In Dad’s final days, he shared words about his love of our mother with us. We are grateful to have had parents who loved each other their whole lives. In this conversation and in the audio clips we share today, we find great peace. Dad knew where he was going, and he knew he would be with her when he arrived. We’re confident today that he is there and that they have been reunited. In our grief, this brings us the greatest joy!
This month, I’m sharing stories I captured on audio in the final days of Dad’s life. There were funny moments, serious moments, sad moments – – all of them with levity and meaning. In today’s audio below, listen for the phrase “the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” Translation: someone passed every level of acceptance and had made it to the inner circle of the Haynes family. While every family has its way of declaring their acceptance of a new member of the fold, this was Dad’s – – and, of course, we as his children had to get through the tests of our own spouses’ families’ gate keeping systems, too.
At our family dinner following the graveside burial, all in attendance were invited to share stories. My husband, eyes brimming with tears as they often do when something hits deep, stood and shared the story of the day he’d “done the old-fashioned thing and asked Felix if he could marry his daughter.” He described the scene: there they were, standing at the top of the dock along the Sapelo River, Spanish Moss gently blowing in the limbs of the Live Oaks, where Briar had expected it to be just him and Felix.
Only it wasn’t.
Felix was “the easy one to get by,” he shared. Miriam……..not so much. But there he was, face to face Felix AND with Miriam and all her intuition, when Dad looked over at Mom and saw that Briar got a passing score – so Dad gave Briar his blessing with two conditions: 1) “get your arms around the kids;” and 2) “encourage Kim to finish her doctoral program.” Briar had just received the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
He was in! And 17 years into our marriage, Briar has done both of the things my father asked of him – the kids love him, and I finished my doctoral program, ten months after Mom died of complications from Parkinson’s Disease. Even though she wasn’t physically present to see these things happen, somehow I know she knew. She knows everything, still.
Fast forward to June 2025. In the hospital room with Felix were Ken and Jennifer and I. Somewhere between Heaven and Earth, Mom stepped from behind the veil to join Dad and deliver a message to Ken and Jennifer through Dad’s words.
Did Jennifer get the Haynes family’s Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval?
She got The Grand Slam Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval!
Throughout the month of July, I’m using Dad’s stories I recorded in the final weeks of his life to share poems about things that were on his mind. I’m dedicating some of the days in July to capturing what he shared with us that was on his heart in these days – and I’m using the actual words from recorded audio, preserving the wording the way he spun it.
Today, I share his fragmented story of his aunt Claudine, one of his paternal grandmother Lena Mae’s nine children, who lost a toe making lye soap in the back yard of her Waycross, Georgia childhood home. There were three girls and six boys, all told, and my grandfather and his brother Virgil were making lye soap in a big pot in the back yard one day. They were cutting the wood to kindle the fire under the big iron pot where they made the soap, and somehow Claudine’s toe got involved. I’ve heard the story two ways: she lost it and she almost lost it. Depends on who tells the story. In Dad’s version, it was just “cut real bad.” When I called Dad’s cousin Kathy, she assured me that part of the big toe was missing because she’d seen Claudine’s foot. She also said it flew into the chicken yard and nobody ever found it.
As I listened to Dad tell his stories, the repetition of common words and phrases led me to choose the Pantoum form, since that is a form that uses repetition. He also had a notebook he kept at his bedside for writing, and it was heartbreaking to see the plummeting handwriting and broken thoughts, like jagged pieces of thick glass on the page. I’m glad that I captured so much audio during these final days so that I can revisit his voice and put the stories into words. A good friend at work, Janette Bradley, inspired me to do this, and I cannot thank her enough for her foresight.
Common Threads 