Axtel Mountain

Axtel Mountain

I sat in the waiting area while Imogene attended to whatever things she needed to do: contact family members, contact Barbara's work and the place where she volunteers at, all informing them of her sister's passing. I could only envision her having to tell the entire story...how she was just there for a routine clearing of her cath tube when things started to turn.

 

I was thinking in my own mind the various images I have stored of Imogene's younger sister. How she tracked me down at a book signing and did not leave until after I had finished autographing my second book and accepting an dinner invite with her.  How we talked for hours and then she led me to her bedroom and after a change of clothing, emerged wearing an all white bed ensemble, asking me simply "too little or too much?"

 

A smile quickly came over my face when I remembered I started to reply "too little" and she immediately said "too much!" and stripped to her raw nakedness.  Our lovemaking was slow, careful and protected.

 

Someone sat down in the chair next to mine and I scooted enough to be back in the present. My tears overcame me as I remembered other wonderful memories.  The drive which established her nickname forever in my heart.  Her posing and standing under "Buttercup Lane", a sign somewhere near the city of Charlottesville.  The dinner at the restaurant -- whereby she asked me to switch seats with her and after I did, she stuck her tongue out at some old charm bracelet of a man and then returned to whatever I was talking about.  I giggled to myself aloud at that point.

 

The person beside me asked "What's funny?"

 

"Just remembering a fond memory I had...sorry..." I responded. 

 

Other memories came back to me while I was sitting there.  Moving into the home which became our home.  Meeting the neighbors and their cats. 

 

Attending the Independence Day fireworks display at the county fairgrounds.  Listening....listening to some country band trying to sing a rap song. I broke out into laughter and then remembered where I was at. 

 

"Sir, are you alright?" the man beside me asked.

 

"I'm sorry," I said. "My mate passed away this morning and I am thinking of all of the great things we did together, that's all.  I mean no disrespect to you or your family..."

 

The man placed his hand on my left shoulder and said "It's okay. You must have had a hella time with her. What did she die of?"

 

As if by magic, Imogene walked over and answered, "She died of a broken heart which this man tried to repair with his love and affection. It didn't keep." She looked at me with teary eyes and added, "We've got to go, Mike. There's some things I've got to let you know..."

 

I got up and looked around the room before I finally, reluctantly followed the large woman in the dress.  I stopped and turned back.

 

"I wish for their recovery. Thanks for sitting with me!"

 

----

 

 

"I have to get you out of the hospital because the rest of my family will be showing up here in about 20 minutes or so," Imogene stated.  We stood in the main lobby of the hospital. "Can I stop in on you later today and we can exchange the arrangements?  We really need to talk about the funeral and burial."

 

"I know where she wants to be buried. I know how she wants to be buried.  I had her to put into writing her wishes -- in case I went before her" I said. "What's wrong?"

 

"The words need to come from my mouth, that's all. She made a strong effort as to not let on about you... oh, she loved and was always so proud of you but country folk talk too much, you are an established writer therefore you have money, and well, some of us are still living as if the War Between the States was last week."  She tried to smile but it was a forced one.

 

"Understand.  We'll work through the details this evening.  Can I share with my friends? What about all of our photos...including the one over the mantle?"

 

The photo over the mantle was a simple one, taken by me the morning that she got wheels again.  Her smile said it all. 

 

"My favorite? Everything stays. We have our marching orders. Besides, nobody's coming over to the house because nobody wants to "catch" whatever it is that she had when she died."

 

"Huh? Barbara was healthy as you or me...well, as far as overall health is concerned." I replied.

 

"We know that. The doctors know that but Doc Elliot said that he'll give us cover for the week or so needed to get everything out we need to and to make arrangements before they start objecting to how Barbara wanted to be planted."

 

Imogene then kissed my cheek and said "Gotta go meet the family. Have a pot of coffee on for me please?" She then walked back toward the elevators while I made my way to my car.

 

On the way, I stopped by Barbara's white Suburu and opened the door with my spare key for her car. Taking a whiff of the air inside her car, smelling her perfume -- White Shoulders -- and admiring her almost pristine interior compared to my coffee stained, food stained, grungy car interior, I simply looked around in her car. 

 

Nothing to see. She kept her car like she kept her house...clean but yet lived in.

