Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller Lorely walked from her bed to the kitchen table, and sat down. It didn’t take long before Collin was there to give her a big hug. Grandma O and the doll house she  assembled for Malika one Christmas.  Lorely’s face held pure joy mixed with a little  bliss. A hug from   a six-year-old grandson first thing Sunday morning must feel pretty good for grandma. Lorely didn’t sit there long, maybe 15 minutes. She was in a lot of pain. She has had cancer for more than three years, and it seems to be getting worse fast. She can barely walk or catch her breath. She is most comfortable lying in bed. She hardly eats. She’s staying with us so that Cindy, her daughter, can take care of her. Some of her grandchildren know the score. I realized that when I saw our son, Noah, sitting on the bed next to Lorely a couple weeks ago, telling about his day, asking about his grandfather and the Good Old Days. He wouldn’t normally do that. But he’s doing it now. Ou...

David Heiller There are certain moments that I will never forget. It’s funny how they mostly involve death. Like when Tom Pringle came into the fifth grade classroom on November 22, 1963, and told us that President Kennedy had been shot. Or when Reverend Graupman sat down at our kitchen table on July 18, 1969, and told us that Lynette had drowned. October 25 will be one of those days, the time when Cindy called and said that Paul Wellstone had died. The gray day outside suddenly got a foothold on my heart. I turned on the radio. The announcer said that Paul’s wife had died too, and his daughter and everyone on the plane, and the light faltered even more. Paul Wellstone: Man of the people. My friend Dean Dronen from Sandstone called a little later. I could tell he needed to talk to someone. So did I. He told me how much he thought of Wellstone, what a friend he was to veterans. Dean is the veterans’ service officer in Pine County. Wellstone could not have received a hig...

David Heiller My son came home from school two weeks ago with a trombone. I felt like the man who watched his mother-in. law drive off a cliff in his new Cadillac. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. On the one hand, Cindy and I want our children to take up an instrument. It’s good to learn tο read music. It’s a good school activity. He’ll get in with a good bunch of kids. Music is just plain good. Malika sent me this photo as a homemade postcard.  (A trick she learned from her Daddy.)  She and David loved to perform  together both in public and  in the kitchen. They didn't play  together nearly  enough, though . But a trombone? By an 11-year-old? In a small house, where lives a man who can hear stairs creak at 50 paces? We tested it out on Friday night. I was playing the banjo in the kitchen, which is the best room i n the world for any musical inst rument. Noah and our daughter, Malika, were playing with puzzles in the living ro...

David Heiller Grandma and Malika at the cabin. (1990) Cindy’s mother, Lorely, was diagnosed with cancer on Saturday, October 15. Lorely spent ten rough days in the hospital, and will spend many more days at home, recovering and taking chemotherapy. Cindy has been gone nearly all of the time since the cancer was discovered. I’m realizing in a hurry how hard it is to be a single parent. Lorely’s illness is making me appreciate both Lorely and Cindy more than I ever have. Many thoughts have crossed my mind about Lorely since the illness was discovered. She has so many good qualities, like her love for her family and her generosity. She had strength enough to raise three children as a single parent without child support payments or extra finan­cial help. I have great respect for that. People usually don’t think about qualities like this in a parent until the parent is facing illness or death, which is a little late. Sometimes too late. But that’s not clear in Lorely’s ...

David Heiller We lost a friend on Saturday, a century old friend that we have known for the past six years. When we moved to our homestead in May, 1981, this friend welcomed us. He stood erect to the southwest of the house, leaning over the house towering above us, a full 70 feet. He made us feel at home, just as he made the family of orioles feel at home in their swaying nest our first two summers here. Orioles love elm trees. After the elm was felled, it started snowing.   Noah grabbed an  umbrella  and played  jack-in-the-box in the hollow stump.  The hollow stump held  flowers for many  years  before that too, had to be removed. But the next year, 1984, the orioles did not return. Our elm tree showed us why. A few of the outer limbs had turned brown in June, their leaves shriveling too early in the summer. The orioles weren’t taking any chances. Dutch elm disease had arrived. Still, for the next two summers, the elm...

David Heiller Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death... Macbeth spoke those words at the end of a bitter life of power and betrayal. And now they are coming back to haunt me through the words of my four-year-old daughter. Mollie hasn’t started reading Shakespeare yet. She’s not even reading Olga Da Polga, although she listens to Cindy read it every night at bedtime. But on the subject of “tomorrow”, she can keep up with Bill Shakespeare just fine, thank you. It usually starts the previous night, when we are saying goodnight, lying in her bed. Mollie starts by seeking promises. “Can I wear my heart dress tomorrow?” she’ll ask. “Uh-huh,” I’ll answer in a dull voice. Mollie has a way of wearing your voice down to a dull edge by seven in the evening. If it is real dull, she’ll move boldly on: “Can I go to Day Care tomorrow?” Uh-huh. “Can I stay at Bobby-Jo’s house ...