I remember the first time I heard of death.
I was 5 I think.
We were in Iowa. I must’ve been on the couch in the living room from the view of the memory. The blue one.
My mother got the call. The phone was on the wall just outside the galley kitchen. My grandmother’s second husband had died. I’m not sure if I overheard the call or if she told me after. But I remember knowing what death was. What it meant. That my grandfather was gone. I think my mother was crying, the memory is old, blurry, and it was been many years since that woman cried much.
We lived among farmland. Cornfields for days.
So when I saw cemeteries for the first time, I called them people farms. Because you put people in the ground.
But I remember knowing what death was.
My brother was around the same age when my father’s father passed.
And Brean kept asking when Pops was coming back.
When he’d see him again. No one had the heart to tell him.
I never asked for Grandpa Jim.
Because I already knew.
Laughs and Lobotomies 