The Board

*Note: I've Been away from the blog for a spell. Life happens. Thanks to all who pestered me for more and the many who've read my previous posts. Hope you enjoy.


This Weeks Song - Half Mile Hill - David Nail. This one was written by my friend Rick Brantley and  recorded by both David and Rick. It's nice to know talented people. Check them out on itunes and their websites. Rick has a new album and podcast coming out this week. Check out Facebook.com/rickbrantleymusic and discover a great talent. When he blows up, you can say you heard him first (unless you are in my presence). I just happened to be listening to his beautiful song when I recently drove by the Board.

The Board

He stood and made his way to the front of the packed chapel. This big and quiet man, this man of faith, this man I'm proud to call friend and brother-in-law rose to deliver his father's eulogy. Mike Turner has never been considered a dynamic public speaker. He is a trained accountant and great businessman, always deliberate and quiet, one who listens and is capable of cutting to the chase with a single well-considered response. However, I never thought of him as possessing great oratorical gifts. I've always respected his mind, appreciated his intellect, admired his faith, and welcomed his wisdom. So there I sat, excited to see two worlds collide in my quiet friend's public reflections on the father he adored.  His first words upon arriving at the microphone warned those gathered that he would be reading his remarks; Not a promising start to what would turn out to be perhaps the best eulogy I've ever heard. Mike captured his father's spirit and love of family in a way that only Monford Turner's son could. It was beautiful. With a scientific precision and order that defines Turner men, he chronicled the life of a good and generous Christian man. Then came the unexpected breaks for emotion. He told us what his father meant to him - the lessons taught for sure, but more importantly, the example he'd been as a husband, father, and man of faith. He covered details of his life, but what was intended to be a man's recounting of another man's life became peppered with glorious moments of a little boy simply talking about his dad. Perhaps it can't be helped when you love and respect someone like that. If you didn't know Monford Paul Turner, you would have known and loved him after hearing the ten minutes of his son's perfectly written and exquisitely told assessment. The words stood testament to and reminded me of how we are shaped by those who pass through our lives. The following day Mr. Turner was driven beyond The Board to his final resting place. The Board and I are old friends.

It's made of wood, painted black, and stands in the shade of a small tree. The white letters adorning its facade are interchangeable. The Board silently, and without a hint of apology, greets all visitors and future permanent residents of Highland Memorial Cemetery. On the last occasion I rolled by, it simply read Johnson and Hinton, announcing the ascendance of two souls and the arrival of their earthly vessels to reside forever beneath the East Tennessee clay.  I've entered many times, more often since that day in the Fall of 2000 when I buried my wife and the mother of my children. The Board always has at least one name. Always. Beyond it are many I've known and several I've loved.

Betsy Coffey became my mother's best friend during a time when a friend was desperately needed. The Coffeys lived next door to my parents when I came along in 1968, the first-born child. Betsy already had two boys of her own. While my mother was equipped with the love, dedication, and the enthusiasm required of a new mother, she was, as most first-time mothers, ill-equipped when it came to the practicalities of caring for a new baby boy. Betsy was a steel magnolia planted at the end of Columbine Circle in Rocky Hill. She was a West Tennessee beauty, a farm girl with an infectious laugh and a dominating, irreverent personality. She became my mother's sounding board, confidant and coach in all matters, including dealing with mother-in-laws, managing a grocery budget, and keeping other women away from their men. They were twenty-somethings without two nickels to rub together, married to law school buddies.

My very first memory in life is standing in Betsy's Volkswagon Bus as we made our way to get ice cream on a hot summer day. In the world of a child, can you tell me something that holds more excitement? I couldn't have been 4-years old when I stood between the seats of the hippie bus transfixed by the woman behind the wheel, her beautiful blonde hair in a bandanna. She laughed and barked out orders to her boys telling all of us to sit down as the bus pulled onto Northshore Drive. Seat belts? I don't think so. She steered with her left hand, using her right to shift gears and hold onto a lit cigarette, its smoke pierced by the voice of a young Michael Jackson declaring "I Want You Back" via eight-track tape. The notes of the Motown sound played in harmony with the laughter of little boys and their mothers and the unforgettable rumble of rear-mounted German ingenuity. When I let the memory take me I can still smell the mix of gasoline and unfiltered cigarettes, a scent that will always conjure feelings of excitement and adventure. I know now that Betsy was the type of woman men write songs about, a poet's muse. She had a raspy commanding voice, a youthful and beautiful face and a rare confidence that captivated anyone in her presence. I cannot for the life of me remember that voice without the beautiful sound of my mother's laugh.

