One Long September Week

Dear Friend,

I’ve been trying to write this letter for a week. September 8th came, then September 11th, then September 13th, and every year those three dates seem to belong together in my head. I thought about writing on each one of them this year, but I didn’t. Sometimes the stories that mean the most are the ones I have to carry around for a few days before I can figure out how to tell them.

My Pawpaw was born on September 8, 1913, and this year would have been his 113th birthday. In 2001, he turned 88, and Mama, my aunt, and I went to the nursing home in Columbus, Georgia, to celebrate his birthday with him. I was 17 years old, and I had absolutely no idea when we left that day that it would be the last time I ever saw him. Twenty-five years later, I think about that visit every September.

The 17-year-old part hits differently this year because Bubs is 17 now. I look at him and think, My God, THAT’S how old I was. Seventeen feels pretty damn grown when you’re the one doing the being seventeen, but looking at it from 42? That is somebody’s baby. 😂 And apparently I needed to have a 17-year-old of my own before I could really understand how young I was sitting in that nursing home room with Mama and my aunt that day.

By then, Pawpaw had been bedridden in a nursing home for about eighteen years. He had Paget’s disease and cataracts, and he couldn’t see, but Lord, that man could worry. He was a devout Catholic, and I mean DEVOUT, so I imagine there was probably a whole lot of praying mixed in with that worrying too. We still have his rosaries packed away with his reading glasses, and there’s something about those two things being together that gets me every time I think about it. He eventually couldn’t see to use those glasses, but we kept them anyway, because some things you just keep.

Something strange happened during that last birthday visit, and Mama, my aunt, and I have talked about it many times over the years. Pawpaw started asking us about Madalyn O’Hair and something about Dulles. I don’t remember his exact words after twenty-five years, and I’m not going to pretend that I do, but I remember those names because none of us had a fucking clue what he was talking about. 😂 Mama didn’t know why he was bringing them up, my aunt didn’t know, and seventeen-year-old me damn sure didn’t know. It was just one of those weird conversations you shrug off and go on about your day.

That day was September 8, 2001.

Three days later, September 11th happened, and suddenly one part of that strange conversation felt a whole lot stranger. American Airlines Flight 77 had taken off from Washington Dulles International Airport before it was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon. I am NOT telling you that Pawpaw somehow predicted September 11th, because I don’t know what the hell he meant that day. Maybe he had heard something on television, maybe his thoughts had wandered from one subject to another, maybe the Dulles he was talking about had absolutely nothing to do with the airport, or maybe it was simply one of those coincidences that means nothing until something happens afterward. We will never know, but I can promise you Mama, my aunt, and I remembered that conversation a whole lot differently three days later.

I remember exactly where I was when September 11th began unfolding. I was seventeen and getting ready for work that morning. I had gotten out of the shower and heard the news talking about a plane that had hit one of the World Trade Center towers, so I sat down on the couch and started watching. At that point, I don’t think any of us really understood what we were watching yet. A plane had hit a building, which was horrible, but we didn’t know what it meant.

Then I watched the second plane fly into the second tower, and THAT was the moment seventeen-year-old me knew some weird shit was going on. I grabbed the phone and called Mama at work. She was already there, and in my seventeen-year-old mind, Mama needed to know what I had just seen. I don’t remember everything I said to her, but I remember needing to call her because whatever this was, it wasn’t just some horrible accident anymore. Some shit was goin’ down.

Like most Americans old enough to remember September 11th, I remember the television being on constantly afterward. Pawpaw couldn’t see the television in his nursing home room in Columbus, but his roommate could. They shared a TV, and his roommate kept the news on, so even though Pawpaw couldn’t see the images the rest of us were watching over and over again, he could hear every bit of it. He heard about the planes, the buildings, the people who were missing and dead, the fear, the confusion, and all the speculation about what might happen next.

And man, did my Pawpaw worry. Our family has always believed that hearing everything happening in the world that week worried him right on out of this one. Obviously, I can’t tell you that’s medically what happened; Pawpaw was 88 years old, had been bedridden for eighteen years, and his body had already endured more than most. But we knew the man, we knew how deeply he worried about things, and two days after September 11th, on September 13, 2001, Pawpaw died. He had turned 88 only five days earlier.

