death

Learning how to die

April 24, 2020 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

“I seen this,” he told me, straightening his legs outward from the wooden bench as he hitched a thumb into the front pocket of his overalls. “Twiced, I did. Twiced was too many.”

He leaned forward and spit a runner of brown tobacco juice onto the pavement between us. Six feet, that’s where I kept it. That’s what they say is to keep six feet between you and anybody.

The little old lady at the register inside the 7-11 had reminded me of that just a few minutes before, and then she’d winked and said she didn’t like that six-feet rule, it being so hard to hug on anybody. Six feet, but I stepped back anyway when I saw that spit coming at me like a bullet.

I guess that’s how things are now.

“Twiced,” he said again.

I knew he was right, knowing him all my life. Daddy used to bring me here every Saturday morning. I’d ride with him to haul our trash to the dump, then we’d stop by the 7-11 for a Coke and a Zero bar.

Even then, all those years ago, that old man would be sitting on the bench in his overalls, chewing his tobacco as he looked out on the road and the houses and the mountains like it was all his own. Even then, all those years ago, he was old. Now he was older, with lines on his face like worn leather and a Dale Earnhardt hat that had seen too many sunny days under too many plowed fields. Weren’t no corona gonna keep him hid inside the house, he’d told me. Besides, it was just him out there on that bench.

He went quiet, no doubt thinking of the two times he had lived through a thing like this.

Sickness, he meant. The first time back in the early 60s or so, and then again going on a dozen years. Had it really been that long? I counted them off in my head and decided it was. Time truly does pass.

“Pammy,” he said. He smiled at the name the way a father will. And then he said “Rachel” in a quieter way with a mist in his eyes that showed in a brief tick of time the remnants of a heart torn in two, one half beating on an old wooden bench, the other half sunk in the ground across town at the cemetery beside the Church of the Brethren.

Anyone that old was bound to have seen death. Parents, siblings, friends, enemies. He had seen it closer than most, first holding his daughter Pammy as she took her last breath before the age of 10, struck down by scarlet fever. Then all those years later saying goodbye to his wife of nearly sixty years while the cancer wasted her away.

“I hear you old folk shouldn’t be about,” I said, wanting to steer his thoughts from sadness. And as I figured the best way to do so was to get him riled, I added, “Too frail, I reckon.”

He leaned forward and spat again, this time coming within an inch of my boot. Then he smirked at me. “Still whip you, boy.”

It was true. He could.

“Ain’t afraid a no germs,” he said. “Though I keep well enough away, for others more’n myself. Don’t nobody want to catch the death, but death’ll catch everybody in the end.”

I said, “Lord, Hubert, that’s a hell of a thing to say.”

He looked at me that way he always did, like I was the child and he was the wisened old man God kept around just to keep everybody in line, just to remind us all of the way things used to be back when the world made sense.

“You tellin me I’m wrong? That’s the problem. Folk forgot that. When’d folk forget that?”

I didn’t answer. Partly because I wasn’t sure what Hubert was asking. Also because I knew that was one of those questions he asked that required no answer, because he already had one.

“Come down here ever’day to sit on this bench,” he said. “Gets me away from the farm for a bit, and I like it. I like it here. Seein all these folk, talkin to them, seein how they gettin along.” He waved out toward the parking lot. “Now they don’t stop. Get out they cars with they masks and they gloves on, which ain’t no problem and I think is fine. Masks are, least ways. I wouldn’t be wearin no gloves myself.”

And he wasn’t. Not a mask, either. Hard to spit with a mask on.

“That don’t bother me, though. Know what bothers me? That look on’m all. They scared.”

“Reckon we should all be scared,” I said. “Scared means you’re careful.”

“Scared means scared,” he said, then waved out to all that pavement again. “That’s their problem. Half these people all worked up because up until a month ago, they all thought they was to live forever. Hear me? That’s what happens when folk get away from the land. They should come live with me a spell, spend some time on the farm. I see it all the time, death. My fields die every winter. Cows and pigs. Crop. Don’t nothin in this world last. Not even them mountains’ll last in the end. Ain’t supposed to. We all just passin through, man and woman and beast the same. Best thing you can do is keep that in mind. Think on it, like I do. You forget it, you got the biggest problem they is. Cause I seen it. Twiced.”

