Our Heart

246

Our Heart

by

Brian L. MacLearn

Introduction

In May of two thousand and four, I lost the one person who always had a strong belief in me. He loved me when I found it hard to even tolerate myself. He never criticized me or raised a single hand to me the whole time I was growing up; instead, he taught me more by example than even he knew. There were many days when I wished he was my father. In a lot of ways he was, even though he was just Grandpa Jake. When my father left me, it was my Grandpa who stood in and donned the robes of fatherhood. Even though the three of us shared the same last name, Owens, the similarities between us stopped there, or so I thought they did. Funny how life won’t let you run away, always finding you and reminding you of who you are and where you came from.

Coming back to my small hometown in Iowa was not something I looked forward to. When I turned eighteen, I’d made my life, “the road of life,” as I came to think of it. Today is my twenty-fifth birthday and, rather than celebrating with friends back in San Diego, I find myself staring into the coffin of the last person I still held claim to as my family. It wasn’t always like that. There was a time when my father and I got along just fine, actually better than fine. We did all the things fathers and sons do; we played sports together, went fishing, and he even taught me how to hunt. He took me camping every summer, and I never imagined there would come a time when we were not close. When I was fourteen, the storybook happiness ended. My mom died in an auto accident and things changed forever between my father and me. My mother was the glue that held our family together, and it dissolved when she died.

Randall Owens, my dad, couldn’t get over the grief. He chose to start down the path of least resistance, alcohol. He tried to drink the hurt away, and when he wasn’t drinking, he was thinking about it. I did my best as a son to be there for him, but at fourteen, struggling with my own feelings of loss, my efforts were like a small drop of rain lost on a big pond. Grandpa Jake and Grandma Sarah Owens were always there. They became my stability and, in many ways, my salvation. When Dad lost his job and disappeared, I expected the worst, but he came home and his eyes were clear and his mind coherent for the first time in a long while.

He apologized first to me and then to his parents. Without any emotion, he informed us that he would be leaving. I’d be staying with Grandpa and Grandma till he worked things out. By this time, I was nearing my sixteenth birthday and couldn’t understand what possessed him to think that it was okay to leave me here and go off on his own. I didn’t understand then and I still don’t today. I waited days and then weeks, and then months, and still he didn’t come back.
It seems I’ve always found a reaso
n
not to
forgiven him, because I needed him
to be more than he was
. For the longest time, my Grandma Sarah would comfort me, telling me it would all work out. My Dad missed me and he’d be home soon. One day, she quit telling me and that’s when I knew he wasn’t ever going to come back. Not long after that, on the way home from school, I saw a for-sale sign in the front yard of my house. I had felt many things, but seeing that sign turned my hope into anger, and I cursed my father for making me feel this way. Much of my stuff had long ago been moved out of my old house. I spent an emotional weekend as my Grandparents and I loaded the furniture from my home and piled it into their basement.

I was forever changed. I’ve never lost that defining moment in my life, when I knew with all certainty I would now be on my own. I loved my grandparents, but they couldn’t ease the pain bottled up inside of me. There were times when I thought it would consume me. Only one person found a way into my heart and began to stem the tide of self-destruction. Her name was Allison Dittmer. Allison was a year behind me in school and happened to be a neighbor to my grandparents. Allison hadn’t lived in town long when we went to the town’s summer festival together. It was during a three-legged race, with a yellow ribbon tied around our legs, that I first discovered she was more than I deserved and someone I needed desperately. She soon became the guiding light that drew me out of the darkness. She gave me hope, a chance for a better future, and filled the void left by my father leaving and the death of my mother.

I really wish this was the end of my story, but instead, it is only a brief opening on a much larger and dramatic recollection of memories spanning three generations of the Owens men. It started the moment My Great Aunt Vicky called to tell me Grandpa Jake was in the hospital and he was dying. The numbness accompanied me all the way back to Cedar Junction, Iowa. Like a child sent to his room, I had run away, only I didn’t just go around the block. I went where I thought home couldn’t find me. It might be befitting, considering I’d made my life one of song, but I was sure I was coming home to “face the music.”