On September 13th, I was sitting on that same couch when the phone rang. This time, I wasn’t calling Mama. Someone was calling me. It was an extended former family member I knew only by name, and I still remember the words: “Mr. Layfield has passed away.”

And then I had to pick up that same phone and call Mama at work again.

Two days earlier, I had called Mama from that couch to tell her the world had gone wrong.

This time, I had to call and tell her that her daddy was gone.

So September 11th has always carried two kinds of grief for me. There is the grief we share as a country for the thousands of people who left home on an ordinary Tuesday morning and never came back, and for all the families whose lives were permanently divided into before that morning and after it. Their stories deserve to be remembered, and September 11th belongs to them in a way it does not belong to my family. But tucked right beside that enormous piece of history in my own memory is a much smaller family story about an old man in a nursing home in Columbus, Georgia, who couldn’t see what was happening on television but could hear every bit of it.

September 8th was Pawpaw’s birthday. September 11th was the day the world changed. And September 13th was the day we’ve always believed Pawpaw’s worried old heart decided it simply couldn’t bear the world it was hearing about anymore. Somewhere between those three dates sits seventeen-year-old me, on the same couch with the same telephone, calling Mama at work twice. The first time to tell her something terrible was happening in the world. The second time to tell her something terrible had happened in ours.

Maybe that’s why those three dates have never existed separately in my mind. Twenty-five years later, they’re still one long September week to me. And maybe that’s why I couldn’t make myself write this letter on any one of them. I needed September 11th to be September 11th, and I needed Pawpaw’s story to be Pawpaw’s story.

Because Pawpaw was so much more than an old man in a nursing home, and I don’t think seventeen-year-old me understood that yet. Back then, Pawpaw was just Pawpaw. I knew he was old, I knew he was sick, and I knew we went to the nursing home to visit him. I didn’t yet understand how much LIFE had already happened inside that man before I ever came along.

And Friend, that man had lived one hell of a life. He had survived being shot in the head as a little boy in Eufaula when everybody thought he was going to die, and the bullet stayed in his brain for the rest of his life—we still have the X-rays to prove that wild-ass story. 😂 He grew up to become what I now realize was basically an original Mr. Mom and an OG homesteader in Columbus, raising his family along with rabbits and quail for meat. He loved Alabama football and Bear Bryant, took the city bus and walked to Krystal once a month on payday to bring hamburgers home for the family, and apparently believed decorating a Christmas tree was a weeklong solo undertaking that required his complete artistic control.

But those are stories for other letters, because Pawpaw deserves more than one.

This one is about the last time I saw him, and I think being Mama to a 17-year-old now has made me see that day differently. At seventeen, I didn’t know I should memorize the room or pay closer attention to the sound of his voice. I didn’t know I should file away every ridiculous question he asked or look at his hands a little longer or somehow make an ordinary birthday visit feel important enough to remember every second. I thought we were just going to see Pawpaw for his birthday, because that’s exactly what we were doing.

That’s the thing about the last time, though. Most of the time, nobody tells you that’s what it is. You go see Pawpaw, sit around his room with Mama and your aunt, listen while he asks about people and places you don’t understand, tell him happy birthday, and then you go home. It feels completely ordinary right up until enough time passes for you to realize you’d give almost anything to have one more ordinary day exactly like it.

So yes, I’m a few days late telling you about Pawpaw. His birthday passed, September 11th passed, and the anniversary of his death passed before I finally sat down and got the words out. But I don’t think family stories have expiration dates, and maybe remembering somebody doesn’t have to happen on exactly the right square on the calendar. Maybe it matters more that we remember them at all, and that somebody keeps telling the stories after the people in them are gone.

Pawpaw was here. He worried too much, he prayed, he kept rosaries close, and he lived a whole damn life full of stories that seventeen-year-old me hadn’t yet learned to appreciate. Once upon a time, on September 8, 2001, I went with Mama and my aunt to celebrate his 88th birthday, and I had no idea I was saying goodbye. Twenty-five years later, with a 17-year-old of my own, I understand just how young I was and just how precious that ordinary visit really was.

I’m just damn glad we went.

And I’m damn sure not finished telling you about Pawpaw. ❤️

Love,

Miss Sas ☕🌻