Everybody is important

Just not that important - Kiya Heartwood

Poor people stagger my imagination. Lincoln said the Lord must love common people. He made so many of them. He was talking about poor people.

They are prideful and pugnacious with the crap that stack and stand up in their yards. They are embarrassed by what they can and cannot do, especially for their children.

Some will say of days gone by, “We wanted for nothing,” especially when talking about a mother or father who got them through childhood, a mother or father whose funeral we’re planning. Sometimes that’s a lie. Sometimes they would look with want on somebody else’s toy or television and pine for it and hear their daddy or mama say, “We can’t afford it.” That stings.

Good Lord. My brother says we were poor. I argue we could not have been because we always had ice cream. And we had a fabulous living room and dining room. Poor people don’t have those. But Daddy was once cut to the quick when two of his wealthy “friends” sat at that dining room table and one said to another, “Let’s get in our air conditioned cars and drive back to our air conditioned houses.”

It was not long after that central air and heat showed up at our house. Poor people can’t just go to the bank and borrow the money for air conditioning. We were not poor. We were heavily in debt to perhaps hide whatever embarrassment might rise from not being able to air condition our house.

Poverty is different from being heavily in debt. Poor people can’t hide. They wear it like clothes and beards and lousy haircuts. Gabriele and I tried to “help” a poor man who used lots of drugs to treat his embarrassment at mental illness and never picking the trash up off the floor of his home. My brother Bill Jobe showed up to rehang his front door after a dog or an outburst of anger had required that his front door needed to be rehung. While Bill was hanging the door I used a wide shovel to move soft drink cans, fast food containers and unmentionables off the floor of his home. As I did, he said, “My mama would be so embarrassed if she saw the way I keep house.” Maybe it is hard to pick up trash once you have more trash on your floor than would be easy to pick up. It’s worse out in the front yard.

Another friend argues that litter is redneck protest. It’s just one more way to say, “You can’t tell me what to do.” One more friend says the Confederate battle flag falls into that way of life, too. We may have earned our baby Hitler on the wings of all that anger, all that embarrassment, all that fear of not being enough.

Mama believed “not being enough” was the curse of anybody who had to try too hard to prove themselves, to earn some tin star that might say to the world, “here comes somebody special.” It has been a torturous lesson that we are all important, just not that important. The great singer-songwriter Kiya Heartwood came up with that line. Everybody’s important, just not that important.

All this comes from grief and loss. Death tears us to pieces and the great work of surviving is to get all the king’s horses and all the king’s men and our own gumption to put ourselves back again. Death is always right around the corner. It is a hard shell, but when we remember to love each other and treat each other kindly, we can keep it near at hand and not define us as poor or middle class or rich or whatever else might sell us the lie of separation. We’re all in this together. That’s such a sweet belief.

Check out the Welcome To Death Faire book at theplantnc.com. Join us at Next Door Used Books on the afternoon of Valentine’s day at 3:30 or at The Pines in Davidson at 1 on Sunday, Feb. 15 or at the Unitarians of Lake Norman, 625 South Street in Davidson at 3 that same afternoon. We’d love to see you.