Every story has a beginning, so they say. I look into the serene face of my departed grandfather and wonder. What is my story? How have I gone so far and still been nowhere? And the defining question we all ask when faced with death…what have I done with my life? Did I mention there is an important tree that binds all of the Owens men together? I didn’t think so, but you’ll understand it all when you hear the song…

Chapter 1

It’s never easy to lose someone you love and even worse when you end up becoming the family orphan. No, I’m not really an orphan; my father is still alive, but to each other we have ceased to exist. He still refers to me as Jason and, in return, I don’t call him anything. Once, a couple of years back, he made an effort to reconnect with me. After thirty minutes of trying to convince me that he had his life back together, and after doing his best song and dance, he tried to make amends for the way he left and for the horrible father he had been. In his best, sorry voice, he attempted to tell me how he should have never left town and should have done so much more to realize he was not alone in his suffering. The past was past and couldn’t we put it behind us and start over? Somewhere in his canned speech, I lost interest. He didn’t take my rejection well at all. I can honestly say I felt a small amount of redemption in watching
the disappointment on his face
as I shut the door. I wondered if he now completely understood what it felt like to be left alone.

Randall Owens, my father, walked out of my life when I was sixteen. I hadn’t heard anything from him for nearly six years, and my life was fine without him. I didn’t see where he fit into it anymore or why, after all the things that had happened, he suddenly wanted my understanding. It may be a hard thing to say, but I could no longer find feelings of loss for the man who had once been the center of my universe growing up. There was a time when we were extremely close. The three of us were the typical small town, Iowan family. My mom, Emily Carter Owens, was great. Because of her love and spirit, I found belief in myself and a strong desire to sing. When my mom sang in church, the pastor would get tears in his eyes. I like rock and roll
and upbeat country
, but I have to admit, when my mom broke into one of her songs of praise, she could flat out put the hush on a room. During the spring and summer, she was always in high demand to sing at weddings and celebrations. Many couples would even try to get her to travel far away, she was that good. She rarely said no, singing was sharing, and I believe she thought it was her purpose to share the talent that God had given her. She had a heart of gold, which only knew how to give, and I admired her for it.

Randy, my dad,
couldn’t sing
a lick, and it used to drive him crazy when my mom would sing. It wasn’t because he was jealous of her. He would just get lost in the fact that Mom had the voice of an angel, and his voice could make shiny pipes rust. The three of us as a family were as average as average could be. We didn’t have a big house or lots of money. As far as I knew, we got along with most everyone; you’d better anyway when you live in a town of less than two thousand people. Like they say, “news travels fast in a small town.” When I broke Mrs. Eldridge’s window playing baseball, down at the city ballpark, my folks knew it before I even got home to tell them. In my defense, I want to say, I think it’s just plain silly that Janet Eldridge’s house sits so close to the third base line. I hit a perfectly normal foul ball, which just happened to catch the light pole at the right angle before it shattered her front window. If you ask me, her house was just asking to be hit someday.

So many memories of the past keep fighting for space in my head, sitting here in the same church that my mom would hold captive with her performances. I didn’t have a choice; I had to leave the visitation being held for my Grandfather Jake, across the street at the funeral home. I desperately needed someplace where I could grab some quiet and solitude. Ever since I’d arrived back in town, my emotions and memories had been getting the best of me.

My Great Aunt Vicky, who was my Grandfather Jake’s younger sister, was the one who finally tracked me down out West. I don’t know how she did it. San Diego, California, is a long way away from Cedar Junction, Iowa, but somehow she got word to me that my Grandpa Jake was on his deathbed. Nothing else could have caused me to react any quicker; I was on the first flight out to go home. If there was one man who I would attempt to move a mountain for, it was my grandfather. It wasn’t even six months ago when I sat here, in this very same pew, with Grandpa Jake as we mourned the loss of Grandma Sarah. The day we laid Grandma to rest was the first time I had prayed in a very long time. When they lowered the lid on Grandma’s casket for the last time, my grandfather had the same look in his eyes I still so vividly remember my dad having, the day my mom was buried.

