"Come Find Grandpa In The Grave"

I ask you this...How would I ever have known to look for that letter there? How?? And how would I come to know all of the other things I knew before I shouldn't have even known them yet? The things I haven't even told you about yet?? I'll tell you how!! It had to be that damn crystal swinging dwarf Auntie Kay! I mean, right?? Ugh! I remember being soooo mad at her that day. All her fault...she must have voodooded me, or something. "Special", is what she said we were. Well, just so you know, being "Special" SUCKED that weekend...And sooooo many times since...

Ohhhhhh, I wanted my Mom to hurry up and come get me sooooo bad. She was supposed to be driving to the mountains to pick me up. I felt like I'd been there forever, and now....now, Dad was pissed off at me! That's putting it mildly, by the way. He'd been in really bad shape since the cozy coffin dropping day anyway. He'd spent most of the time at the bar down the road. On one hand, I had a strange feeling I shouldn't tell him about what had happened, and the letter and all.... But, then again, maybe it would make him really happy!! I mean, right? WROOOOOOONG! "Where the hell did you get this?" he had demanded. I got scared. I tried to tell him. It was no use. He said I had snooped where I didn't belong. He paced back and forth in the kitchen. I thought I was going to get a whippin'. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry...", I repeated. I ran back to the room and put everything back in the trunk, just like I had found it. Everything that is, except for my letter.

I tried to tell Mom what had happened when she got there. Uhhh, that went over like a turd in a punch bowl. They were fighting. Oh, it was bad. It was really, really bad. I gathered Grandpa Roy had called Mom just days before he passed. He said he NEVER wanted my Dad or his friends at the cabin again. He said he had changed his "Will". The house would be left to me...I was the Earp...I was the only grandchild.

Wait, where had I heard that before? Had Grandpa Roy told me that in my dream?
"Do you know who you are?... Do you know who you are?"

So anyway, who was "Will"? They were yelling and screaming about him. But...I did remember seeing his name in my letter. Will...Will... Oh, and there was someone else's name I remember seeing too. It was his neighbor. His name was written at the bottom of the letter and he had signed it above a line. There was someone else's name too, but I didn't know who it was. Nobody would ever know...because my letter disappeared. It wouldn't be seen again...

Summer came. Mom and my stepfather had split up and my brothers had gone away on an airplane to visit their other Dad...their "real" Dad...whatever that meant. It was just me and Mom. We stayed in the mountains at the cabin. We mostly stayed by ourselves, but my Dad would come sometimes on the weekend. He would bring all his friends. They would fill the entire property with their loud motorcycles. I would mostly hide in my little pink cottage. I didn't want to snoop where I didn't belong...

"Sweetheart", my Grandpa Roy said to me, stirring me gently as I snuggled in his bed one night. "You need to come see me." "But, I can see you now!" I thought. "Yes, but you need to come SEE me!" Yikes! He seemed a little mad. Ah, sheesh....What?? "You know where", he said..."You know where"...

"Mom, I want to go see Grandpa Roy", I told her the next morning. "We can do that." she said. "Let's just wait until your Dad comes." But Dad wouldn't go. He would NEVER go. Not even to this day.

Even after almost 25 years of being alienated, I tried to get him to go with me recently.
Nope! Gee..guilty much Dad??

Anyway, Dad would try to pacify me (himself?) by telling me about the gravestone he had bought for Grandpa Roy. He would tell me how beautiful it was, with mountains on it, and pine trees... So one hot summer afternoon, I talked Mom into taking me. Taking me to the place where they had dropped my Grandpa into a hole and covered him with dirt... "OH, how beautiful it must look now", I thought! And hopefully, Grandpa Roy would quit bugging me. Every night, every night..."Where are you? Hurry! Come!" Creepy, creepy....

"Stop the car!" It's over there!" I jumped out and started running. "Wait", Mom said. "We need help finding it. Let's go ask someone." Yea, right!! I didn't need to ask anybody! I knew right where it was. Running, running..."It's...right...HERE!" I dropped down to the grass... Wait...Whuh?...WTF?? There, right under my nose was an engraved plate... an engraved plate with SOMEONE ELSE'S NAME ON IT!! No mountains...no pine trees... "It's O.K." Mom tried to assure me. "You haven't been here for a long time. We'll ask for help." But I didn't need any stinking help! Oh, why wouldn't anybody listen to me?