 

Then I saw it. She said she would never drive anywhere without it, and she kept her end of the bargain.  A photo of a yellow buttercup flower.  I took it the same day years back in which I took the other images of the "Buttercup woman".  She didn't like being called "Buttercup" but she loved my calling her "Barbie" after the Mattel playtoy and female body image prompt.  I asked her to place it in her car to remind her of her "mate".

 

"I love buttercups. So bright, so cheery...like you..."

 

"It's like you're calling my nips "buttercups", or my butt "buttercups".  No thanks!" I can remember Barbara informing me this.  "Call someone else your "buttercup" -- I don't care!" she added. "Not me."

 

She then wrapped her arms around me and said "But I'll be your Barbie...forever and a day. Just don't get me any of those dolls. As you can feel, I'm nothing like her..."

 

"Oh, but you ARE like her...smart, attractive, bright, full of life...and expensive!" I said.  I kissed her on the lips and added, "And unlike a buttercup, you my dear, have this special thing..." I then touched her portacath through her top and then kissed it.

 

Someone's car alarm went off, bringing back to the present.  I closed the door but not before seeing the envelope captured by the sun visor on the driver's side.  I looked at the envelope and then pulled it down.  It was not sealed.

 

I took the envelope, closed and locked her car, and walked over to my car. Getting into the car, I closed my door, rolled down the window, and opened the letter.

 

It was a letter to her family. It was her goodbye letter.

 

"She knew" I said to myself.  I stopped reading the letter and placed it back into the envelope.

 

-----

 

Imogene and I sat in the kitchen at the table whereby normally Barbie would be serving the two of us a side of ham, some potatoes, mixed vegetables, and a small piece of corn bread.  She would not eat until I did...that was her preference regularly and she would break it only for special occasions.

 

Instead, Imogene and I had coffee and a slice each of Barbara's lemon box pie she had in the refrigerator.

 

I listened as Barbie's sister read aloud, choking up at times, the letter I found in the car earlier.  She got choked up when she read that if circumstances were different and she knew she would live for another 20 years, that the "colored" -- and then she said "please don't call him that. He's a black man"  -- man who stayed at my house for seven years now would have been my husband. Legally in Virginia, he is.

 

Imogene read "We "carried on" as if we were and as many of you know, I have enjoyed the happiest seven years of my entire life.  He is a writer and public speaker and will want to someday write or talk about me, about us, and I have already given him permission to do so. I have every confidence in him, and while I cannot know what is in your hearts, that someday you would consider him as family. I have from day one."

 

Imogene looked up from the letter at me. "Any proof that she wanted to keep you in the shadows is gone now, Mike."  She continued to read, explaining that she knew that she was dying after she felt a sharp pain in her chest a week or so after she bought her new car.  She said that by the end of that week, the pain was so tough that she contacted the doctor, and asked her not to tell anyone -- especially Mike -- to which Imogene again looked away from the page and toward my face. I could not hide my sorrow.  She moved downward in the letter and explained that she was telling her family that I came from good stock, that she did not have the opportunity to meet the parents of the man she befriended but did talk with my Dad one year and he asked when they will meet me in person.  He also said "take care of my Son, please." 

 

The tears fell from my face further. My father never said those words about either of my two former spouses.

 

She then moved to the part which her family would object to.

 

In rural Virginia and Kentucky, people are buried, "planted" into the ground. Very few people are cremated, and those which choose this method of body interment do so with a lot of objection from Baptist, Gospel and Pentecostal church families. In those faiths, they take the wording of John's Revelations very seriously: you are planted in the ground where you will rest until the return of Christ to reclaim those faithful and bring them back to life as angels of the Trinity. You are dressed in your best because you want to see your relatives and friends in your best dress.  You cannot come back to life if your body is nothing but dust and chemicals.

 

There are others that will say ALL burials the body returns to dust -- "dust is how you were formed, dust is what you return to".  Families have come to blows over whether someone should be buried and decay or turned to dust right away.

 

Barbie's desire is to be cremated and molded into one of those clay containers which could hold an apple tree. She saw the advertisement in a magazine and shared the information with me.  

 

She and I laid down on the hood of her car one night, looking up at the stars and touching -- not holding, but touching -- each other's hands and shoulders as the local jazz station played more contemporary variations of that style of music from her car's radio.

 

"You could plant me up there..." she pointed to the mountain in front of the two of us.  Axtel Mountain.

 

"You could come back each spring, pick a bushel from me, and eat me. Wouldn't that be delicious?" she smiled and giggled.

 

"You take all of the fun from enjoying you..." I said, kissing her shoulder. "Besides, it wouldn't be as sweet as you..."

