The first death
The first person I knew who died was my grandfather. He lived in New Jersey in the home where my father and his brothers and sister were born and raised. It was a tall gray house across the street from a vacant lot that when I was a child I thought was a forest. Beyond the trees was a clearing where they said hobos slept and a small creek that fed into the river down the street.
He used to smoke a pipe, when he died he left behind a pipe wheel that had about twelve or thirteen pipes on it. He had tiny pocket knives that he would use to clear the tobacco out of his pipe. I have a small pocket knife in the side pocket of an old black flight jacket that has an orange liner. I also keep a plastic Yoda toy and some ball bearings in there.
He carried me into that forest on his shoulders the first time I remember meeting him. Something struck me behind the ear, I thought it was a bumblebee sting.
We played in the street in front of that house, and in the vacant lot. There was a stump that kids would climb up onto and squat. Or lean their bicycles against it.
They set up a bird feeder at the kitchen window and I would sit at a table there and squirt blue jays that were molesting the tiny robins. I thought of myself like the lone ranger come into town to keep the peace.
They had a couple of large reclining chairs in the living room that faced a small television in the corner of a room dominated by the front window on one wall, the kitchen opposite, then there was the fireplace, and the staircase in front of the front door. He died in that room, in that big chair, probably with a smoldering pipe in its cradle on the end table.
I remembered everything as dark wood, it felt German. Except the kitchen which was very bright, yellow and white, even in the spring.
My grandmother backed down the driveway of that house, out into the icy street, and was struck by another vehicle. They hit her hard enough to send her to the hospital for the rest of her life, in a wheelchair.