To Live Again

There are some things that just make you scratch your head and wonder and the year that I was a junior in High School we blundered up on one of them. To say that it was one of the strangest things that ever happened to either one of us is an understatement of epic proportions.  We were the youngest kids of youngest kids. Our grandparents were all born in the late 1870s to the mid 1880s. Papa was born in 1881 and Mama Carrie was born in 1888. That put us a whole generation, almost two generations closer to the 19th century than other kids our age – and had it not been for the fact that our grandparents raised us we would never have had this experience.

We grew up hearing about things that happened long before we were born – in the “last” century from people who were there and remembered them instead of reading about them in history books. We grew up thinking of it as being “our” time and “our” place far more than the time and place that we were in. After seeing something else that I’m attaching here we both became convinced of it.

Papa had been in the Spanish-American War. He was one of the first doctors… very first… to be in the Army Medical Corps. It was organized for the Spanish-American War. Up until then there were no doctors who were actually in uniform. They were all civilian “contract physicians” until 1898.

When we were in High School Papa still had one of his old blue uniforms from “the war” in his closet and Mama Carrie had a whole bunch of her old dresses from that time in hers. The whole thing started when our High School scheduled a costume party for Halloween and we got right up to the last minute and didn’t have any costumes figured out. Naturally we wanted something that would complement each other as usual.

Well, we dug around in our grandparent’s closets until we dug out all of those old clothes and… with their permission of course… wore them to a school costume party.  I wore Papa’s old uniform and Sherry wore one of Mama Carrie’s old dresses. When we were dressed we came out and showed ourselves off to Papa and Mama Carrie to get them to fix anything we hadn’t done right in putting them on. Papa almost passed out when he saw us. The look of shock on his face was something that we had never seen before. He turned as white as a sheet. With thirty-six years in the army – they didn’t make you retire back then until you were sixty-two years old no matter how many years you had in – and a lifetime in medical practice it took a lot to shock Papa.

“What’s wrong Papa?” I’d never seen him like this before.

“Papa are you alright?” Sherry had never seen him that way either.

He didn’t say anything for a long time – it was almost like he couldn’t. We just thought it was the old memories coming back. It was to a point but we didn’t understand just what that “point” was until the a little later Finally, he just started muttering “Well I’ll be damned. I’ll just be damned,” under his breath. His eyes were as big around as saucers. “I’ll just be damned – Jimmy and Emmy.”

“Emmy? Who’s Emmy?”

“Yeah, who’s Emmy Papa?” He seemed distant – far away. He was, but we didn’t know how distant that was yet.

Then the old man got real quiet. “You’ll see Little Squaw.” He stared at us a little longer. “You’ll both see.”

Then he left the room, but he never took his eyes off of us while he was leaving. When he came back, he had a box full of old photos. It was the kind that are made on the thick cardboard backs and all of them were from the Spanish-American War period or the War in the Philippines. He must have dug in that box for an hour before he found the picture he was after.

What he showed us made us almost pass out.

He handed us an old, faded picture and then turned to Mama Carrie. “Carrie, do you have a mirror in your purse?”

She nodded, opened her handbag and handed him an open make-up compact. He handed it to us. “Now look.” He held the little mirror beside the old photo. “Look…”

We did. It was a picture of a coupe, and they looked exactly like us… I mean exactly like us. They were dressed exactly the same way and in exactly the same pose that we had used to show off for Papa and Mama Carrie just a few minutes before. They looked enough like us to be us or vise-versa. It was like looking in a mirror at ourselves. It’s hard to explain still. It was us.

“Baby Girl, do you see what I see?”

“Yeah, I do, but I don’t’ believe it.”

“Neither do I.”

Papa took the old picture and handed it to Mama Carrie. She had never known the people in the photo. “Carrie do you see what I do?”

She squinted and then took out her glasses. She looked back and forth between that picture and us for several minutes in total silence. “Yeah Lee, I do. I don’t believe it but I see it. It’s as  plain as the nose on your face.”

He chuckled under his breath in spite of himself. “That’s pretty plain Carrie.”

She nodded. “I know.”

The next day we all loaded into Papa’s little ’49 Ford and took a trip to one of the neighboring towns… to the cemetery. He took us directly to a big granite monument… it stood over six feet tall.

We both came down with a case of cold chills and thought we were going to pass out.

