationship that’s lasted for over half of my life. Such things, even if “just a store” are precious and are mourned for at their passing.

Robert Kennedy

On November 22, 2013 I posted something in connection with remembering the death of John Kennedy. It also contained the following:

"As powerful as that memory remains, it was the news of the death of Robert Kennedy that has the most connection for me. My grandmother was visiting, and the two of us were watching television together when the news broke. She gasped and said, "Oh, poor Ethel, with all those children." To understand fully, you need to know that my mother, the eldest of five children, was only eight years old when her father was killed. When a former employee of her father came to the door, she and her brothers clustered around Grandmother and heard her tell the visitor when my grandfather would return from an appointment. The man left, but walked only a short distance from the house, where he waited out of sight until my grandfather returned. He shot him at close range. My grandmother never mentioned how difficult it must have been for her, not only lose the love of her life, but to rear five children in a depression era world. In her softly spoken "Oh, poor Ethel with all those children" she revealed perhaps more than she realized. Her expressed empathy came from an understanding that most of us will never understand."

Hearing of the events planned earlier this week  to commemorate the anniversary of Robert Kennedy's death reminded me of my earlier post, but mostly of that hour or so with grandmother. Like many, we were glued to the television upon hearing the news.  Grandmother's life was very different from that of Ethel Kennedy. She was never in the spotlight, nor did she have the same financial resources. In almost every way they had nothing in common, yet in that awful moment of hearing the news on television, my grandmother felt an instant connection to Mrs. Kennedy. 

Grandmother died four years later, and we never again talked about hearing the news that day or about the day my grandfather was murdered. Now I wish I had asked her more about her life, but even if I had, she probably wouldn't have talked about the bad parts. She was truly a remarkable woman in her own quiet way. She lived the rest of her life in the same house, alone once her children moved away after they finished college or married. 

 On that day as we watched the news, it didn't occur to me that my grandfather had been killed almost forty-four years earlier. Realizing it now makes Grandmother's quiet utterance seem more remarkable. The time that had elapsed vanished, her reaction was instant as she remembered what had happened to her and what the years ahead might hold for Mrs. Kennedy.

But now, fifty years later, I can still hear her voice in my head, as clearly as if she were seated next to me on the sofa as she was that day. As I remember her sympathetic expression and all the unspoken things it revealed, I marvel once again at the courage with which she lived.