Hubert was right. Those old farmers usually are. I stood there with him a little while longer, keeping those six feet between us, chatting and watching those cars roll in and out. I saw people scared to death to go in and buy a gallon of milk, watched them sprint to the doors and back again like it was death itself chasing them. And it was, just like it chases us all.

I saw Hubert too, sitting on that bench and enjoying the sunshine like it was any other April in any other year. Laughing and joking and telling me of new calves born and that old tractor of his that was always acting up. Sitting there as calm and happy as he could be while to the rest of us it felt like the world was burning down.

All because we were the ones still learning how to live, and he was the one who’d spent his years learning how to die.

Gently down the stream

January 23, 2018 by Billy Coffey 19 Comments

My mother passed on early in the morning of January 15, 2018. Her loss will be felt far beyond our family and into our small town where she served as a nurse for thirty-three years. Her service was held this past Friday at a little mountain church not far from home. By the time my daughter sat at the piano and began the first notes of It Is Well, the pews and vestibule were filled to capacity.

She was a good woman and a better mother, the sort of person you could not be around without feeling a little better about yourself and your world. I’ve been asked to publish here the words I spoke that night. Feel free to read as much or as little as you like.

It’s strange, the things that come to mind in a time such as this. Mom wouldn’t want this to be a sad occasion, wouldn’t want us all to sit here long in the face and short in hope. She would rather us leave here smiling out from full hearts, knowing it is well. All is well.

That was my only aim in deciding what to talk about this evening. So when I sat down to decide what I wanted to share with you, I did so reverently. Seriously. I dug through scripture and studied the wisdom of church fathers and philosophers and writers, but the only thing that crept its way into my mind and refused to budge wasn’t a psalm or a proverb or a saying of some great person of faith, it was the beginning of a nursery rhyme:

Row, row, row your boat…

And I thought, Really? That’s all I can come up with?

So I prayed. I said, “God, give me some wisdom here. Give me some direction.”

And I waited. And He answered, “Gently down the stream…”

So I gave up on finding something profound and comforting to tell you, because a nursery rhyme is a ridiculous thing to talk about in a situation like this. I went downstairs and tried again later, and this time I decided to go straight to the source. “Mom,” I said, “I have to do this, now. There’s going to be a lot of people there, Mom, and I want to tell them what you need them to know.

And Mom said, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.”

And with that some old dusty drawer long untouched in my mind slid open and out fell a memory, one so clear and sharp that it could have happened mere hours ago instead of forty years—Mom and me riding down the road in her old yellow Camaro, singing that nursery rhyme.

Then other drawers flew open, other memories of other times we would sing that rhyme together: when she tucked me into bed and as we sat on the porch snapping beans, while I sat at the kitchen counter watching her make supper.

Mom taught me that song when I was five, maybe six, and I remembered that I became obsessed with it. Sang it all the time, and Mom would always sing it with me. We’d do it as a round, me starting off alone and Mom starting when I reached the word “stream,” the two of us trying to keep our parts right but never quite making it, leaving us both laughing by the end. I was so young that I thought that was the point of it all—to laugh. Now, I don’t think so. Now I think even those many years ago, Mom was getting us all ready for this night.

I’ve found myself these last days wanting to grab everyone I meet by the shoulders and give them a good shake, tell them “Don’t you know that none of this will last?” We all know that, don’t we? Nothing in this world lasts. But death is something we do our best to cast aside and try to forget. We run from it, ignore it, do all we can to stave it off.
But that doesn’t change the fact that life is a stream we all are set upon, and we begin every day in one spot along that stream and end it a little further along. Those two things are absolute and unchanging. There’s no going back against that current, no floating in place. We can only move forward bit by bit and little by little, on and on and on.

We are each given a boat to move along those waters. Some are large and fancy, others tattered and plain. Mom’s was tiny in some ways, having to hold only a small woman and a small town. She would tell you her boat was somewhat defective—to the day she passed on, she would laugh and blame all of her troubles on Amish inbreeding—but her boat was strong nonetheless, with a good rudder to keep her far from the shallows and the rocky places where so many become stranded. No, Mom lived in the deep part of the stream where the waters are calm and where she could look out and see the beauty and joy in all things. She rowed her boat straight down the middle all her life.

