Short Story - "Ducky"

In the days of her youth, the story goes that she used to strangle ducks.  She would frequently visit a farm owned by a friend of her father, way out in the beautiful Pennsylvanian countryside where the hills roll on infinitely, to violently put an end to their lives.  When she did this, Mary A. Lovey became known as Ducky.

Why this story has been told throughout my family I will never fully understand, but I suppose that is the way it goes with legendary nicknames like Ducky.  I suppose a good nickname is an open invitation for an interesting tale, for all great nicknames must surely come with an equally great story.

I remember the photographs of her quite well, although I haven’t seen them in many years.  My mother keeps them stored away in some kind of sacred chest, full of memorabilia and nostalgia from her childhood.  In one particular old photograph, I remarked at how young she looked.  She wore a long, flowing dress and was surrounded by a horde of farm animals.  Pigs, cows, chickens, and of course, ducks.  The picture was in black and white, so I often wonder what the color of that dress was.  She looked happy.  I would never have believed that she could kill an animal with her bare hands.

I don’t know why my grandmother strangled those ducks.  Perhaps they were for food, and that was just the thing you did back then.  My mother never strangled a single animal in her life.  Her hands are soft and kind.  I wonder what the texture of my grandma’s hands felt like when they were around the throat of a duck, but more importantly what they felt like when she tucked her children in at night.

Unfortunately, I only possess a handful of memories with my grandmother and a few tales from her farmland experiences and life.  I sometimes regret that I did not have the opportunity to be closer to her, and I often feel envious of peers and friends who have a close relationship with their grandparents.  Through my personal memories, second-hand stories, photographs, and other personal scraps, I’ve attempted to make sense of her life and what it meant to me, tessellating the puzzle pieces to form a broad portrait of who she might have been.

I was quite young then, around the age of six, living in an impoverished neighborhood in Pittsburgh.  Too young that I couldn’t possibly understand what the crying meant.  I couldn’t possibly fathom that phone call or why my mother rushed out of our home so quickly that night with such determination.  She even forgot to grab her car keys, and had to come back in for them.  I was watching cartoons.  I didn’t know.  I was laughing to “Hey Arnold” on Nickelodeon.  I didn’t even bother to ask where she was going.

But even when you are young, you can tell when something is not quite right.  It’s like an antenna sticking out from your head is picking up some kind of family distress signal, and you can tell it’s there, you are aware, but your human processing software does not recognize the input.  I surely did not recognize the input.

I kept watching cartoons that night, oblivious to the fact that a few miles away from the comfort of my own warm blankets, my grandmother was on her deathbed.

While I did attend the funeral, I don’t think my younger self realized what death meant, or that I had lost my grandmother.  Her funeral was an interesting experience for me, and I recall it to be quite fascinating the way my family and siblings were adorned in all black.  I vividly remember the sea of darkness, the crying, and the aura of sadness that loomed malevolently over the funeral home like smog.

I was not affected by the gutting grief that seemed to penetrate all of the adults.  For us who were younger, her funeral was not a traumatizing experience; rather it seemed almost fun, like any family get-together was meant to be.  My grandparents had many children, and their children had many children, and so I had many cousins who were my age and also attempting to comprehend what this strange event meant for us.  My cousins, brothers, and I went into another room and shared cookies and water.  We couldn’t understand the seriousness of the situation.  We didn’t make sense of the apparent finality of death.

I grew up rather quickly after that, fueled by my mother’s depression after losing both of her parents in such quick succession (my grandfather had passed away only a year before my grandmother, although his funeral evades my memory almost entirely).  I soon learned that death pervades life, transforming any hopeful presence into overwhelming absence, and it drastically altered the dynamics of my family.  While I have trouble recalling what it was like directly after my mother lost both of her parents, her grieving words still weigh heavy in my head:  “I feel like an orphan.”

I had difficulty understanding what that must feel like, especially to an adult.  I did know for sure that my mother was utterly paralyzed by the loss of her parents.  She would recount the awful story, all of the gruesome details of how long it took her to die.  My mother was a nurse, and her sister Marianne, too, so they took diligent care of my grandmother in her final moments.  They had the most intimate relationship with her before she was gone.

I was so young when my grandmother died, and I barely had a chance to get to know her.  I did manage to share a few special moments with her when she came to live with us after she had fallen ill.  She had to wheel around a tank of oxygen with tubes going into her nostrils.  This made my overactive imagination liken her to a robot, although I soon got used to the strange presence of those clear tubes and the restless, ominous sound of the machine.  I would help her to the bathroom or keep her company when she would watch the game show network.  I would help her with crossword puzzles and bring her snacks when she got hungry.

Even with the small amount of time I got to spend with her, she still remains quite a mystery.  I am not entirely sure who she was.  Her enigmatic, fractured presence in my life has driven me to want to learn more about my family’s history.  The story I have been told concerning her actual time of passing intrigues me even more.

The story of her death goes like this:  on her deathbed, her hollow eyes were fixed on the corner of the ceiling.  While she was still alive, her chest rising and falling with each struggling breath, she was speaking to an apparition, my grandfather, who no one else could see.  While her body was still physically there, it seemed that she was somewhere else entirely, perhaps in an alternate or spiritual dimension.  It intrigues me to ponder if my grandfather was present when she passed.  I wonder if he walked her to the afterlife, if they were soul mates, and if they will be eternally together.

I believe that they deeply loved each other.  In the golden years of their old age, they spent practically all their time together, stuck in a tiny house in the West End of Pittsburgh.  The dingy house always smelled of cigarette smoke and the dim lighting made it hard to make out the details of my surroundings.  They each had their own chair, and they always seemed to be in that living room.  I can remember my grandma’s voice well, always shouting “Al!” when she needed my grandpa to get her something.  They would share ice cream together like young lovebirds.

When my grandpa died, I’ve been told my grandma lost her light for life.  I think even my mom knew that she would not be alive for much longer when that spark in her eyes disappeared.  I imagine they had that kind of undying love for each other, and after he passed away, my grandma couldn’t bear to live without him.  Perhaps it could be said that she died of a broken heart, or maybe she loved him so much that she chased after him, even if that meant embarking on a journey in which she had to brave the indeterminacy of death.  I suppose that takes much courage and intense love.

My grandmother was buried in a yellow dress.  When she died, she was agnostic and didn’t believe piously in any god.  I am told she feared death and feared passing away without a firm belief in God or Christianity.  I wonder what her final thoughts were.  I wonder if she prayed.  I wonder if my grandfather really did walk her to the afterlife and if their love bound their souls together in a magnificent way that even death could not break.

I am often struck with silent wonder when I think of the love my grandparents shared.  Perhaps it is just my overactive imagination that brings me to believe their love could transcend death, but I feel deep within my heart that their powerful love could do just that.  Sometimes I feel like she is with me and I can sense the presence of her bright yellow dress, sometimes on sunny days and sometimes in the rain.  And so I feel like even though I didn't get to know her in this life, she is still with me, and I will have the chance to know her someday.