I was in love with and continue to crave the sound of my mother's laughter. It brings joy to anyone who hears it and has the power to heal. Betsy always made her laugh - not a polite laugh, not the laugh drawn in the company of important people - but the laugh of unrestrained and unguarded joy that comes only in the presence of a dear friend. I was never around Betsy in my life that I didn't smile, too. She continued to be one of my mother's best friends long after Columbine Circle was in all of our rear view mirrors.  Betsy was the best kind of friend - one that not only brought laughter but longed to serve. She kept and tended to my young children on that terrible Wednesday in 2000 when "Pryor" made its debut on The Board. She insisted - and when Betsy insisted, you didn't question her - on staying with my young children as the rest of my family and friends made their way to Highland Memorial on an overcast October day to lay my wife to rest on a hill. When Betsy made her journey beyond The Board for the last time 10 years later,  felled by a cancer she'd fought for years, I sat by my mother as she succumbed to the unguarded and beautiful grief that comes only in the company of a lost friend like Betsy Coffey. It was the only time Betsy made her cry.

My grandmother, Louise Pierce Hammer, had a difficult life. She was a frail and generally unhappy person, but I never knew it. None of her five grandchildren knew it. Her name adorned The Board in 1991, the same year I graduated from college. She loved me. She was the greatest example of the transformative power of becoming a grandparent. It returned her to the joyful and sweet soul she was always meant to be, one that poured out God's word and a lifetime of love whenever we were around. When I was in her presence, the light in her eyes belied the years of hardship she'd suffered. She never talked about the husband who left her with two young girls to raise or the health problems that plagued her in the last decade of life. She threw the pitches a grandfather should have pitched, once taking a line drive from the end of my bat to the face, leaving her glasses broken and her face badly bruised. She drove like a NASCAR driver without a sense of direction. She had such an abiding faith in the Lord that she trusted He would deliver us to our destination in one piece regardless of what the traffic laws required or driving conditions dictated. It was during one of these trips that I first found and secured a seat belt.

I think of her most often these days when I'm struggling with sleep. She lived on a busy street when I was a little boy. In the quiet darkness she'd put me to bed on those nights I was privileged to stay over and together we'd sing "Jesus Loves Me." Before I'd drift off we took turns making up stories about the shadows that formed on the walls of her bedroom when headlights of passing cars passed through the blinds. The power of imagination, the enjoyment of story-telling and an abiding love of one's savior are lessons she bestowed, perhaps without even knowing it. It is a hearty inheritance.

Mr. Turner joins many others I've known and several I've loved beyond The Board. I don't list them here and I don't visit them all when I go, but there is always one more who calls to me before I leave.

I never met Lily Claire Felton. She is the smallest of my loves beyond The Board. When my good friend, Johnna Comer Felton, delivered triplets just three months after Cheryl died, all who knew her and her wonderful family rejoiced. I visited Johnna and her husband, John, in the hospital in the midst of my dark days, searching for a bit of happiness in the joyous gift of children delivered to good friends. After my visit and prompt return to grief, I was shocked and saddened to hear that Lily, the smallest of the three Felton triplets, tragically succumbed to an unexpected infection only 18 days into her life. 18 days. I was further astonished a few days later when I realized she had traveled beyond The Board and resided only 40 yards from Cheryl. I placed one rose from Cheryl's bouquet on her grave that cold February day. It has been a secret ritual I've repeated for 14 years.

When I decided to write this piece I called my dear childhood friend, Johnna. I'd lost touch and wanted to tell her how her daughter's death impacted me, reveal my secret relationship, and learn how my tiny friend's family was fairing in her absence. Facebook is an amazing thing but it rarely affords us a true view of our friends. It can never replace human interaction and the blessing of sitting and talking with a dear friend. Johnna and I had lunch and discussed those beyond The Board. We shared laughter and tears, our beliefs about those we've loved and lost, and the well-being of our families. She spoke of our shared season of grief and of the years that have followed. She spoke with great affection for the two children who survived (Hannah and Kate) and the two who followed (Sadie and Jack). She spoke with palpable love of her family and the everlasting hole in the family portrait created by the absence of my little friend. People who have lost a child deserve a special place in the scrolls of the grieved. I know many. I'm so amazed by those special people who have found their footing in a world that no longer includes their child. Lily's death made Johnna an overprotective mother. She knows she says "no" too much. She's allowed. We spoke of loss, the kind you hold close for no one to see, so close that few remember you have been brought to your knees in this life. She told me about a simple lone birthday cake that sits on the table with the one for the surviving triplets on each birthday and her sacred and sweet belief that a found penny is a smile and a "Hello" from her sweet baby beyond The Board.  Then, I told her about Lily's lessons for me. Simply put, Lily taught me then, in February of 2001, and every time I visit, to get over myself. She taught me death does not discriminate, that the pain of others we walk among cannot be compared, calculated or underestimated. Johnna also reminded me of a simple universal truth - nothing abides like a mother's love.

Lily's siblings - Sadie (11), Hannah (14), Kate (14) and Jack (9)

I go beyond the board to honor one and remember others. I go because it is where I'm reminded of their impact on my life and feel them push me to the point where my thoughts of them cannot remain confined to that hallowed ground. I am pushed to find them in those places they truly reside - in the eyes of my children, in the sweet sound of my mother's laugh, in the darkness of a sleepless night's shadow, or in what others simply think of as lost pennies on the ground.