KEN’S CORNER: 23 Faces of Haunting Memory

KEN’S CORNER: 23 Faces of Haunting Memory

Taken from my diary from 1973 to 2005

Commentary by TLB Contributing Writer: Ken LaRive

Our memories fade, and what we once perceived as truth are redefined as we mature… and so will it again in the future. This is why I take pictures, and keep a diary. It is a record of a reality we had, something we held as truth… but, as time moved on, a frosted lens is placed over our memories, and at times, we might think it has been completely forgotten. It is a mechanism to keep our sanity on a conscious level, but everything is still there on a subconscious level. Nothing is forgotten, though it might be sealed from conscious view for a reason….

However, what we are (our reality – our perceptions) consciously might not have nearly as much influence as what we are subconsciously, as every moment in our lives is recorded. These lost and misplaced memories promote us to react to life in a certain (unconscious) way. Seemingly unreasoned fears, suspicions and self-doubts, inhibition and shyness, are all results of what we have experienced, whether consciously remembered or not… and going back to those forgotten memories may open doors to a more lucid, and truthful future.

The following are excerpts from my diaries, from 1973 to 2005. Paragraphs describing people I knew who had died, and I’m sure there are hundreds more… Here are 23.

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23 faces of haunting memory

One- Mr. Rickey…

We were told by the old man across the street to take all of the fruit we could carry from his narrow property. We climbed his ancient trees, gnarly and twisted to survive, and filled paper bags. He sold my father all of his tools, and was found soon after, alone in his one-room shack, estimated to have been dead for a week. He told me once I was a good boy, and called me “Cowboy,” because I wore a Roy Rodger’s pistol. All of those tools now belong to me. I wondered about him for a long time, dying alone in a one room shack. As an adult I went back to that property, and it was only about 20 feet wide. It seemed immense to a seven-year-old cowboy…

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Two- Jimmy the Bucket…

He stole money from his mother, my mother’s great aunt, and was a troubled boy and man. He cursed too much, drank too much, could not hold a job, but always smiled when he saw me. He was fast, and mean, and had been in trouble with the police for many bar fights… He shot himself at 27 while being stopped for a simple traffic violation. I suppose it was just the icing on the cake. He told me once that working in a gas station was not something I should never want to do. I never did. I remember he put his cigarette out on the palm of his hand, to show me his calluses for working… I saw men do that several times in my life. I never could.

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Three- Kenny…

His first name was the same as mine, and he called me Kenny Boy. He was the son of my mother’s boss, who sold Sara Coventry jewelry. He would deliver the jewelry to my mother and had a young son and a wife who wore beautiful embroidered blouses, that she did herself. I thought she was beautiful. He woke me up once, on a Saturday morning, by jumping on my bed. It scaring me badly, but his laughter was infectious. I was told by my mother on another Saturday morning, soon after I woke up, that he had been in an accident, and had died. I’ll never forget that feeling when I found out he had been decapitated while closing a service elevator door, and I played that in my mind for years…

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Four- George…

A fishing partner was a friend of a friend. He had a good job, responsible, and well respected. He lived in a good home, with giant indigenous fish aquariums, a cigar speed-boat, fast cars, hundreds of guns and fishing rods, a beautiful wife and three wonderful kids. One night at supper, she confided in my wife that he was abusive, on drugs, and was never home because of hunting and fishing. One year later, I got a phone call from our mutual friend to tell me he had killed his wife and himself in a argument over divorce papers. He had put the three children in a locked room while they argued, and in a rage shot her three times at close range in the back as she ran out of the house. He then took a shotgun and shot her in the head as she tried to crawl away on the front lawn. He wrote a note on one of the first computers ever made, and shot himself as the police came in the front door. That note was never released. It was determined later in an autopsy that he was strung-out on cocaine. Both grandparents fought for custody of those kids, and the wife’s family finally won. Pain and accusations divided that family, and still to this very day. About a year later I got a phone call from our mutual buddy around midnight. I could tell he was drinking. He told me that he had taken the boat out all the way to Chandelier Islands we used to fish, and in the fog he saw George. George told him he was sorry for what he had done, and was paying for it.