"It's here. It's here. I'm here..." That's what I heard. Grandpa Roy. Couldn't Mom hear him?

"NO MOM! It's here! I know it is!" But Mom wouldn't listen. Neither would the little old man she fished out of the office who came to help. He wiped his sweaty bald little head, shaking it back and forth. "There must be some mistake." he said. "We'll find him"...

"I'm here Sweetheart. You know where. I'm here"...

I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wouldn't accept the other unmarked grave they said was his. It was a lie!! I couldn't be consoled!!...

And so it would come to be...the wrong headstone had been placed on my Grandpa Roy's grave. And even though it would be a long time...eventually, the one with my Grandpas name on it, and the mountains, and the pine trees, would find its proper place. And years later, by some strange circumstance (?) I would come to meet the widow of the man who had mistakenly been marked in his place...

Grandpa Roy Has A Message...

My Grandpa Roy is dead. There would be no funeral. No funeral that is, except for me and my Dad. Mom and Dad had been divorced for a long time. I guess Dad didn't have a car then...? I remember taking the Greyhound bus to the mountains that night. We sat in the back. It was weird. Super weird. He didn't talk much. I remember mixing him drinks from bottles in a brown paper bag...and him chain smoking...throwing the still lit butts on the bus floor...watching them glow. I don't remember how we got to the cabin in the mountains after we got off the bus. I remember how dark it was. I remember that....and that I wanted to sleep in Grandpa Roy's bed. The bed he had been found in...the bed where he had laid for a few days... Creepy, creepy!! Can you say "Lil' ten year old Melody is a weirdo"? Dad didn't complain. In fact, he seemed MORE than glad to sleep in the other room.

Such a sad, sad day...just the two of us. There were lots of other chairs set out. But they wouldn't be used. I sat next to my Dad in silence, wearing my best outfit my Mom had handmade me and packed. There were graves all around us...and a hole in front of us. A big fancy station wagon rolled up. God bless the two men who tried as they might to lift that damn special made casket!! I'm ashamed to say it, but I think I might have laughed out loud at one point.

Grandpa Roy never, EVER, made excuses for his size. And let me just say, I'm pretty sure he was...HUGE!!! I remember him "trying out" an outdoor lounge chair for his porch one day. He crushed it, literally to the ground. I tried to help him off the floor. He was cursing and carrying on..."Cheap shit!!...GD cheap shit!!"... The kid who worked there was freaking out. Grandpa Roy would settle on solid redwood lounge chairs. They were so heavy I couldn't lift them. ...He eventually broke one of those too... Damn cheap shit!!

So anyway, after they call for all of the employyees on duty to come and help lift the coffin...and there were about six back-up...I watch them huff and puff it (dropped it once) over to the hole. It was crazy. The guy who drove the fancy station wagon asked my Dad if he wanted to say anything... He just kept looking at his feet, and said no. I didn't know what to do. I had never been to a dead person get buried in the ground thing. They were lowering him into the hole... A small hispanic looking helper was holding onto a rope and almost fell in... And then, I was standing up...and then, I was looking at his casket in the hole... "I love you", I said. And when I turned around, I saw something I've never seen before, and I've never seen since. I saw my Dad cry.

Grandpa Roy sat at the end of his bed. Ummmmmmm...He was SOOOOOOO not dead! WTF?? He was just looking at me...and I was looking at him...and I felt overcome with joy!! "Do you know who you are?", he asked. He was always such a rough, tough MF. But, his words were always so gentle to me, when we were alone...like this...me lying curled up in his bed, and him sitting next to me. I could see him in the moonlight shining through the window. "I need your help", he said. WHAT? Of course I'd help!!! Anything!!! "The trunk at the foot of the bed", he motioned to it. "You know the secret walls?"

Uhhhhhhhhh...of COURSE I know the SECRET WALLS!! One day after Grandpa Roy had taken me shooting at the river, and after he had made me dismantle each gun, clean them, and reassemble...he took me to his closet in the sunken room. He pulled apart his clothes, reached into a notch, and pulled out the wall...then he did this to the other walls. Guns...a secret place...filled with guns. Oh, the stories he told...

"Go to the bottom of the trunk. There's a secret wall there...you know how...you know how..." I woke up to streaming sunlight in the room. I sat up and looked at the trunk. I remember, I wasn't afraid at all. I slid out of bed in my jammies and lifted the trunk open...I emptied it to the bottom, and...sure enough... a secret bottom.... and beneath it... all by itself...there lay an envelope... In my Grandpa Roys handwriting I read, "Melody"...