That is an important point to make. Mom rowed. You would perhaps take such a thing as that for granted—if you’re in a boat out in the middle of the stream, of course you have to row. But not all do. Some will stow their oars and sit back and let the current take them wherever, not caring where they go.

My mother was never like that. She was as driven a person as I have ever known, and she believed in work.

I’m not sure at what point nursing became her calling, but I’ve never known anyone more suited for her job. She spent long hours at the doctor’s office in Stuarts Draft, leaving early in the morning and often not returning until past dark, coming in tired and worn not merely from her labor but from shouldering the burdens of her patients. And she did that no matter who you were. When she called your name and led you back to an examining room she did so with a loving firmness—Mom was going to make you step on that scale whether you wanted to or not.

And when she asked you what was wrong, she felt your pains and worries as her own. She was the only person I’ve ever known who would ask, “How are you doing?” not out of social convention or politeness but of genuine concern. Mom wanted to know because that was the only way she could do her part in having you feel better, whether that was taking your temperature or drawing your blood. A smile and a dose of laughter. Or a prayer she would say for you at night that you never knew.
Her job was hard on us, on Dad and my sister and me. Amy and I grew up believing that to go to the store with Mom was some form of punishment. A simple trip for milk and bread to the IGA or the Food Lion would often stretch into hours because everyone knew her and she knew everyone.

There would be someone to greet her in the parking lot and another just inside the door, and then still more as we made our way down the aisles, patients and people from church and longtime friends, and she would make it a point to talk to them all no matter how busy she might have been, asking them how they were getting along and if there was anything she could do to help, because that’s who Mom was and who she remains.

She knew people, you see. Knew the human heart and mind and soul as well as any preacher. Her job taught her that. It didn’t matter how rich you were or how poor, what color you were or what your address happened to be, at some point you were going to get sick and need to see Dr. Hatter, and you’d have to go through my mother first.

She saw people who went down life’s stream bitter and those who went with anger. Some had lost the will to row at all. Still others had come to believe the stream we’re on was meaningless, and that there was only darkness at the end.
Mom always pitied the ones who believed such a thing. She came to understand early that the best way to row down that stream was gently. Gently down the stream. That is how Mom lived. That’s how she treated everyone, friend and stranger and family most of all. That’s how she taught her children, and her grandchildren. “You got to be nice to people,” she would say, “because you never know what they’re going through, and you might be the only bit of Jesus they’ll ever meet.”

That is what people know of Mom—her gentleness. But that certainly isn’t all. So many have called and written and spoke with me these last days about how she always seemed so happy. And she was. I stand here right now and say none of that was an act. But she wasn’t merely happy. She was joyful. Always quick to laugh with a unique ability to find humor in almost anything, and to me that will always be the one quality of hers that I will remember most.

You couldn’t be in a bad mood around her. There were so many times, especially as a teenager, when I would look at her and think, “What is wrong with you? How can you be so happy? Don’t you know how messed up everything is? Here I am barely managing to hang on, and you’re acting like things are great. I’m sulking, but here you are hopping merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily on your way.”

I’ll be honest. There was a time in my life when I was foolish enough to believe my mother lived in a tiny bubble and didn’t know much about the world. I was wrong about that. My mother knew more about living than I ever will. She hurt and endured and yet she remained joyful, and I believe that joy was present not in spite of those trials, but because of them. Mom came to know what so many of us never truly understand, and that is the power and grace and mercy of suffering. It is our nature to avoid hardships yet still they come, and because of our avoiding we don’t know how to deal with them. Mom did, and she did not flinch. She never once lost her joy.

And do you know why? How?

Listen to me, because this is important. This is what she wants you to hear.

Hard times, illnesses, trials, pain, grief. These things come to us all sooner or later. They come upon us like a storm that won’t pass, stripping away one layer of our lives after another until nothing is left but the soul, but those storms can go no further.

That’s what Mom found. That’s what she knew. The world can leave us bruised and maimed, but it cannot touch our souls. Our souls are God’s alone. They are always in His tender care.