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Five- The murderer…

He talked to me every day as I picked up my new wife from work at the Orleans Levee Board. I never once thought him a murdered, but he always looked sleepy. He was arrested for the murder of a 12 year old black girl. He raped and then strangled her, then stuffed her in his stereo system all night. Police actually checked his apartment but found nothing, but she was in the console where the records went. He slept with his wife in the very next room… She was found weeks later in a swamp, tied in a black trash bag, with the same twine and tape found in his trunk, and his DNA. He confessed. I saw his wife every day after that, but she no longer looked around, too intent on the inside…

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Six- The Black Boy…

Integration has everybody nuts, and our world is falling apart with hatred and violence in New Orleans. Crime escalates along with violence, and we were forced to accept what we considered inferior, ignorant, and violent black people infiltrating our turf… I remember the black boy running and falling over a string of trash cans, and over fifty white boys kicking him to death. I remember his two friends running away, getting away, but never saw his face as he melted under a sea of bluejeans, in fronts of the Old Court House, hood territory. I was in that category. The face of the boys kicking however, I still remember. They didn’t mean to kill him, (they said in court) but each wanted one kick, some two, and five of my brothers did life for the murder. It was one kick too many, and five lives for the price of one was an incalculable loss. Life in prison, I was told.

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Seven- my Mawmaws and a PawPaws…

All of my grandparents, one at a time, died. Though they could hardly speak English, all to the last could say I love you. Their faces were kind, and filled me with such joy, and they all seemed to just float away without fear. They lived in the country, and I was a city boy. My regret is not knowing them better, but what can a child do? Wish I would have tried harder…

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Eight- LeRoy and Billy…

My parents died in Katrina. Six weeks to find their bodies, and another six to ID them. Thoughts of them are a vortex of emotion, feelings of frustration and inadequacy without understanding. I loved them, as they did me, but we could find little solace together when alive. So hard to fathom even now, even after all these years… and the complexity of their faces still boggles my mind…

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Nine- Sarge…

I remember the face of a police officer after Katrina, and his uncontrolled tears as he told me two officers had committed suicide, and the bodies he has seen. I later tried to find him, but no one knew his face.

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Ten-Terry…

He was a big boy with a big heart. He played with my little daughter in the yard, flew kites with us, photographed the night sky with me, and was incorporated into my family as an asset and friend. While in college he contracted Mononucleosis. After three days of operations, he bled to death on the operating table. He was 21. We were so close his father called me to find his brother at UL to and tell him his brother had died. I remember his face too. His parents were strong-willed people, but their faces seemed to melt with tears…

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Eleven-Jim…

He was my best friend as an adult, and though significantly older than me, and far more worldly, we connected. He died from complications from an infection and a blood thinner given by a childhood playmate, now a seasoned doctor. I didn’t find out about his death for months, so never got to say goodbye, but there is no need for that in true friendship. Some things are just cemented in our hearts…

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Twelve-John…

A boy in my senior class crashed into another car in the fog, killing his girlfriend. She went through the windshield and had her throat cut. They found him in the woods hours later screaming. He was never the same, and later disappeared. I saw his dark eyes, his white face, his pain, months later when he returned to school. He had no tears left, nothing left… I thought he was just an empty shell. He had been speeding.

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Thirteen- Rodney…

A boy I worked with at Sears could not stop. His brakes were worn, and he plowed into the side of a train in Gentilly. We went to the scene and saw how he had desperately tried to stop, pumping his breaks making black skid marks for blocks. He was going too fast. At the funeral his father was crying saying he knew the brakes were bad.

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Forteen- Charlie…

At our Boy Scout Patrol meeting I first met his father. He had a yellow plaid shirt and smoked a pipe that smelled like cherry. He would go on the camping trips with us and play cards with the other men, and once snuck out fried chicken from the mess-hall to several of us saying we were hungry outside. His lawnmower exploded on his front yard while he was inside getting a drink of water. He told us he was now living on borrowed time. The next week he was found sitting in his favorite chair dead of a massive heart attack. We all went to his funeral dressed in our Boy Scout uniforms, and stood at attention as he was lowered into the grave. I remember the crying. Forty of us crying. At attention you are not supposed to look right or left, but I looked down that line and saw their faces.

