The Record

  Suggested listening: Ray Stevens’ Mississippi Squirrel Revival A country kitchen table is the perfect place for a lot of things - perfect for family holiday meals, perfect for rifling through historic recipes, perfect for playing board games with the younger cousins. A country kitchen table is maybe not the perfect place for hawking your self-published book to a grieving family smack dab in the middle of their funeral planning. Just maybe. After losing Grandma, a woman who taught my then-husband how to fish on the shore and who introduced me to the wonders of The Seafood Hut , we rallied around Grandpa. The whole family filled the kitchen and living room, making plans and recounting childhood memories. When the pastor stopped by to visit, it started out normally - the usual “how are yous?” “we’re praying for you”, etc. And then. You know how you get that ominous uh oh feeling when something awkward’s about to happen and even though time seems to slow down, there’s nothing you ca...

Suggested listening: Georgia Satellites’ “Keep Your Hands to Yourself “Are you pregnant?” The question came during the wake for my then-husband’s grandfather, a kind, generous retired state trooper who recently lost his beloved wife and who asked us often if we’d used the rice cooker he got us as a wedding gift (yup, still using it, Grandpa). The question came from Polly, one of his many widowed neighbors and church mates who often dropped by with homemade meals for Grandpa, giving him the family-bestowed title of Tilly Swamp’s Most Eligible Bachelor.  The hand reaching to pat my tummy to check its status also came from Polly. The question came because, I suppose, of my empire-waist dress. For those of you not raised on a diet of What Not to Wear and Project Runway, that style fits snug until just below the bust and has a loose body-skimming skirt that apparently flows freely enough to leave room for a passenger. The momentary stunned silence came from me, a newly minted 24-year-...

Suggested listening: Lucky Chops' "Hello" The thing you don’t expect when you lose a parent early in life is that you become fluent in funerals. And when you lose that second parent, it feels like going from fluency to an unwanted tenured professorship in grief. And when all of that loss happens in the South, punctuated by other losses, you can’t help but start racking up helpful hints and strengthening your syllabus to better steer your fellow mourners. Or, at least, this native Southerner can’t.    Bless all of our hearts. Yes, this originally came out of the cringe-worthy, comical, very real things that happened at or around the services of people I loved. (Pro tip: No one should be patting anyone’s tummy at a wake.) And it probably also originally came with a good amount of exasperation, probably a dash of biterness, and more than a few eye rolls. (Pro tip: Don’t give copies of your self-published book to the grieving widower.) But underneath all that - with a litt...

Suggested listening: El Ten Eleven’s Bye Mom It  came unexpectedly, a whiff on the wind, a familiar scent attached to an unfamiliar passerby, a reminder. I inhaled, and I remembered what my mom smelled like. She smelled like Ithaca (her mill). She smelled like cigarettes (her vice). She smelled like leather (her purse). She smelled like Pond’s cold cream (her routine). She smelled like Vanilla Fields (her perfume). She smelled like sweet tea (her other vice).  I remembered.