And that brings me to my last point. I look out over this room in wonder that a single woman can touch so many lives. I’m not sure how, but I know why. Not long back I ran into a friend who wanted to know how Mom was doing. He said something that I’m sure was meant well. “What Sylvia needs,” he said, “is just a little more faith.”

That was all the proof I needed that he didn’t know my mother at all. You ask me how it was that Mom rowed her boat so well for so long, how she kept to the deep places in the stream so gently, so merrily, I’ll tell you it’s because her faith never wavered. Not once. We are gathered here in this place tonight, we sing her favorite songs, we pray and worship because that was the center of her life.

God never let her down. That is what Mom wants you to know. And she wants you to know that God will never let us down either. He is the one that made this stream we are on. His Son is the water and his Spirit is the current that leads us ever forward and all of it, every single bit of it, is for one purpose.

Love.

It would be easy to dismiss that right now. What I feel, what you feel, very likely doesn’t resemble love at all. And that’s okay.

I am reminded of the story of John the Baptist. At the end of his life he was imprisoned because Herod didn’t like the things John was preaching. John held on as best he could, wasting away a little every lonely day and dark night. Waiting. Praying. And when he couldn’t take anymore, he sent a few of his disciples to Jesus with a simple question.

“Are you the one, or should I wait for another?”

What John the Baptist was asking is this: Are you really the Son of God? Because I’ve spent all this time telling everyone you are, and I could really use you help here. Because I’m in trouble, and I won’t last much longer. Come and save me.”

So his disciples found Jesus, and do you know what Jesus told John’s disciples to go back and say?

Tell John that the blind can now see, the lame can walk, the lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead are being raised, and the poor have the good news preached to them.

That’s it.

You can imagine what John’s disciples were thinking. “Well, Jesus, that’s all just great. Really. But we’re just not too sure it’ll make John feel any better about things.”

So they turned to go away, and as they did Jesus said one more thing, saving it for the last because it’s so important: Tell John, he said, that “blessed is the one who does not fall away because of me.”

I’ve probably read that story a hundred times in my life, but the meaning of it never really clicked until this week. John had faith enough when his life was chugging along just fine, but there’s something about a prison cell and impending death that can bring doubts to the most faithful soul.

And that’s what this time feels like to so many of us right now. A cell. Four close walls and no window to see the light. Faith is easy when life is good and things are moving along exactly the way we think they should. But when they don’t? When our days become a prison like John’s, the world shrinks around us, and we are tempted to doubt the very things that are meant to give us strength, and hope, and faith.

Like John, we say, “You sure you’re up there, God? Because I really need you right now, and it feels like you’re not paying attention, and You’re not making much sense at all.”

And God says, “Of course I’m here, and I’m doing things so wonderful that you can’t even imagine them.” Then God says the same thing to us that Jesus said to John’s disciples. “Blessed is the one who does not fall away because of me.”

What does that mean? “Don’t lose faith just because you don’t understand it all. Don’t stumble because you don’t know why things have to be like this for now.”

Because I am working toward something incredible. Because this, all of this, this stream and this current, this life, isn’t all there is. Those we love and lose are never lost at all. They’re not gone, they’re just a little ways farther down the stream. They’re home, waiting for us, ready to celebrate our arrival.

All of that from a nursery rhyme Mom taught me as a boy. All of it true. And the great thing is the last part of that song is the best part, the most comforting. David said in Psalm 17, “when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.”
Did you get that? It isn’t passing on, its waking up.

David knew too, you see. He knew what Mom knew, and that is what Mom wants us all to know as well.

Life truly is but a dream. So row your boat. Go gently and merrily. Hold dear to Christ, and when you wake you will find what Mom has found: the face of God.

Release Day: Some Small Magic

March 14, 2017 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

Let me tell you about a kid I know, a boy named Abel.

In many ways he’s not unlike a lot of children around here, meaning Abel’s family is poor and he has only one parent at home. That would be Lisa, Abel’s momma. Lisa spends most of her time waiting tables down at the diner. The tips aren’t much but they provide. There’s groceries enough, along with the rent money for their little rundown house along a dead-end dirt road outside town. Abel stays home most times. He came into the world with a mild form of brittle bone disease. Any awkward step can leave Abel casted and laid up for weeks. He’s got to be careful in what he does. Lisa worries about her boy. There are times, many times, when Abel knows himself a burden his momma cannot bear.