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Fifteen- Mark…

One of our scouts had muscular dystrophy. His father would carry him everywhere; a strong man with a loving heart. I pushed him to a class in high school, and watched him slowly weaken, so that he could barley use a pencil. He knew, his father and brother knew, and his mother, that he would die soon. He died while I was in Vietnam, a senior in college on the dean’s list. His brother died soon after. They found him in the morning in front of the TV, and before I got back from San Diego all of them had died. I just couldn’t believe it. Still can’t.

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Sixteen- Mrs. Mary Beth…

I remember the old lady across the street telling me about the day her granddaughter died. She had a fever from her illness, and knew she was going to die that day. She begged her mother to do something, that she did not want to die, over and over again. He grandmother listened in the hall. The way she told me has remained in my mind and heart for thirty years. Though I never met her, I saw her face reflected in her grandmother’s eyes… She was fifteen.

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Seventeen- Clay…

He lay on clean white sheets in Africa, on a hospital bed for the dying. I couldn’t tell how old he was; so emasculated from AIDS. He had turned blind days before, and his mother held his hand. The Sisters put a cool cloth on his head, and the light went out of his eyes. It was like tunnel vision, as the screaming of his mother defined the moment. In that hospital, this scene repeated five times a day. Children dying, and on the street of Malabo, I was the only white man, and the oldest by a decade. I remember the Love of the Sister of Christian Charity, French nuns, and they were to me angles of mercy.

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Eighteen- the trash man…

Jogging I came across a man running down a trail waving his arms. He said “My friend’s head got caught in his dump truck. We need to call the police. He is dead!” I ran down to the site and found a trash truck on a plastic and dust filled road, in the middle of a dump. It smelled like sour fruit and burned plastic. He was lying in the middle of black plastic bags of leaves, and his head was crushed flat. His eyes I will never forget, as they had popped out of the socket… He had been trying to clear some debris from the crack between the cab, and it slipped. His eyes were protruding, and they looked to be looking at me, and for just a moment I thought he was alive. Way in the distance, I could hear his friend sobbing. “Oh sweet Jesus! Oh sweet Jesus!” over and over again. I felt an electricity in me, like an electoral shock, and a low gurgling sound, and I realized that sound was mine.

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Nineteen-Mrs. Blue…

She came into the emergency room on a stretcher saying “I passed out again? Am I okay?” We x-rayed her and found a tumor in her brain. It was Friday, and they were going to operate on Monday morning. Sunday afternoon we were called stat. I stood in the corner and saw seven doctors and nurses try to revive her with CPR and electricity stimulation. The doctors said “Clear!” four times and she would jump, almost sitting upright once, but she was gone. I remember the sound of the monitor; one long D minor until clicked off. I remember the faces of every one of those people trying to save her. So stoic, so full of care, so guarded from the pain of the moment. She had an embolism, so I remember, and it was all thought: if only that operation would have been earlier. One of us said it was because of the Sunday Saint’s game, and another told him to shut up. After it was over I looked into her face, into piercing blue eyes full of tears, just as a hand closed them.

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Twenty- Timothy…

He came into my office several times, on the USS Kitty Hawk. He was guarded by a Marine once, a Captain’s Mast for disobeying an order. He had eyes like a trapped dear. I wasn’t privy as to why he got into trouble. They found his shoes on top of his folded clothes, his ID and socks in his shoes. It is speculated he jumped naked into the prop on the after-braw late in the night, hundreds of miles into the Tonkin gulf. I went out there the next night, long after midnight. It was a full moon, and the wash glowed a phosphor iridescent in a straight line all the way to the horizon. I did this to see the last thing he might have seen, alone, with a decision to make. I still wonder how on earth it could get so bad… I was the Captain’s yeoman, and he wrote the letter to his folks, but he would not let us read it.

