Where Truths Lie
We begin with an exploration of family secrets, buried at the old Jollyville cemetery.
🎻 One glad mornin’ when this life is o’er
I'll fly away
To that home on God’s celestial shore
I'll fly away 🎻
We sang the words in the old Jollyville Cemetery as Amber, my second cousin once removed on my mother’s side, played the fiddle on the day we bade farewell to my father, Major (MAJ) John “Johnny” Lee Foster, United States Marine Corps, April 1, 1941- July 4, 2024.
A cluster of Longhorn steer in the adjacent field gazed unfazed, lazily grazing on the buffalo grass that grew in patchy, sun-bleached tufts. Amongst the time-ravished monuments, rusty demons pitched gusts of dust from the earth parched in the Texas swelter, crusting noses and mouths, and mingling with tears in muddy rivulets that wouldn't be brushed away.
On his arrival, Pastor Mike removed his cowboy hat and apologized if he smelled like cow, as he had been tending to cattle that morning. I wondered whether he is a preacher who also ranches or a rancher who also preaches?
He recycled those threadbare platitudes, that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and that “Johnny” has everlasting life because of his faith in Jesus, and he’s returned to the arms of God the Heavenly Father. The hollow words left me aching as my mind struggled, as it still does, to hold on to some part of my own earthly father.
Are you there Dad? Are you in range? I need you to explain. I strain in vain to send signals from my brain, but his plane has sailed into that great dead domain where they say eternal life is sustained, while earthly remains are stained with pain.
The honors ceremony was performed by the local VFW Honor Guard. First a 21-gun salute, then the placement of three spent rounds into the American flag: “One for Duty, one for Honor, and one for Country.” A haunting bugle rendition of Taps reminded me of the days living on Camp Pendleton, where it was played over the loudspeakers every evening before Dad would be home for supper. Finally the flag was folded and handed to me as the Primary Next Of Kin (PNOK).
The urn was lowered into a hole that had somehow been shoveled out of the rock-hard dirt, next to the place where Mom “Darlene” had rested since last year, after her soul had passed from her body ridden by the effects of carcinogenic cigarette smoke.
In celebration of the family’s proud U.S. Marines history, we planted little American flags and silk flowers of red, white and blue on the sites of Dad’s and his father William Lee “Billy” Foster, Private First Class (PFC).
I led my husband Kyle, daughter Elizabeth and five-year-old granddaughter Chelsea amongst gravesites of ancestors going back to my great-great grandparents. We removed and discarded the rotting and tattered remains of silk flowers and American flags, left who knows how long ago - everything decays fast that’s left open to the elements on the Texas High Plains.
We stopped along the way to honor WWII veterans. A couple of local boys had been Killed In Action (KIA). For many survivors, the War had opened up eyes and minds to opportunities elsewhere, as a modernizing country conspired to ghost the town. For some of these, the home of their birth was chosen as their final resting place.
Then there were the veterans who stayed behind, some living short and hard lives, such as Dad’s father Grandpa Billy. He had been Wounded In Action (WIA), sustaining a disabling injury in the Battle of Guam that earned him a Purple Heart. He ended up taking his own life just a couple of years before I was born. Questions were deflected as my parents insisted on reflecting the greatness of God, Country, Family, and Guns.
Dad had followed broken Billy's footsteps, enlisting in the Corps, but elevated to a higher floor, avoiding the carnage of War. To all eyes never suffered trauma, never cried for his Mama. He worked in an office, safe from the losses of life and love and light. Wages of war were unspoken, and our lines of communication were broken, when I understood that War wrote the paycheck that bankrolled our blessings.
The marriage of Billy and Dad's mother Bettye Mae decomposed for reasons undisclosed when Dad was just two. Uncle Theo, his brother from another mother, was kept from view. But when they were grown, someone picked up the phone. Both Marines, late brothers-in-arms, forever true, Theo gave the final salute.
Never to remarry or have another child, Bettye Mae is said to have gone wild after the divorce. The divorce was impressed upon this terrified child’s mind as the cause behind the perpetual mess that she was: quite weak if not bedridden, forever with a can full of some kind of tobacco spit, stained teeth bared in a dribbly smile bidding me to “Come over here and give me some sugar, Darlin’.” For many years she lived alone, as well as Dad’s Duty would allow, until the young age of 55.
Billy and Bettye Mae are buried not 5 yards apart, among the scattered stones of their parents and grandparents. Their humble markers - his a military issue - each lie alone and forlorn. Their secrets are sacred, maintained in privileged spaces, on encrypted databases, released on a needs to know basis. For reason of grief or shame, they are left unexplained as time slowly erases all necessity of knowing.
