Holding The Line
Last of a dying breed.
The first X Douglas Bunting was my grandfather, C Senior. It’s unclear where my great-grandparents got the “Douglas”; the name means “from a dark river,” but they came from untheatrical farm people, so probably they just picked the first name that scanned and wasn’t “James.” C Senior met my grandmother on a trolley car when she felt faint. He fanned her with the afternoon Inquirer. Twenty years later, he felt faint himself in the cloakroom, and murmured to his friend, “I don’t feel right.” He was dead in an hour.
I don’t know much about him. He was easygoing. He liked steak. He could really wear a tank top for a Depression-era gent. He looked like me. Only these broad, blank stones remain after two generations, worn down smooth by the mythos of an early death. This is what I had, the amiable portrait beside the door of Grandma’s bedroom, and the black leather reading chair, the hobnails kept shiny, positioned at an angle next to the Dos Passos and Catton only he truly enjoyed, and unconsciously avoided by the living. And his nose.
The second X Douglas Bunting is my uncle, C Junior, by nature’s impish design the son who looked the least like him. The son who had to become him after he had gone, when Grandma came home from the committal and got in bed with her shoes and hat still on and stayed there until the next bank holiday, and when she arose and began to cook (a mixed blessing), he “borrowed” a car and moved to Florida to wait tables. C Junior told me before I went to college that boys would try things, and that if I did not want to try those things, I should grab anything sticking off these boys and pull. And twist. And call him “to deal with the body.” He was not kidding. It was good advice. We never dug a grave together, but if I’d needed one dug, he’d have showed up. C Junior walks pitched forward towards the fight, although he’s not much for walking, anymore.
C Junior is not much for much, anymore. I have heard any number of other ways to say that in the last few weeks. One gently arranged phrasing about grips or tides is as good as another. The veil is thinning, that’s a nice one. You could also say he is hung up in it, tangled in its hem, waiting for it to tear. Pull, I want to tell him. And twist. But he probably wouldn’t know me, anymore.
The third, and last, X Douglas Bunting is I. I too have a reading chair, and while it too is avoided, that’s because a white cat has taken full and sheddy possession. C Senior also had a furry white cross to bear; his was a Manx named Ruby, and mine is a jerk named Pearl. Yesterday, because the weather had turned, Pearl agreed to share, and I listened to The RFK Tapes and made a get-well blanket. The RFK Tapes told me, among other things, that “Softly And Tenderly” played at Robert Kennedy’s funeral. It’s a lovely comforting song, although I don’t know how aptly it plays for such a young man. “Beset,” we might have said of Kennedy, but weary? At 42?
The blanket grew and began to cover Pearl. I thought about brothers, and names, and who is waiting on the other side when we, we who are weary come home. Who is at the end of that great bright hallway, to take the hand that in a last gathering of courage pulls the veil aside and lets it drop behind him.
Jesus, the hymn says. It doesn’t seem sporting to complain, if He’s put Himself in charge of hospitality. But I picture someone else, known and yet unmet, first in the line, our own holy ghost, “watching for you and for me.” With a joke at the ready about his bride’s “innovative” recipe “variations,” because you may not believe in life after death, but the hilarity of my grandmother’s lima-bean creations is eternal. It is as much a part of the home in our Bunting hearts as a chair with a cat in it.
That line, somehow, unbroken.
Y’all know my next line. Happy birthday, Don.
Tags: September 11th
Thank you, Sarah. Happy Birthday, Don. I find it comforting that as bonkers as things can get, on this day, in this place, you forge a path forward with your heart and your words.
Still here, always here. Love to you and yours, Sarah…and to Don and his’n.
I haven’t been here in a while, but I would not miss the day.
Thank you, Sarah, and much love.
and Happy Birthday, Don.
Thank you for this, Sars, and I hope you are OK? Four days after burying a friend of mine, this made me worry slightly.
Thank you Sarah, as always. 17 years since then. Happy Birthday Don!
Every year. Like everyone else in the comments, I come here every year. Thank you for your writing. I mean this as thank you always for your writing, but thank you especially for your writing on this day.
Happy birthday, Don.
Forgive the slight stalking I employed yesterday, but I read through “For Thou Art With Us” with GoogleMaps, trying to retrace your steps that day. While I always send a prayer of thanks that you, and Don (Happy Birthday!) were spared, you were nowhere NEAR safe and sound at that time and that reality hit me yesterday. Thank you for taking that long walk to safety.