“Baby Girl, you’d better pinch me. I think I’m dreaming.”

“Jimmy, you’d better catch me. I think I’m going to faint.”

Mama Carrie sat in the car while we walked through the wrought iron gate and directly to one of the biggest monuments in the tiny graveyard. When we got there, Papa just stood and stared at us like we had two heads, looking back and forth between us and that big tombstone. He had known these people before they died. They had been close friends but he hadn’t though of them in years until he saw us that Saturday evening dressed up for the party. I will always wonder what went through his mind. All he could manage to say was the same thing he’d said the day before when he saw us all dressed up. “Well I’ll be damned. I’ll just be damned. Jimmy and Emmy.” He took off his glasses and clasped his temples between his thumb and second finger. “I just can’t believe it. I just can’t.”

Neither could we.

The three of us looked back and forth between each other as we read the inscription on that monument.

IN LOVING MEMORY

Of

OUR PARENTS

Major James Lee “Jimmy” Masterson MD AUS (MC)

Dec. 4th, 1845 – Jan. 11, 1901

Emily Marie “Miss Emmy” Fields Masterson RN

Sept. 11, 1848 – Jan. 11, 1901

Died in field service with the Peking Relief Expedition

There was never in their lifetimes,

Not a single minute’s span

That the two were not together;

This woman and this man.

From the time that they were children

To the time that they grew old

They stood beside each other

In the wind and rain and cold.

From a far-off land called Texas

To the forests of Vermont

To the shores of distant China

They cast a single lot.

The Major healed their bodies

While Miss Emmy held their hands;

And they raised a loving family

In a dozen different lands.

So pay good heed what love can do;

How long that love can last.

And know that God can give us

Both a future and a past.

Know that God can give us

Loving families and friends

And God on high can give to us

A love that has no end.

For there is no one beneath this stone

No earthly shells lie near.

Their bodies lie across the waves

Their hearts are buried here.

From All of Us:

Josephine, Emily, Kimberly, James, Timothy, Grace, William, Norris, Doris, John and Samantha Masterson

Papa finally came to himself and told us a little of the ‘story’. “You see kids, the Mastersons were killed in China during the Boxer Rebellion. They were part of the International Relief Expedition that went to relieve Peking under General Chaffee and Admiral Sydney.” He paused. A sorrowful look crossed his face. “Their bodies were never recovered.”  He pointed to the tombstone. “Now I want you to look at that. It’s the damndest thing I ever saw. Except for the years you were born, you and Sherry have the same birthdays  as Jim and Emmy did.” He took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. Then he slowly went on. “And, there is exactly the same amount of time between you – thirty-three months.”

I didn’t’ have to figure it up. I knew it was right. Except for the years they were the same dates.

He reached into his pocket and handed us that old photo again. “I’ve seen this rock a thousand times and it never registered on me. I’ll just be damned.”

We looked at the picture again and that same cold chill shot through both of us as the long-dead couple smiled up at us.

Sherry grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. “Jimmy, it’s like they’re trying to tell us something.”

“I know. I can feel it too.”

We stood there for a long time. I don’t know how long. Finally we walked slowly back to the car, settled in and Papa drove us home.

There was something else. We really didn’t pay any attention to it at the time. Papa and Mama Carrie pointed it out to us later. All the time we were getting all dressed up in that old uniform and that old dress, it was just like a “habit” for us. We knew what we were doing. Sherry didn’t even look while she was using a button hook to fasten the buttons on a pair of high-topped shoes and I never down while I was buttoning the fly on the uniform’s trousers (no zippers back then).  The thing is, clothes from the 19th century are a LOT different from the clothes we wear now. We shouldn’t have had any idea what we were doing, Sherry buttoned the detachable collar onto my shirt without any trouble at all, and helped Sherry into all of those petticoats and bloomer just like I’d always done it. We had seen Papa in his uniform before for parades on Veteran’s Day (he still called it “Armistice Day”) but neither one of us had ever actually seen him put it on. Neither one of us had ever seen Mama Carrie in any of those clothes except once or twice in old photos. There’s just no way that we should have known how to do any of that, let alone get it completely right the first time.

***

We kept that old uniform and that dress. For the next twenty years, every time we saw them we remembered Papa and Mama Carrie and that first time we ever put them on… and any time we went to any kind of “costume” party, we were “the Major and Miss Emmy.”