But I don’t want you thinking everything in Abel’s life is bad.

Far from it. He doesn’t have much but believes that okay; very often the ones truly cursed in life are those who have more than they know what to do with. It’s hard for Abel to get around with those soft bones, but there isn’t much exercise involved in reading. That’s what he does mostly, Abel reads, which has turned him into maybe the smartest kid I’ve ever known. And you can say all you want about the way his classmates pick on him, Abel’s got someone who will do just about anything in the world for him. Dumb Willie Farmer might only be the janitor at the elementary school (and might only be Dumb, as the name implies), but you will find no better friend. Ask Abel, he’ll tell you.

And about that house: sure it’s nothing more than a rented little shack, but it’s set along the edge of a field where the trains pass three times a day. Abel loves his trains. He’ll limp out there every day to count the cars and wave at the conductor. His daddy’s gone, prayed into the sky before Abel was born, but some days Abel will wave at that train going by and imagine a daddy he never knew waving back.

I’m not sure how life would have turned out for Abel had he not gotten into trouble with his momma and cleaned their house as an apology. Have you ever noticed how quick things can change off one small decision? It happened to Abel that way. He even cleans up the spare bedroom in back of the house where Lisa says he should never go, and that’s where he finds his daddy’s letters—shoved into an old popcorn tin and addressed to Abel Shifflett of Mattingly, Virginia. Some of these letters are dated from years back, but the one on top? Sent three weeks ago. Abel can only sit and ponder it all. His daddy’s not dead. And more than that, one of those letters reveal where his not-dead daddy is: a place called Fairhope, North Carolina.

It’s one of those times when all of life’s murky darkness gets shot through with a beam of light.

Abel knows what he’s supposed to do. He’s going to find his daddy and bring him home. Because that will fix everything, you see? His momma won’t have to work so hard anymore. The two of them won’t have to struggle. If Abel can get his daddy home, they’ll all be a family. It’s all Abel has ever wanted.

The problem is how a ten-year-old boy with soft bones is supposed to make it all the way down to someplace in Carolina without getting found. It’s too long of a way, and there will surely be danger. But then Abel realizes he has a secret weapon in his friend Dumb Willie, and the two of them hatch a scheme to run away from home. They’ll hop one of the trains coming by Abel’s house and ride it as far as they need. It isn’t a terrible idea so far as ideas go, but one which doesn’t take long to go awry. Hopping a moving train at night is an act fraught with peril, especially with a broken little boy and his not-so-smart friend. Abel’s journey seems to end before it begins when he is crushed under the rails.

But this isn’t a tragic story—oh no. This is a tale of magic big and small, and Abel and Dumb Willie aren’t the only ones at the train that night. Death itself has come in the form of a young woman to take Abel on. One look at this broken boy is enough to convince her this is a thing she cannot do. Even Death carries a burden too great, having witnessed so many children having their lives ended in so many needless ways. And while both Death and Dumb Willie (who is not so Dumb after all) understand what has happened to Abel, Abel himself does not. He convinces the strange but pretty girl who saved them to join in their journey, after which he promises to let her take them home.

So it is that Death itself accompanies two boys along the rails through the wilds of West Virginia and eastern Tennessee, clear to the Carolina mountains. Looking for a father long thought dead. Looking for a little magic.

That is the story in short for my eighth novel, Some Small Magic, which is out today.

There’s more to Abel’s journey (trust me, a lot more), but the rest is for you to discover. Believe me when I say you won’t be disappointed.

It’s my favorite book so far, and you can pick it up by heading here.

In the meantime, should you find yourself at a railroad stop in central Appalachia, do yourself a favor. Scan those boxcars as they fly past. They might not be all empty. And if you see three faces peering out at the blue sky, send a little prayer their way.

Because those three are bound west, toward home.

