Chapter fifteen
A Story of Grief, Grace, and the Gift of Community
I fell in love with the power of community before I learned to walk.
I was raised in my parent's country store, Hickory Market. My crib on the other side of the counter. They were open six days a week, twelve hour days. My earliest memories are spending time with my dad. He was a giant of a man to me. Six foot three and full of life. From dusting shelves to playing chess, our store was the playground and my dad was my best playmate.
A country store brings people together in the form of eggs, milk, bread, birdseed and beer. But when the register is done ringing up the sale, people stay to talk.
There was the lunch crowd, the after work beer runs, the old timers, the hunters. Our Hickory Market culture was rich with subcultures, everyone having their different needs at different times, but they all would stay to talk.
There was talk of weather, sports and politics, the surface stuff. But in a country store the pace is slow and there is time. Time to learn stories, to share stories, and to get to know the person on the other side of the counter.
Vaughn, Bill and Paula, Connie and Norm. These are more than names to me, these are some of the people that helped raise me. One day. One order. One story at a time.
Our little store never made my parents rich, never allowed them time to see the world, or to even retire together. But it gave them the gift of time, the gift of togetherness. They never complained about the hours, or the income. They just shared the stories of the people who made our corner of the world feel so rich.
When I was 23 I decided it was time for me to leave the nest. I moved to Chicago to immerse myself into the world of comedy. I moved with a dream but without a job, to an apartment with people I'd never met. My mom was nervous, to say the least, but the combination of youth, ignorance, and supportive parents was all I needed to have the freedom to play. Besides, I always knew I could come home.
The first thing I did was sign up for an improv class. The Player's Workshop of The Second City. I made it. Improv theaters in Chicago are the same. Dark with a stench all their own. It's a combination of hopes, dreams, fear and old stale beer. But it works and it leaves you wanting more. In my first improv class we were taught three things I'll never forget. "Thank you red ball." How to walk in space. And "Yes And."
Yes, And. It's the first rule of improv. The purpose wasn't to get a laugh. It was about establishing relationships to create a world that you lived in together for the next five to ten minutes. It was about accepting whatever we were given and seeing them as gifts. So even if I said we were going bowling, Creagh decided I didn't have any arms while Dawn mentioned I only spoke gibberish. I had to say "Gazzobi."
For six years this was the world I lived in. Playing. Accepting. Creating.
I was living the life I'd always dreamed of. Yes!
And then my dad died and I started to really understand what the "gift" of acceptance meant.
When my mom rang me on the morning of November 4th, 2004, there was a tone in her voice that I had never heard but recognized immediately. "Your dad has fallen," she said. I knew that meant he had died.
Losing my dad was rough. He had fought so hard to live. He had had heart surgery two years prior. He walked three miles a day, changed his diet and did "all the things" you're supposed to do.
All the things except not unloading a delivery. My dad died unloading a fifty pound bag of bird feed. Striped sunflower, for those of you that feed. He didn't have a heart attack. His heart simply got out of rhythm. And then just like that, all of our hearts were out of rhythm too.
I had always known what I would do if that call came. And so I did it. I packed a bag, a black dress, and headed home. I remember stopping at the door of my condo, saying goodbye, knowing that my Chicago run was over.
I had friends worry about my decision to leave my life to move back home to a small town and to run a country store. But I knew it was the only place I could be. I needed to be surrounded by those that loved my dad inside of the walls that brought us all together, to accept he was no longer with us. Besides, I knew I could always go back.
Acceptance. It's the fifth stage of the grief cycle. I never went through the denial stage. He was gone. I didn't get angry. I didn't bargain. I leaned into acceptance. I was given the opportunity to serve my mom and our community. It was one of the best gifts I could have been given, even if it was devastating.
The year following dad's death, our little store became more than a place for people to come and get groceries. It was a place for them to grieve and heal. I always joke that people would come and buy milk or eggs, when I know they did not need milk or eggs. They just wanted to check on me and mom to see how we were doing, and to stay and talk.
It was the Hickory Market community, that my parents had spent thirty-five years serving, that lifted my mom and I up in ways we could see, hear, feel and taste.
The cement slab by the unloading dock is where my dad fell. The slab broke under the force of trying to resuscitate him. The morning after he died, I woke up, or maybe didn't even sleep, but I had to go to the store. I had to stand where my dad had stood for the last time less than twenty-four hours earlier. I noticed the slab was fixed. Our neighbor Pat had come to the store in the middle of the night, washed off the cement slab, leveled it, and patched it. He didn't want us having that scar to look at.
Our neighbor Dave brought mom and I full dinners three to four nights a week for a year. I can still taste and crave his pork tenderloin.
Then there was Big Mike. I'd never met him until my dad died. He started to come to Hickory Market after I'd moved to Chicago. He told me stories of my dad I'd never heard, how my dad had saved his life because everyone else just saw him as an alcoholic but my dad cared about the person on the other side of the counter. In losing my dad, I'd never guess that in the acceptance of it, the gift of it, I'd gain a brother.
Communities like that don't just exist. They are created through kindness and by caring about the people behind the purchase.
The year after dad died taught me that communities flourish because people are the heart of it.
The heart of it
It's never lost on me that my dad gave his whole heart to our family, our store, and our community. Ninety-five percent of every heartbeat he had from the age of twenty-seven until his last one at sixty-one were spent on one acre of land being of service to others.
My mom decided to keep the store open for another year before closing Hickory Market and retiring in December 2005. I wasn't sure what I was going to do but I knew that in my dad's passing, in the acceptance of it, the gift of it, I'd found my purpose. I was a tugboat. I was going to live a life of service that mattered to others, that would make my dad proud.
And I knew that meant I may never be the next sitcom writer, be a famous stand-up comic, or run a Fortune 500 company. But I was going to find ways to make sure I built community and served others, as long as my heart allowed.
And if you ever need a little help? That's why I'm here.