CRYING OVER POSTCARDS 1

Ima Righter

Brother Teecher

ENG 150

[Date due]

Crying Over Postcards

I haven’t cried since I spoke at my grandmother’s funeral many years ago now. And

before that, I can’t remember the last time I cried. I mean really cried, with the blubbering and

the shoulder shuddering. But this postcard I tack up in every office I move into is of such a

desperate scene, I think if I stare at it too long I might not be able to control the tears.

Let me paint it for you. In the foreground are two half-frozen men using a rough wool

blanket to lower a completely frozen man into a very shallow grave. The grave has been

chiseled out of the frozen, snow-covered prairie. From the men’s tattered clothing, you might

guess mid-1800 as the date of the tragic event. They wear cowboy or frontier hats,

unceremoniously tied down over their ears with strips of cloth, in a futile defense against the

bitter blasts of deep winter wind. One of the men isn’t even wearing gloves. I imagine he’ll

have to peel his grip, finger by finger, from the blanket after he lowers the dead man onto the

hard ground.

A mother and a young woman, her daughter it seems, stand next to the shallow grave and

watch the men at work. Their clothes, also, aren’t sufficient to keep out the blowing snow.

Their heads are wrapped in small blankets; the mother has a shawl around her shoulders, but her

hands are exposed to the elements. She clutches a small bundle of a baby in her arms. Her

daughter stands close to her side hanging onto her arm, a gesture of consolation and devastation.
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What do they feel as they stand there in the middle of nowhere watching their husband and father

laid to rest in an unmarked grave? The snow drifts over their feet.

In the background, you get a feel for the desperate situation these pioneers face: snow

drifts and prairie clear to the horizon. You can see a few handcarts, basically wagons without

animals to pull them, loaded with everything these people own, which is very little. One of the

handcarts has broken down and been abandoned. More people, bracing themselves against the

wind, emerge from the blustery snow. Four men, each holding the corner of another blanket,

struggle toward the gravesite with another frozen dead body.

Who are these people? Where do such people come from? What makes them keep

going? What is it that they believe is worth such sacrifice?

I called my grandmother, “Bestamor” or “Bedstemor,” which is Danish for

“grandmother.” She was the first in her family raised in the New World. In fact, her mother was

pregnant with her when they made their way across the ocean and the continent to settle in Idaho.

She and her family didn’t travel across the plains using handcarts. But she was of the same hard

stock that could’ve made it that way if she had to.

She always said she wanted me to speak at her “Big Day,” meaning at her funeral. When

the day came, I tried as I spoke to recall what things made her great: how she raised more than a

little hell as a young woman in a very conservative society; how she was the best dancer in the

county; how she stayed out or snuck out of the house till the wee hours of the morning; how she

married young to a Danish man with whom she had five children; how he broke her heart and

left her to raise the children on her own; how this beautiful, promising young woman worked the

next 60 years as a waitress and cook to feed her children and send them to college; how she
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never lost her sense of wonder with the world and her subtle and often not so subtle sense of

humor; how as a child I loved sleeping out in her backyard; loved coming into her house in the

early morning and smelling aebleskiver—“just in time,” she’d say and drop a couple of the puffy

pancake balls on my plate; how as an adult, I loved taking her to Wendy’s because she could

only go so long without a Frosty; how we would sit on her front porch swing in the evening

twilight and remark at the sparkle of the setting sun on her giant weeping willow and talk about

how she never wanted to live so long as to see one of her own children die, as she did with one

of her sons, my Uncle Eldeen. When Bedstemor passed away at 95 years old, there were so

many things I tried to say when I spoke at her funeral, but instead I just cried.

I tack this little postcard near my computer in each new office I move into. Sometimes,

when I’m feeling honest, I’ll stare at it for as long as I can stand, and I’ll wonder what I’m

prepared to lay to rest in the frozen prairie ground, in an unmarked grave.

+ some really moving descriptions of the pioneers

+Nice style with the listing of memories with your grandmother; the list has a nice detailed
“weight” to it, showing the depth and variety of your relationship with her
-I wonder if you need more direct connection between the scene in the postcard and your
grandmother’s life of struggle and joy and your own life. You suggest that there could be or will
be or should be things you may have to sacrifice in your life, but I’m not sure the readers get a
good idea of what those things might be. Maybe you could offer a few brief hints in way that
wouldn’t complicate the ending unnecessarily?