Danny

August 12, 2016 by Billy Coffey 6 Comments

Danny was the one who told me about sex. He swore it was true but refused to confess the source of his information, instead repeating all the necessary steps in order, none of which involved kissing. That’s the reason I called it a lie. Everybody but an idiot knew you got babies by kissing.

But then Danny said, “Swear to God.”

That gave me pause. You didn’t go around saying something like that willy-nilly. Swearing to God was more than a promise, a lot more and maybe the most more there was. I took a step away in case the playground broke open beneath us at that moment, spewing hellfire.

He turned, looking to make sure Mrs. Harrison wasn’t around, and raised both hands. One became a circle, thumb resting across the nails. Danny made the other look to be pointing at something—a chubby forefinger caked in eraser shavings and dirt and what may well have been a booger. He shoved that finger through the circle made by his other hand and sort of wiggled it around in there.

“Like that,” he said.

“That’s just about the grossest thing I ever heard” is what I told him, which it indeed was, and I followed that with a lengthy dissertation concerning human anatomy and body function, namely that the two parts in question were meant for a variety of things but never THAT.

“Swear to God,” Danny said.

Maybe you could say right there was when a bit of my childhood ended—that tiny corner of the third grade playground where the slide emptied out and where two discarded tractor tires had been sunk into the earth to make a crude playhouse. Because Danny swore to God, and that’s something you didn’t do unless you were absolutely certain. And because if babies came from an act that disgusting, then the entire world was upside down.

It turned out, of course, that Danny was right. And like a lot of things in life, what I started out thinking was gross actually turned out to be anything but. For me that was proof learning can come from just about anywhere. Even an elementary school playground. Especially there.

Danny proved himself a fount of further information in the years following. Most all our classmates were good for learning something from, whether it was what I should do or what I shouldn’t. When you come up in a small town you come up with all the kids there are; I walked across a high school stage near a dozen years later to be handed a diploma and looked down to the same people I’d known for as much of forever as I could reckon. You can’t help but form bonds.

And then life happens. We all scattered. Some to college and others to work, and some who all but disappeared. I still see a few of my classmates around town. Others I haven’t seen for close to thirty years now. That’s how it goes. There are some in life who come along and stay in some manner or another, and ones who make only a brief appearance across the stage of your days and then exit, never to be seen again.

I received news of Danny’s death early this week. “Work related” was all the information I could gather. I found a picture of him online. He hadn’t changed much except for the beard, trimmed tight in high school but now long, a hybrid of an Amish man and Willie Robertson.

It’s funny how you can go years without thinking of a person and still feel a little hole left in you when he passes. Like a link in the chain that holds your yesterdays to your today has been broken, leaving a part of you to twist in the wind.

The rough and tumble boy I knew Danny to be back then became a man of deep kindness in the years after our graduation. He married and settled into living. Got washed in the blood of Jesus. Life can harden some as it moves over them. For others, it softens. I am glad to know it softened him.

I’m glad, too, of all the lessons he taught me. Even that gross one.

If you’ve a mind at some point in your busy day, do me a favor? Say a little prayer for Danny’s family. I’m sure they’d appreciate it. I wouldn’t bother saying one for Danny, though. Because he’s good now.

He’s good.

Trapped between worlds

April 26, 2016 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

For a while all the news was about the woman gone missing in the mountain wilderness two counties over.

It is rough land, beautiful for its remoteness and dangerous for the same. Hundreds have been involved in the search. Pleas have gone out from her family. Her car was found near a trail, abandoned.

Days passed. People hung onto hope, though that hope moved from one buttressed by faith to one guarded by optimism to, finally, a fragile sort of assurance.

Her remains were found last week, deep in the woods. Authorities have now said a suicide note had been found in the car.

It is a sad end to a sad story told too often. Those closest to her are now left to grieve and mourn and somehow move on. No doubt they will be haunted by questions of what sort of despair could wrench itself so deep and thoroughly into her that suicide came to be the only option, and why she felt she could not lean upon those closest for help. The pictures I’ve seen on Facebook show a bright smile and vivacious personality. They serve as a reminder to always approach others with equal measures of grace and kindness, because we may never know the battles they fight or the struggles they face.

Reading about this woman has gotten me thinking about all the others who came before her.