Thank you for sharing your experience and your excellent essays; they say so much and say it perfectly. I’m sending healing thoughts for your uncle and comforting thoughts to you and your family. <3
I’m okay, @Laura! Thanks for asking. And thanks to all y’all for the kind words and just for stopping by.
Thank you Sarah. And thank you everyone for being here every year.
I’m so glad you’re in the world.
Happy Birthday Don.
Every year, Sars, every year since *that* one. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
Happy birthday, Don.
Happy birthday, Don.
Happy Birthday, Don
Every year. Thank you Sarah.
Happy birthday Don.
Every year. Happy birthday, Don.
This is the only place on the interwebs I always go to on this day. Most places I avoid. I never watch the news on 9/11, not any more. But here, here I always find something right on the anniversary of something very wrong.
17.
It was a beautiful morning in Washington, DC back then…
Happy birthday, Don. Thank you, Sarah.
Happiest, Don. Thank you, again, for sharing the path with our Sars that grievous day.
And Ms. X Douglas Bunting, bless you all to pieces. Bless you for reaching out to the planet and into the ether and to whomever else is reading, on every side of the veil. We are all made finer by the gifts you share. xo
Thanks, Sarah. The catch in my throat and sudden tears took me by surprise, though I can’t imagine why. Thanks for being a place we can all come, and remember together.
I come back to read every year. Thank you Sars…and Happy Birthday Don. ??
Beautiful piece, Sars. Thank you for always hosting a kind and thoughtful place for us to remember an awful day and the people who were there.
Happy birthday, Don.
Hello again, friends. As @StillAnotherKate so aptly put it, Don is the glue that holds us together. We meet in tears every year, but we come and we remember and we salute a man we’ve never met whose impact has rippled through all our lives.
Happy birthday, dear Don.
Happy birthday Don – a different day in my timezone already, but the day when I remember too. May you be safe and well, and with loved ones.
Beautifully written. Thank you.
Have you seen “Junebug”? The version of “Softly and Tenderly” in that movie is terrific. Find it on YouTube.
Every year, I come here to read your ruminations on this day. And I re-read “And Thou Art With Me” again. This year, it’ll be the last thing I read before bed. I am so glad that *you* are still here, Sarah. I still hope that one day, you’ll be able to thank Don in person. Stranger things have happened.
Happy Birthday, Don.
Thank you, Sarah.
Every year. Thank you, Sarah, and as always…Happy Birthday, Don.
After all these years, I still look for community here on this day. Cheers, Sars. Cheers, Don.
Oh, god, I almost forgot. Avoided TV and radio news all day so well, managed to lose myself in work. Then, remembered, the one place I could trust. Every year it’s harder to for me to mourn what was lost that day, and easier to be angry about what we’ve lost since then. But here, here is the place where I can be sad, and cry tears of sorrow, not anger. Thank you Sars, and happy birthday Don.
Happy birthday, Don. Thank you, Sars, for every year this.
Thank you Sarah.
Happy birthday Don.
Thanks for coming by, everyone. That we’re in each other’s thoughts, all of us, is great.
I am told C Junior passed over last night. Rest well, #1 Son.
Here’s to you Don, and to Sars for the grounding thoughts you provide every year.
I had to wait this year to come here. My children were born around this event, which occurred just before the second birthday of my first while pregnant with my second. As a new parent, I struggled with having children in a world where evil made planes fly into buildings. But through all my tears, the everyday people that became (or perhaps always were) heroes, gave me courage and comfort. My littles are now big. The biggest is at a service academy, bringing home the risk a bit more. Someday, he may have to be on that front line. We can only hope to never see such events again. But he, like the rest of us, will be ready. I have always found comfort in your writing, and I visit here each year because of that. Happy Birthday, Don. Be well, Sars. Hugs to your family in this tough time.
Like all of you….every year.
Happy Birthday Don.
Thanks, Sars, as always, for giving us the words we need.
<3 to Sars, Don, and everyone else
Tell Big Little to stay safe out there. xo
I’m sorry for your loss, Sarah. Your uncle sounds loving and beloved. He’s through that veil now.
This year September 11th really snuck up on me and grabbed me by the throat, I’m not sure why. Anxiety through the roof the days before, lasting until the day after had come and gone. Spent more time than usual mourning the world that was, I guess because I have so much fear right now about the world that is.
I’m a couple days late, but it was good to come here and read your voice again. I hope, despite grief, that you are mostly well.
Happy belated birthday, Don.
A very happy, if slightly belated birthday, Don.
As a person who recently had a family member tangled in the veil, hugs to you Sarah.
I’m behind on checking in, obviously. But happy very belated, Don. All these years past and your kindness will still never be forgotten.