MY Eulogy (and the turkey buzzard)

My Eulogy

Early morning.

Not so early, around 9 am.

Still early for me, for my brain and body to be in sync.

I have to run to the store for contraband.

It will not hurt any others, only myself.

More on that later.

 I ask the kids, “What do you want from the store?”

My two girls respond, “Yoo-hoos please!”

The drinks will have high fructose corn syrup, and coloring, and flavoring, and possibly only an ounce of milk in them from abused and mistreated cows.

My third child is not awake, but I know what he will want.

Gatorade. Or possibly Powerade.

Both are bad, and chock full of electrolytes, and salt, and I don’t know what else because I haven’t read the label, but I know it’s only good for someone who has either ran a marathon, or 5k, or is a construction worker in the heat of summer.

Someone that has sweated a lot.

I will get the blue color. Blue because it is probably everyone’s favorite color, though I have not googled that or polled anyone.

The second most favorite color I think is green.

(Tell me dear reader if your favorite color is neither, I’d love to know.)

Blue for the sky. Green for Spring, for growth, money, for the land to finally have color after a black, white, and gray winter, the snow being white.

Snow which we don’t have here, Coastal NC, except the last two years we have had enough flurries to cover the ground.

This year, and last have had extreme weather conditions, no matter what Season.

The tsunamis, tornados, flooding, drought. Did I miss anything?

 Right now it is the drought.

We and most of the eastern part of the states are in a drought.

Might be more, but I haven’t watched the news in a really long time.

I just don’t.

Too many channels, too many controls to work either satellite or cable, and kids hoarding the TV and gorging out on it like it’s a mind fest, but not in a good way.

 I wonder if it kills their brain cells to watch such stupid things.

No rain.

When it should be raining every afternoon. Just a sprinkle even.

The meteorologists say for our area, I hear it on the radio, because as I said I don’t watch TV, they say we have a 30% chance of rain each day.

Them with their superior degrees and years of pointing at the blue screen which to us looks like a map.

They know that 30% covers their bumpkins.

They, those meteorologists, haven’t the foggiest. (Isn’t that a good pun?)

They have no idea because the grass is brown when it should be a vibrant green.

Even the crabgrass is pissed off.

You know how hard it is to kill. I will not let my husband kill it with chemicals because everything will be brown.

We had only three wishes this year with the wish flowers.

The dandelions.

The yellow weed flowers that a lot of people hate because they can take over their nice green pampered lawn. They multiply and populate like crazy when you blow their seeds. There were not a lot of them this year, which tells you that it’s so dry that our whole eco system is really confused.

So, I wet my hair.

In some form of obedience.

But it’s too short. Looks wrong. Parting in no particular way.

Wet on top of my plain unmade up face.

The lines are there.

The skin with scars from the early years of hormones and popping.

Discolored ‘melasma’ I am told, above my lip a brown splotching.

From the sun the dermatologist says.

But I haven’t been in the sun.

 I feel like a woman who has a mustache made of brown colored squares above her lip, fading together to give emphasis that is unsightly.

 I am told, by friends, that it is hardly noticeable.

This can be kindness on their part.

Or it can be me staring at my very magnified, lighted mirror, staring at all the blemishes, and marks, and eyebrows.

I don’t own a scale. I will not. Because then I will be hyper focused on my weight.

My clothes fit fine.

 I have big clavicles, shoulder bones.

They jut out. Small breasted.

I am exactly the weight I need to be.

Hyper focused.

I do that a lot, with different things.

“Don’t bite your nails,” my ten your old daughter says.

“Don’t suck your thumb”, I reply back to her.

I am not biting them, I am chewing at the dry skin cuticles.

I am outside.

Different birds are chirping, cicadas buzzing their loud beat, windchimes softly singing in the gentle breeze. Thunder rumbling way out in the distance, hardly heard, but I hear it, and I know that it is a farce. It has no promise for my grass, or flowers.

The wind blows harder, blowing this sheet that I am hand writing on.

The pink plastic flamingo is dancing side to side. His name is Fred. The girls love him. My sixteen year old said not to buy him, that it is a redneck thing to go in the yard.

So Fred has his own place among the pink flowers in the back yard.

I still want a troll, but in the stores they are expensive and made of colored plastic.

I saw my first basement when I was nineteen. Where I lived there was no way to construct a house with a basement, we were at water level, in Louisiana. Still is.

I wet my hair down, threw on a pair of jeans and t-shirt with a cotton running bra, because I cannot find my good one in the 6 baskets full of clean laundry.

Nor do I want to start looking.

It only frustrates me and gets me angry.

Didn’t brush my teeth. Gross, I know.

Old white t-shirt, flip flops.

Got into the car. My big yellow car.

Drove down my long driveway, stopped at the end of it, looked left, right, then turned left when the way was clear, onto the road.

Less than a mile down there was a turkey buzzard chewing on the contrails of something foreign, which lived once.

Maybe a cat, a raccoon, parts of a deer.

Decomposed and only bits left.

The turkey buzzard. with his bubbly red pockmarked face, and beady eyes,

Hated because he survives on the death of others. But created to do so,

As many others animals do. Hated because he is so ugly.

I swerved into the other lane.

I missed the oncoming truck, that was coming my way quickly.

Both of us going about 60 miles an hour.

It would’ve been a head on collision.

Not good. Bad. Bad as in dead. Deadly bad.

My life did not flash as they say in front of me.

But I did think of what others might say at my funeral.

They would say,

“She would never hurt a soul, not even kill a fly.”

Or a turkey buzzard feasting on the dead.

In my Eulogy

I would like people to say:

Raelyn Jean Sellers Oliver ………

She was an avid four leaf clover finder at one time in her life.

When the waitress asked what she wanted, she said, “Tuna,”

Instead of "turkey" and got very upset when served.

It was hard for her to pay bills on time, and remember appointments, and balance the checkbook.

She got nervous when the phone rang, or if someone was knocking at the door.

She talked to the local Jehovah Witnesses on her front porch for four years before she had the courage to tell them that she had her own religion and to please not come back.

She wanted an Austrian crystal round ball to hang in every window of the house, for rainbows to appear when the sunlight would shine through.

She wanted long hair, but didn't have the patience to grow it.

The sound of the vacuum, and the smell of gasoline gave her a sense of peace.

She wanted to be better at her photography, but didn't have the patience to read the manual.

Just to capture a water drop from the sink, or some child's eye that is focused above so intently, their eye sparkling, a mirror to others.

She wanted to be able to catch that with her camera.

She made a difference in this world, even though she didn't believe she did as she lived.
She was beautiful but didn't know it.

She wanted peace in the home, and peace in the world.

She forgot things. She forgot a lot of things.

But she never forgot a friend, or a family member.

They were always there in the back of her mind, even if she didn’t pick up the phone or take the time to call or visit.

Her friends and family. those she loved most,

they were part of her heart, and she was part of theirs.

So as she has gone on to a higher place,

parts of her will remain in the hearts of those she loved, and those that loved her.

And she wants you to know that every person, and every animal, has a purpose.

crocodiles, flies, hawks, and YES,

even the turkey buzzard.