Marvelous Pigs in Satin

Last Saturday, I got to chat with this lady who I hadn’t seen in a long time.  She is not my mother or my grandmother.  In fact she really isn’t related at all, although I think we could go back a few generations and prove that we share common cousins.  

My siblings and I called her Aunt Sherrell when we were growing up.  She was a good friend to our family, but not just that.  Every time we had a family crisis, she was there. 

I’m pretty sure she was there to help when my dad was hurt in a car wreck, and when our house burned to the ground (but my memories of those times are pretty few because I was so little).  

She was there when Matt age 2 fell in the trash fire and was covered in terrible burns. She made salve from comfrey, aloe Vera, and honey and helped my mom for more than just the first day. 

She was there with a big pot of soup every time there was a new baby.

She was there when my mom was going through chemo treatments. She took some of us into her home for weeks (months?) because  mom was so ill.  

During that time I remember her teaching me that part of washing dishes is to clean the sink when you are done.  

She was who my parents called the second time their home burned to the ground (this time, in the middle of the night.). That’s the kind of friend she is.

She taught me piano for some years.  My sisters and I would walk over to her house after school. She would often give us a sleeve of Ritz crackers to split for a snack. (Just so you know, there are reliably 33 crackers in a sleeve.  That meant a whopping 11 crackers each.  It was luxury to have so many crackers each. ) My sisters and I took turns, 1 having a lesson and 2 playing Statego while we waited.  

One time I was washing dishes with her and she told me how when she was a girl, her mother would assign all the chores for the day.  She knew that once her chores were done, she was free to play.  Because of this she learned to work quickly. She said her husband was only given one chore at a time as a boy, but he knew that as soon as he finished it, he would be given a new chore.  So he did not learn to get his work done quickly. I’ve tried to remember that with my own kids and chores.

Sherrell could make anything that falls in the category of needlework.  She cross stitched tapestries that looked like paintings by masters.  She knitted and tatted lace.  She told me once that as a girl, she did needlework in the evening while listening to radio programs with her sisters.  She said that sometimes in later life as she sat knitting and counting stitches, whole radio programs would come back to her memory.  She suspected that counting stitches had programmed those stories into her memory.

Sherrell had lots of heartbreaking things happen in her life and lots of hard things.  But she has a great sense of humor, and a stubborn streak too.  She told me that when she was a girl, she baby sat for a very large family.  One day the father of the family said to her, “If they ever reinstate polygamy*, I want you to be my second wife.”  

Sherrell looked him in the eye with her chin high and said,”No thank you.  I intend to be a FIRST wife.”  She wasn’t going to be second anything.  

*Polygamy hadn’t been discontinued for very long at that point.

She taught seminary many years. Her last year teaching was my first year of seminary. That year was Doctrine and Covenants and Church history.  She had lived such a pioneer life, that it felt like being taught the history by someone who had lived it. And she had lived all the principles. So she could bear testimony that the Lord’s promises are true.  

One of her favorite scriptures is Doctrine & Covenants 123:17

 Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.

I always saw her cheerful and calm no matter what calamity she was facing.  

It was so great to talk with her for a few minutes last Saturday.  I hope for many more times.  

 I was four.

But I remember the night my father was brought home with a forehead full of glass and a broken hip.
I remember two of the friends who came to help my mother.

A few miles of rolling Missouri fields away, the someone was telling my aunt that her husband would not be coming home, ever.

My father and my uncle had driven together to a church meeting that evening.

On their drive home, as they crested a hill, a car full of drunk teenagers crossed the center line and hit them head-on.

  My uncle was killed instantly.  My dad was the driver.  He was badly hurt.  He was taken to the hospital by ambulance, but at the hospital, the nurses/doctors just wrapped his head in gauze without removing the glass from all the lacerations. They ignored his saying iver and over that his hip hurt the worst and did not even x-ray it. They x-rayed his head and knee and left him shivering on the cold marble table for a very long time.  A brace from the car had speared his knee all the way through and that looked like the worst wound to them, so they wrapped it up and ignored the rest.  They refused to tell him where Uncle Clyde was or what had happened to him for over 3 hours.

