#1: Across the Street

Oct. 16, 1995, Central Pennsylvania

By KENDAL A. RAUTZHAN

The morning my husband died of cancer at our home, the first person to arrive was the undertaker. The second was a neighbor I had never met; a neighbor I had chided.

My neighbor’s house was in shambles, and overgrown grass and weeds were everywhere. Her scraggly looking children ran wild among the broken-down cars and assorted junk in their front yard.

I had heard that her husband had recently been released from jail. He ran a home auto-painting business, and I worried that he disposed of his chemicals illegally, in the ground, contaminating our shallow well and drinking water. I just wanted all of them to disappear.

Not more than 30 minutes after the hearse had pulled away, someone knocked at my door. There stood a small, gaunt woman wearing a threadbare dress and a thin sweater that barely kept out the autumn chill. I was in a stupor and had no idea who she was.

“I live in the house across the street,” she said, “in the hollow. I saw the hearse. I’m sorry about your husband.” Handing me a platter covered with aluminum foil, she said, “I thought you could use this. It’s a turkey, to help feed your kids.”

A whole cooked turkey - the very food, I am sure, that she and her family needed for many meals. And yet she gave it to me and my children.

To this day, 16 years later, I am at once humbled at this woman’s generosity and ashamed of my attitude.

This woman must be an angel, for just when my world was collapsing, there she was with a precious gift for the one who had judged her so wrongly, judged without knowing her at all.

How very wrong I was.

Kendal Rautzhan is a nationally syndicated children’s book review columnist and a freelance writer on various topics for the newspaper and magazine industry.

#2: Cremains

Summer of 1996, Indianapolis, Indiana

By JOYCE WOLF

It took weeks after my husband died for me to force myself to go to the funeral home to collect his ashes. Finally, I couldn’t stand the guilt of leaving Tim alone on a shelf somewhere in Flanner and Buchanan’s back rooms.

I went alone, girding myself to be the spunky widow, though my legs felt shaky, and so did my voice.

“I came,” I told the funeral director, “for my husband’s ashes.”

He nodded sympathetically and invited me to have a seat. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said, “with your husband’s cremains.”

“His what?” I stared, not certain that I’d heard right.

“Cremains.” He was very serious and pronounced everything slowly for me. “Cremated remains.”

Cremains. It made me snicker, sounding like “tater tots” or something from McDonald’s. I started laughing when he left the room but was in control when he returned and handed me a box in a tasteful artificial-wood grain. My husband in a cardboard box.

“Cremains,” I said. So silly, so bizarre, it made me laugh again. Crying, too, but laughing when I took the box.

The spunky widow cracks up.

Joyce Wolf lives with her dog, Zoe, in Austin, Texas.

Posted by Common Ties on Monday, December 10th, 2007 | Email This Post

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