And so...The Dead Talk To Me...

Aunti Kay would never, ever, acknowledge she wrote the letter. I mean, she said she wrote the letter, but didn't write the letter... Uhhhhh, O.K... It was something called "automatic".

Oh, that Auntie Kay. Why did she confide in me? "This is our little secret", she'd say, when noone else was around. "Remember the dead little girl?", she'd ask me later. "She told me everything. She told me where they could find her. The police won't admit it. But they listen to me. But they can't say a crazy little old woman solved their case, can they?". Ummmmmm... "They used to think maybe I was doing these things. Isn't that silly, Sweetie?" Oh...My...Gawd.... something new to consider...and in light of what happened to her daughter, Wendy...and her boyfriend, "Uncle" Bob... I remember my brain swimming...

I remember my Nana on the phone. She was pale as a sheet. "Why, I just don't know...I, really, I haven't spoken to her... Of course I'll call her right away.. Yes...well, she's been ill off and on..."

Auntie Kay had many friends from church, as did Nana. Obviously, a male friend from the church had called Nana. He'd received in the mail that day, a letter. A really peculiar letter. A disturbing letter. I heard her discussing it with my Mom. "Oh, I didn't write it!", Auntie Kay would console, after we drove to her house. "No! Don't be silly! Somebody else wrote it. I just helped. It was an "automatic". Auntie Kay was calm as a cucumber (whatever that means...I got it from her). She always was calm...AFTER an episode...AFTER her freaky deed was done...

It had been a crazy, rambling, letter. Mostly written in barely distinguishable pencil. A vow of love and memories. A love letter from his wife, if you will. A letter which ended with the deepest of sympathy by my Aunt...

The man from church was disturbed. He waited for his wife to return home... But of course, she never returned home again. She would be killed that day in a horrific accident... The day he got the letter in the mail...

I wonder just how many times I was called to Auntie Kays card table. The one that sat between the living and dining room. The one where she told me so many secrets. The one where she so gleefully informed me one night...that I was JUST like HER. I had the "gift".... Uhhhh...but I don't want the gifty thingy....
AHHHHHHHHH....gifty thingy be GONE..... But. Auntie Kay was a gourmet chef... I wanted the strawberries and thick cream she always gave me.... I wanted the perfect poached eggs with toast fingers... Anyway...How could I be just like Auntie Kay? "Well", she would clarify...as she did on sooo many occasions..."You're just like me, but you're fat". Well THAT blows! She would remind me of this many times during her life. No time to absorb the truth though...she would stick a pen in my hands, while I sat across from her at the table. Candles burning, the light overhead swinging, the rest of the house dark, me wiping whipped cream off my face, the crystal thing near by...I didn't know what to write... sheesh...what to write? I drew a picture of my Grandpa...

My Grandpa came and sat at the end of my bed. Oh how I loved him. Roy...that's what I called him. I was never allowed to call him Grandpa. He was Roy. Roy Earp. Homicide Inspector of the Oakland police department. Direct decentant of "Wyatt Earp". He was my hero. Oh, how he loved me! Taught me to shoot a gun at the river, before I could hardly stand up straight. Said he didn't teach me to shoot silver dollars out of the air... I just did it because it was in my blood. It was odd to see him there sitting on my bed... He was sooo warm.... not scarey at all. "Do you know who you are?" , he asked. Uhhhhhhhh..... kinda confused.... WHAT?...."Do you know how much I love you?" he asked. I did! Of course I did! When he retired, he bought a house in the mountains. It had a guest house. He had decorated the entire thing in pink!! PINK!! Imagine that for a little girl. It was MY house....with a porch, and built in BBQ/stove that worked! Filled with little girl plates and pots and pans...He reached for my hand, and he held it. "You are an Earp", he said. "One of the last. I am gone now", he told me. "You are very important. I am gone now"...