Grandpa Jake was seventy-six and, “fit as a fiddle,” as he always liked to tell me. If there was ever a person who resembled the
energizer bunny
, with a fairly large bald spot, it would be my grandfather. He spent his life on the go, and I only wish I might be lucky enough to have half of his energy and mobility when I achieve his age.

When I got into town yesterday, Grandpa looked like a fiddle that had been abandoned and left out in the rain and sun to slowly rot away. His doctor told me that in all truth, he was dying of natural causes. Grandpa Jake had a bout of pneumonia a couple of months back, and he just couldn’t seem to shake it out of his lungs. Because of it, his respiratory system was slowly failing, and it didn’t have the strength to keep attacking the virus. Later, with his body at its most vulnerable, he had a severe heart attack. That took the remaining wind out of his sails and left him unable to speak. He now lay nearly comatose on the hospital room bed. It was only going to be a matter of time until Grandpa Jake would succumb and end the war he could not win.
When the
doctor left me sitting in the room by myself, I didn’t know what to think. My Great Aunt Vicky came to my rescue. She took me down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee.

“Honey,” she said to me, “your grandpa never got over losing Sarah. She was his whole life and without her I believe he just didn’t have the desire to keep pushing! When he caught that bad cold in January, he never got over it. It just kept on getting worse and worse. It didn’t help him any that he’d kept on visiting that tree of his, no matter what the weather was like. For the life of me, I don’t know why it was so important for him to be out in damp weather. He knew it wasn’t good for him. I couldn’t convince him and neither could anyone else. Your Grandpa was stubborn in that way!”

“Oh yes, the tree,” I responded, as if it was the answer to the ultimate million-dollar question. The old oak tree at the top of Murphy’s meadow was legendary in the Owens’ family history. It was already a big oak in my Grandpa’s day and now it was even more spectacular to behold. Grandpa Jake loved to tell stories about that tree. He always kidded me growing up that, without the oak tree, I’d never have been born.

“The old oak,” he used to tell me, “has magical powers and if you truly love someone with your whole heart, the tree has a special something, a blessing of sorts, which
make sure lovers meant for each other,
will be bound together forever.” Whenever he’d tell the story about how the tree played a role in bringing Grandma and him together, his eyes would glisten. I’m not sure he ever made it completely through the story without a tear or two making their way down his cheeks.

When I was young, I used to climb that tree. I never paid much attention to the stories my grandpa told about it; to me it was a perfect tree to climb; that was all. By the time I was twelve I could shinny up the trunk and climb it to the highest branches. From up there, I could look out over the whole town of Cedar Junction and see the farthest reaches of the world. To a twelve year old, this meant the old gas station at the far end of Main Street, where it hooked up with Miller’s road. Travelers who were lost called it County Road B61. If you happened to be staring at a map and trying to figure out how you came to be in Cedar Junction, you might begin to wonder if you’d been transported back in time somehow. The town was friendly and reminiscent of many small,
rural
towns. Cedar Junction had that endearing, nostalgic look about it.

There was a path behind Grandpa’s house that weaved its way through the grasslands at the edge of Kendal Merton’s farm, down to Harden creek, or Harden River, as it was called during periods of high water floods. Grandpa said when he was younger, the creek was more like a stream. I was never sure what the difference between the two
was, but he always swore the heart of the stream seemed to give up when the county put in the new culvert for the highway. From then on, it just lost its will to push on. He may be right. There were lots of summers when Harden Creek nearly disappeared in the late August heat and dryness. I never met anyone else who had more ways to describe the things around him than my grandfather did.