Soon after “the wreck,” as us kids always referred to it, my dad developed pneumonia and had to be hospitalized.  The doctor told my mother that it was common for people who suffered an impact to the chest in a car accident to develop pneumonia.  While still weak from the pneumonia, my father developed a second infection and had to be hospitalized again.

I remember that it seemed like forever that he was in the hospital.  I think it was actually about two months total.  I remember asking my mother when daddy would be coming home.

A few miles away, my pregnant aunt had to tell her 5 children that their daddy was not coming home.

The family of the drunk teenagers sued my aunt, demanding that she pay damages and the medical bills for their son’s broken leg because my uncle had been in the car they collided with.

This was my first “experience” with alcohol.  I learned then that alcohol was a killer and not a fair killer either.  Alcohol killed the innocent.  Alcohol took people’s daddies away.  Alcohol took away other things too.  My father walks with a limp to this day–although most people probably don’t notice because he is so tall, and he sort of rolls along like a ship that lists to one side slightly.  Alcohol took basketball away from my dad.  Something he loved to play (and was good enough that he was offered a contract to play with an Australian team before he was married.)  He never complained about it, but us kids knew he didn’t play because of his hip.

In my religion, we follow a health code that we call The Word of Wisdom.  God has told us that “strong drinks are not for the body”  so we do not drink alcohol.

As a child and a teenager, I could not understand why anyone would drink alcohol.  To me, alcohol equalls death.

When I was sixteen, I worked in an office.  My boss was a part-time sheriff for the county.  One day he told me how he had pulled over some teenagers who were drinking and driving.  He gave them a warning and made them pour out their beer.  He told me this story, I think, because he wanted me to be impressed by how cool he was and how understanding of teenagers he was.

I remember just staring at him, wanting, but not brave enough to say, “Drunk teenagers killed my uncle.  You should have been more harsh with them.”

Now as an adult, I don’t know.  Maybe he was right.  Teenagers don’t often respond to harshness. Maybe his way was an effective way to teach them a lesson.

Now as an adult, I can understand a little that if a person grew up in a home where people drank alcohol often and nothing bad came of it, or the bad that did was laughed off as a funny story, that they would see no harm in drinking.

I believe God warned us not to drink alcohol for the same reason I tell my children to stay away from venomous snakes.  Snakes aren’t bad, but they are dangerous.  It isn’t so much because alcohol is bad, but because it is dangerous.  It dulls our minds.  It makes us less able to hear Him.  It makes us less able to make good decisions.  Under it’s influence, you can hurt others.  Those who become addicted to it are chained as surely as any slave ever was.

When I was 19, I joined the military.  In our company of about 120 basic trainees, one soldier was chosen as the “Soldier of the Cycle”  the best of our class.  The soldier chosen was a tall young man from New York but of Pacific Islander decent. He was a hard worker and an impressive soldier.  One afternoon, a group of us were talking, and somehow it came out that I didn’t drink alcohol.  He became very excited.  He wanted to know why I did not drink alcohol.  I told him it was because of my religion.  He told me that he had never met anyone who did not drink, but because of the way he had seen alcohol devastate his parent’s lives, he had made a pledge to himself to never drink alcohol.
His courage to change his family legacy all by himself was very inspiring to me.

I don’t judge others who drink alcohol.  I know many good people who do.  But I would judge myself, if I ever drank, because I know it’s wrong.  To me, drinking alcohol would make me complicit in my uncle’s death.  I would become one of his killers.  I would in effect be saying, “I don’t care who I hurt by drinking this, I’m going to have some fun.”

I could not do that.
***my original post had several errors due to the fact that I was only four when this happened and we never talked about it much as a family.  My dad corrected my mistakes and I added them in as edits for awhile.  Now for the sake of readability and family history, I have removed the mistakes completely.