KNOCK...KNOCK...KNOCK... I remember being awaikened by the sound...and dogs barking...barking... My girlfriend's Mom came into the room... "Melody?".... "Melody?"... she gently called..."Your brother is here... he says you need to go home now"... What a pisser! I was having a sleepover at my friend Lisa's house. I hardly ever got to have a sleepover...."What do you want David?", I scorned at him, standing outside the front door. "You have to come home now!", he said. "Why?", I demaned. "Uhhhhh....I can't say. Just come home. Hurry up!" ......
'It's because Roy died, right?", I asked him. Looooooong pause..... "I never said that!", he demanded. "Don't tell Mom I said that! She told me not to tell you! How do you know that?"....
I knew because I knew.... he had come to tell me.... That...and there would be so much more....

Damn that Auntie Kay....what was wrong with me? ...

A Letter From The Grave

So, nobody really wanted to talk about the "incident" after it happened. At least not in front of us kids. But that became the norm... Which was really weird at first, especially considering the complete abnormality of the situation. You just sort of learned not to bring it up. Ho hum, just another day.... Auntie Kay was nuts (didn't have nuts;). "Oh, that silly Auntie Kay of yours is just different. " Hmmmmmmm..."different"...I'll frickin' say!! Ya THINK???? Uhhhhhh...any word about the DEAD little girl??

And then...then...I get dropped off to stay with Auntie Kay for a couple of days! WTF is going on here?? I think I might have pooped my pants a little... And I remember, Auntie Kay kept asking me if I wanted to go out back and play... "Don't you want to go out back and play?"... "Why don't you go out back and play?" Hell NO I didn't want to go out back and play... WTF?

So anyway, Aunt Kay has this card table set up between the living room and dining room. One night she calls me over to sit with her. She's very excited. O.K... excited might be putting it mildly...it's more like she's winding up like a jet propeller. She's got this weird, old, chewed up looking board sitting on the table. It's got a lot of the alphabet on it...plus some other freaky shiz... There's a dingy looking thing sitting on top of it, and she's moving it around with her fingertips. Next to her (aside from cigarettes and a cocktail)....that damn swingy crystal thing!
"We're going to talk to the dead people", she says. Just like that! Just like saying, "We're going to color", or, "We're going to set the table." Great, this is my life. And then, it got worse... "Somebody is trying to warn us", she said. And then she said it over, and over, and over...all the while moving that movey thing all over the musty, worn out board. She moved that thing like a puck on an air hockey table. Oh, and then for effect, she'd moan and roll her little scrunched head around... Talk about screwing a kid up...

To this day I refuse to let my kids play Ouija...Word Up!!

I think I had only been home for about a week, when I heard my Mom on the phone, talking to someone about Auntie Kay. Dang! I gathered she was on another "rest". But then, what was this? "A pencil and paper? Why? ....Well, if she's so upset, just give it to her!" Mom sounded pissed! I gathered Auntie Kay was somewhere "resting", but wanted to write a letter. For some reason the person at the rest place didn't want to give her a pencil. "She isn't responding to lithium? Nothing?"...

Well, it appears Auntie Kay needed to write a letter. And write a letter she did...

She Sees Dead People

Just where did the notion come from that when people lose their shiz, little men in white coats will come and take them away? I'm here to tell you that if that were true, I would have for SURE, for sure witnessed it by now! Nope, never seen it. Not even the police took Auntie Kay away that Easter. Ends up she had called them herself!?! After she ate some M&M's she calmed down a bit though. They talked for a while, and one even took notes. Another looked around the yard. I mostly had my eyes on that one, in case he was after my eggs. He was kinda pudgy and I'd seen him swipe some ham after coming out of the bathroom. Things are a little fuzzy after that. I think I might have eaten a little too much of the rum bread pudding all the grown ups had told me not to touch. Anyway, Auntie Kay did have to go away for a little "rest" a few days later. I was assured if she took her lithium vitamins (?) everyday, she'd come home soon. Nobody really wanted to discuss it much more than that. But I did overhear my Dad say Auntie Kay had "lost her marbles"...??

"Ohhhhhhh Nooooooo!", I remember thinking. I TOO had recently lost MY marbles. I thought my brothers stole them! I didn't even know Auntie Kay collected marbles! Oh, this was not good. This was not good at ALL! I searched for my marbles like a squirrel looking for nuts. Cashew nuts.

So anyway, something really weird happens about a week after she gets back home. I saw it with my own eyes on our little black and white T.V. with the tin foil balls on it's "rabbit ears" (?)... There he was. One of the police officers from Easter, on the news, talking about the little girls body they had just found. Dead. Probably for a day, or two (?). Buried. In Orinda. In Orinda where my Auntie lived! In a backyard! In a backyard close to Auntie Kays backyard! Ummmmmm...O.K. WHAT??