 

"You don't know that," Barbie stated, adding, "It could be better! Think of this...an entire pie tasting of ME and apple!!"

 

 

"Here it starts," Imogene said, bringing me back to the kitchen.  "My intention is that my body be cremated, with the ashes sent to ReNew Industries to be molded into a large pot in which either Golden Delicious or Granny Smith apples are to be seeded and the pot buried and planted somewhere on Axtel Mountain facing town. I do not desire a funeral but instead a reception open to everyone who knew me would be most appropriate. As those close to me will inform you, my favorite church songs are "Jesus Keep me Near the Cross" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". "

 

The knock on the door interrupted things. I looked at Imogene and then at the door. "I'll get it."

 

I walked to the door and opened it. 

 

"I'm sorry for your loss, Mike. Miss Barbara was a wonderful woman."

 

It was my friend Paris Berry, the benefactor of several delicious meals made by Barbara over the years.

 

"It's all around town. People are really sad. Some people are concerned about you, so they took up a collection to help pay for the Doll's...er...Barbara's medical bills. And Miss Cherokee made a pie for you, seeing how that's what you like the most besides coffee..."

 

I asked him to come in and that's when he saw Imogene.  I made the introductions.

 

"You look a lot like your sister in the face," Paris spoke. "You could be like cousins if you weren't sisters."

 

Imogene smiled and said "Thank you. That's a good compliment." I was grinning also but I didn't let Paris see my grin as I put the Librarian's pie into the refrigerator.

 

"I have to go. I just came by to deliver this money and to do the same for the pie. Mike, I hope you stay here and don't go away somewhere. I think that Miss Barbara would like that, but you do a lot of writing and promotin and things."  We walked back to the door and as Paris opened the door, he looked at me "Did she go well?  Was she in a lot of pain? I'm so gonna miss her meals..."

 

As I kept the door open for my friend, I replied "I didn't see her go but if she's like the queen I know, she passed peacefully. She just wanted to go home, I was told. She's home.  In my heart always, she's home. Talk with you another time Paris!"

 

I started to cry when Paris left the porch and walked out back to the main street.  I closed the door and walked back to Imogene.

 

"I don't know how you manage to do it but you always seem to be able to say the right words," she said.

 

----

 

Imogene said that the wake was loud and noisy, with Barbara's relatives and children actually showing up and crying over their loss. Ethan, Barbara's favorite child, came and sat beside his mother and on the other side of his aunt.  The minister read a prayer then read from a passage from one of my books. She loved it the most and it matched the sentiment of the day.

 

Everyone was satisfied and all dried up, Imogene told me, until Cathy Louise, all of eight years old, was told to go say goodbye to her grandmother.  Daryl, Barbie's next to the youngest son, did not handle informing the child well and when he told her to go up and say goodbye before she gets burned up, the child went ballistic -- and so did some of the other children. They all had to leave and the minister reminded everyone remaining that it is our souls which will leave our vessels -- that soul does not get buried nor does it get burned. It cannot and for those who believe in God Almighty, it never shall be destroyed but will wait for that great reunion with Jesus and God.

 

I of course, did not witness any of that. I had to hear the accounting from Imogene as we went to the best florist and then to the best arborist in that part of the state and purchased a small Granny Smith tree.  We carefully placed it in the bed of Imogene's truck and drove up on the state highway along the side of the mountain to a spot we thought would be seen from the town with binoculars.

 

I dug, singing aloud "Jesus Keep me Near the Cross" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" as the hole was large enough for the tree. While I was doing that, Imogene was placing the small buttercups surrounding the outside of the tree  As I placed the tree and Barbara's compressed remains into the hole, I started to cry.  It was really goodbye to a woman who truly had a lot of faith in me and what I was doing.

 

We surrounded the tree with chicken wire and I made a small sign attesting to Barbara's life and death. The sign was sealed so as not to be damaged too much by the rain, wind and small animals.

 

"This tree, and the buttercups surrounding it, is the resting place of Barbara (Barbie) Spivey - Walton", it read, giving Barbara's birth and death dates. "While these plants may someday die, she will continue to live in the hearts and souls of those she touched."

 

"Too many great memories," I said to Imogene, taking her hand as she picked up the small trowel she used to plant the buttercup plants. "I will never forget her and what she brought to me. I will always have a deep place in my soul for her."

 

We walked back to her truck, back to town, and back to life after Buttercup Barbie.