It may surprise you to know just how many people here have committed suicide over the years. It may surprise you more that a great many of them have chosen to take their lives not in their own homes but in the mountains that rise above our peaceful valley. They will often leave without a word or under some small pretext of an errand and drive, making their way along our streets a final time, passing friends and neighbors. They will climb the narrow backroads of the Blue Ridge and find a lonely place to walk, a spot to leave behind a world that somehow left them.

I’m not sure if anyone has ever questioned why it so often happens like that.

Ask the old timers around here, they’ll tell you folk have always gone into the mountains to die. Ask the farmers, they’ll say it’s proof man and woman aren’t so different than the animals, who themselves oftentimes sneak away to lonely places so they may breathe their last.

But I’ve always thought a deeper reason lay inside the broken hearts and exhausted souls of those who wish their living done.

To me it is as if they seek the bosom of the woods because the woods always embrace, and each step taken deeper into those ridges and hollers is a step away from their trials. And perhaps it is that they climb these mountains so they may glimpse a heaven they never imagined or never believed.

They say our mountains are filled with the spirits of those trapped between worlds, whose deaths were lonely and violent. Sometimes I believe those stories. But I pray that tired woman who passed on among the oaks and mountain streams has found a peace she somehow came to lack, just as I pray a bit of her remains behind to aid those who come after. To take their hands and gaze into their eyes and ask that they turn back.

For it is a hard world that holds us all, and broken, but there is beauty in the cracks.

A history of violence

June 3, 2015 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

skull pic There is a cave system in the Atapuerca Mountains of Spain that contains a bit known as Sima de los Huesos — “Pit of the Bones.” I’m sure it looks as wonderful as it sounds. Researchers and paleontologists have been combing through the pit, doing what researchers and paleontologists do. So far, they’ve discovered twenty-eight sets of remains dating back nearly half a million years. One particular set of remains stands out: the skull of a young adult, found in fifty-two pieces. Scientists pieced the skull back together and discovered something unexpected—two cracks, just above the left eye. The evidence was plain enough and old enough to define the skull as “the earliest case of deliberate, lethal interpersonal aggression in the hominin fossil record.”

In other words, scientists have dug up the oldest murder victim in history.

The person’s injuries (the researchers were unable to determine if the skull belonged to a male or female) seem the result of two brutal blows, each from a slightly different angle but each more than capable of puncturing the brain, the murder weapon most likely being a spear or an axe. We’ll never know which; the skull—or what is left of it—has been at the bottom of a forty-foot shaft for 4,300 centuries. Dropped there by either family or the murderer(s), creating at once both the earliest known funeral and the earliest known crime scene.

Think about that for a minute. Being murdered like that and then dumped in a hole, forgotten for hundreds of thousands of years. No name, no story, at least none we can know. And lest you fool yourself into thinking this sort of thing really doesn’t matter at all, I’ll remind you this person had a father, a mother, likely siblings. He or she may have been in love, may have been married, may have even had children of his or her own. The brain encased in this broken skull was just like ours, capable of higher thought and language. It could ponder and wonder. It knew love and fear.

I bet he had dreams that weren’t so different from our own, a nice place to live, some sort of comfort, peace. I’d wager she had thoughts of growing old, plans for the future. Unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be. Somehow, someway, whether his fault or hers or whether another’s, death came with horrific violence.

Sad, if you ask me. No matter who it is or how long it’s been.

But here’s the thing that stuck most with me: we’ve been doing this sort of thing to each other for a very long while. We’ve been bashing skulls and chopping off limbs and taking lives since the beginning. We like to think of ourselves as evolved, sophisticated, mature. We’re not, at least not deep down. Deep down we’re still savages, savages whose better natures are constantly pushed aside for what we want, when we want, and exactly how we want it. If we could somehow interview the person responsible for the two holes in this skull, my guess is he or she would sound very much like anyone on the news: “It’s not my fault.” “They deserved it.” “I couldn’t help myself.”

We’ve come a long way in the last 430,000 years. Made great strides, done amazing things. In that time we’ve mastered wind and fire and water, but not ourselves. We’ve plumbed ocean depths and the tallest mountains, but we have yet to discover just how low or high we can all reach. Sometimes, I wonder if we ever will.