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Twenty-one- Halloween…

Early one foggy Louisiana morning in October, I was trying to make it to the landing in Cameron to catch a boat to my offshore rig. The fog was so thick I could only see three lines in front of me, but only when I stuck my head out. Suddenly I saw a light ahead and as I pulled up to a Cop with a flashlight waved me to stop in front of an eighteen wheeler truck. A man in a pickup truck, on his way home, had run into the back of this eighteen wheeler, and was told not to look, that his head had been torn off. It was covered with a blanket, but the faces flashing red and blue standing around the sight I remembered. I pulled off the road soon after and fell into a deep sleep, deeper than I can ever remember. It was the only time in my 27 years a a fluid engineer that I was late for work…

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Twenty-two…

Mr. Red…He came to me asking to use the phone. I was the Mud Engineer and night company man on a rig off the coast of Mexico. I said, “Sure!” He dialed the number and said, “Oh, thank God. Thank God!” After he hung up I asked him if everything was alright at home. “Oh yes,” he said, “My wife’s checkup says she does not have cancer.” He was a red-headed man with a red face, nervous and fidgety, and he smoked one cigarette after another. He wore a large gold crucifix on a thick silver chain, and every morning he would make his own bed and put his bible on his pillow. One night, soon after, I was awakened by the cook saying he got a call that the mud logger had collapsed in his lab. I dressed quickly and ran to his unit located right under the rig floor. I asked several men outside what had happened but they gestured to the open door, not speaking English. Several of us did CPR and he got a pulse back twice, but it would not stay. We kept working and time stood still. I remember his face, and the face of all of us, even my own, as we all decided to stop. We actually decided to stop. It took two days before the proper boat came for his body. We had him wrapped in a large plastic bag, and put him in the cooler with the milk, eggs, and vegetables. I ate none of it, and the smell of that refrigerator I’ll never forget…

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Twenty-three-Pookie…

My best friend since St. Raphael called me a week before he died. He was 51. He told me he wished he had listened to me to quit smoking, and that he would not see his grand-child grow up. I didn’t recognize his face, seven years fighting Renal Cell Carcinoma, and he looked to be the oldest man on earth after the radiation. I went back to his coffin three times, and was one of six others that carried him to the cemetery. The casket was so heavy, and I struggled not to drop him. I was just as strong as any one of those men, but my side dipped down as I struggled to push it up, and it just didn’t make sense. Several other men wanted to help me, but I wouldn’t let them, finally able to get it steady and then up on its carrier. I remember his face from far back in my life, third grade. I had called him four eyes, and we fought in the school- yard, and I choked him to win. …by sixth grade, we were skipping out of church together on Sunday, and he became my greatest partner. The next day I was so sore I could barely walk, and was told that adrenaline does that.

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All of those faces have come to me in certain times of my life. I see them melt into the faces of everyone around me, strangers and loved ones alike. Sometimes, possibly in line at a check out, I see a young girl so unhappy, so cold, so uncaring, and I see the face of the little black boy dying in Africa with his whole life stretched out in a moment. I see the tears of a grandmother telling me her granddaughter begged to live, on a man standing on an intersection with a card that reads, “Hungry and homeless.” I see them in irresponsibility, in wasted moments, and wasted lives, like men in the chain gang cutting the grass on Camellia. I see them in my mirror shaving, my eyes looking back, in both the pain and joy this life can bring, and they have, each and every one, taught me who I am.

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Read more great articles from KEN’S CORNER

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From the Author, Ken La Rive – We in the Liberty movement have been fighting to take back this country for less than a decade, peacefully and with the love of God and country in our hearts. Our banner has been trampled on and displaced by a multitude of distractions, further eroding our nation and the cause for Liberty. And so, as we are pulled by forces we cannot fathom, powerful entities with unlimited resources stolen from our future, unaccountable trillions printed out of thin air and put on our backs as debt, we must formulate the most pitiful of all questions any patriot might ask in the final hour: Are we going to fight for our master’s tyranny, or are we going to demand the return of our civil liberties and Constitution? Are we going to choose The Banner of Liberty, or the shackles of voluntary servitude? Will it be a war for corporate profit, or a war to regain our ability to self govern, as the blood and toil of our forefathers presented to us, their children, as a gift? I fear that decision is emanate. I fear that any decision will be a hard one, but my greatest fear of all is that the decision has already been made for us.

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