And so it went. And needless to say, so did my little crystal swinging, marble losing Auntie Kay...back for many, many a "rest". And then, sure enough, a week or two later, would come the news...

Certifiable

How crazy does crazy really come? How old are you the first time you realize somebody (everybody?) in your family is wacko? Let's face it, it's often a little murky. It's not like a family member makes an official announcement at the big annual Easter gathering...right? Well, unless you were in my family that is! Seriously, somebody just cling-clinged a wine glass and said something like "Aunt Kay is frickin' nuttier than a fruitcake!" Me, being pudgy little five year old me, starts scanning the buffet tables for fruitcake. Hmmmmmm....no fruitcake there. Guess I better go straight to the source and ask Auntie Kay. I figure if she didn't know where it was, at least it sounded like maybe she had a bunch of nuts. I mean, right? I'm fat and five and I heard "nuts" and "fruitcake" and "Aunt Kay". So anyway, I find Auntie Kay out back in her perfectly manicured yard. She's weaving in and out of my brothers croquet game and telling them to be careful where they stepped. So, I skip out there in my new patten leather Mary Jane shoes, being super careful not to get any shit on them (of course it didn't really make any sense there would be any, since apparently her two dachshunds only shit in the house, but anyway...) "Auntie Kay?", I begin as I caught up to her. "Oh my Sweetheart!" she says, "Did you come to help your Auntie Kay look?" I assume we're looking for fruitcake. I mean, right?...or at least I'm hoping for cashews. (MMMMMMM, I love me some cashews!!) But she's studying the ground, real focused like, and kicking the grass around. WTF? Then she whispers to me something like "Go look carefully around the flower beds. Look for where the dirt has been disturbed", she instructs. "You can tell if it's been dug up and somebody tried to cover their tracts." Then she winks. It took a couple seconds, but all at once it hit me... Oh My Gawd! EASTER EGG HUNT TIME!!!! WooooooooooHooooooo! And I'm thinking, they actually buried the eggs this year!?!? Sneaky, Sneaky! Better yet, my stupid brothers have no clue. They've heard squat of this. Hehehehe... This hunt was in the basket (so to speak)! MY basket!! So, I start looking for tore up pieces of yard like nobodies business! Ohhhhhhh I hope I uncover the chocolate ones, the chocolate ones, the chocolate ones! I see a chunk of suspicious grass clod to my left. I drop down and start digging with my hands like I'm looking for China...

O.K. Let me just pause here for a minute. Ah, great, great, Great Auntie Kay. What a specimen she was. I just sorta thought in the beginning that everybody had one like her. All 4' 6" of her... looking freakishly like the doppleganger of that little lady in the Amityville movie who keeps wanting Carol Ann to "come to the light". That little face of hers scrunched up so tight she could pick her nose with tongue...literally. Speaking of which, why she'd show this sideshow act to anyone is still beyond me. And to think she wondered why my brothers and I only kissed her on the cheek?? Anyway, back to that Easter...

So, after I get my ass kicked for digging up Auntie Kay's back yard and getting my handmade Easter dress all muddy, the police show up. Just GREAT!! No chocolate eggs. No fruitcake. Not so much as a stinking cashew. Just an ass whippin', and now I'm getting arrested?? But not to worry. They head for her. The sweet little old lady swinging the crystal over her head and screeching something about the pretty little girls body buried out back...then blah, blah this, and blah, blah that, and would the nice officers like some cocktails or perhaps some ham? O.K....wait...WHAT?? That's right, I said it! "Body" and "Pretty little girl"! WTF? Poor Uncle Jim is chasing her around with a handful of pills, begging her to take them. He's dropping some on the floor and I'm thinking I'll take them if she doesn't want them because they look kinda like M&M's. All the adults look worried and they're following the police, who are in front of Uncle Jim, who's chasing Auntie Kay, who's now running out back, still swinging that damn crystal....

Anyway... Sheesh! Forgive me. I haven't even formally introduced myself to you. It's just that I didn't really know where to begin my blog... And now? Now I have to go pop a Valium...and can any of you really blame me? Truth being, I lost my job and with it went the medical insurance, and with that went the shrink. So it's come to this. I am officially a blogger!

I hope you'll join me again soon. Until then, enjoy your family! ;)