(A Lack of) Words for Darold

You know, I've talked before about what grief looks like, and I think it has a lot of faces: it's loud, it's silent, it's dark, it's blinding, it screams and whispers, and comes with cakes and casseroles, whiskey and beers. Sometimes there are so many words. This time, I just don't know what they are. The only ones that come to mind this time are curse words. And hell, maybe that's fitting, because I know what Darold would say, if it were possible to find a similar loss (it isn't), but if he were the one to walk in with the beer or the whiskey, he'd pull us in with one arm, and he'd say, "Well, dammit, kiddo. Dammit." He would hand over an open beer, because if he handed it over already opened, you didn't have a choice but to drink it. "We better have a beer about it," he'd tell you. 

Darold Schneider was a pillar - a structure that was built deep into the foundation, of community, family, program, church, of all of us. He was a piece that held up the rest of it, no matter what the rest of it was. The loss of a man like that, or rather, of Darold, because truly, there isn't really another "man like that" - is shattering. The structure becomes unstable without the pillar that has been it's foundation for, well, for what feels like ever. He was a cornerstone, more so than almost any person I've ever known.

The first thing that comes to mind, when I pull up Darold in my mind, is the image of him standing on my parents front step with a box full of peaches. The peaches were for my mom. She mentioned once, ages ago, when he talked about how he'd bought fresh peaches, how much she loved them. And ever since, every fall, for years, he'd show up at my parents one evening with a box full of peaches for my mother. He'd set them on the counter without a word, and then he'd stay and have a beer on the porch. She'd thank him over and over again, and he'd wave off her thanks like it was nothing at all, like he hadn't gone out of his way in the slightest. Like he just always carried around boxes full of peaches. 

When my sister got married, she wanted pallet wood to decorate with. Darold said that he had plenty, to just swing by work, and grab them. I drove Dad's pickup over, met Darold in the parking lot, got out to help him load them, and he said, "Hell, we're not carrying these." And he got the forklift, and loaded them all into the back for me. I offered to help him strap them down, and he said, "You just sit there and look pretty, I got 'em." He strapped them down, pounded on the back end, and said, "Get outta' here, and drive slow!" When I thanked him, he waved me off with a, "You bet!" And that was it. He just...did it. Always, without fail. He just showed up and did it. 

When I was little, sometimes we'd ride in Darold's backseat to away games. Our dads would sit up front, and us kids would pile in the back seats, and listen to them talk strategy, make predictions, and on the way back, talk over what went right, what went wrong, and which parents would do better to stay quiet on the sidelines (most all of them). Once, I remember, on a chilly ride home, I wrote my name in the fogged backseat window. Darold, caught my eyes in the mirror, and said in his serious voice, "Don't you be leaving fingerprints on my windows, or I'm calling you to clean 'em." He didn't ever really make me clean the windows, but I still never wrote my name on another foggy window after that, and every time I see a kid doodle on a foggy car window, I think about Darold's raised eyebrows in the rearview mirror.

There are many times, throughout my life, when I've seen those raised eyebrows or heard, "Move your feet!" from the front row of the bleachers across the basketball court when I got beat on defense, "Quit driving so fast!" across the football practice field if my mowing lines were crooked, post phone call to my dad that time that Darold eyed a beer can in my hand when I was underage at a wedding reception and said, "Kate, that doesn't look like a Pepsi," or later, when I wasn't underage anymore, Darold coming out to the lumber yard when I worked for my dad in the summer, and putting an open beer on my desk because, "well, it's Monday, we'd better have a beer about it."

As a teacher, I frequently told my students to "use your head for more than just a hat rack," a favorite of my Darold Schneider staple phrases. He's the reason I know how to back a mower onto a trailer, carefully and slowly, as he often reminded. The first time I drove a four-wheeler, it was Darold riding behind me, reminding me every few feet "don't turtle the gas; keep your thumb down on the throttle." And when we won our first elementary school basketball game (4-2 in sudden death overtime), it was Darold who said, "little too much defense; maybe next game we think about shooting."  After my grandma died, Darold would stop by frequently to visit my grandpa with a box full of Dilly Bars, just to sit with him for an hour or so and have an ice cream, just so he didn't have to sit alone. And that wasn't an anomaly: there were other people on that list, that just-stop-by-to-visit list, there was always a list.

I can't count the times in my life that I've heard Darold's voice in my head, or told my sisters that we can't do that because while yes it would disappoint our parents, imagine if Darold heard, and we never wanted to disappoint Darold. He was the kind of person that you just never wanted to let down. Because in all of my life, I have never, not once, seen him let anyone down. To disappoint Darold would be criminal. Even into my thirties. I think the last time I said that to my sisters was within a year or so: we couldn't do that; it would disappoint Darold. 

And I know, that while this short list of snippets about Darold is unique to me, everyone who knew him has a list like this. Every person whose life he touched, has a piece of Darold that struck a chord. It feels impossible, to leave an impact on every surface you touch. And maybe it is, an impossibility unique to Darold, because if anyone could have managed the impossible - I know where my money would have been.

Darold Schneider has been so much to so many; I'm not sure what grief looks like in the face of a loss like his. I do know that this is one of those times that I feel like the axis of the whole universe should pause, or be thrown off kilter, that so many people are off balance without the weight of who Darold was. Kind, strong, stern, goofy, present, willing, generous, steady. There will forever be a gap in the fabric of life without Darold's silhouette to fill it. I told his kids last night that I didn't have words. And I still don't feel like I do, because there aren't enough, there aren't any that could encompass what the loss of Darold Schneider means. So, truly, I don't really know what grief looks like today, in the absence of Darold. I truly do not know. I think it probably looks a little different to everybody who meets it this time. The only thing I can tell you, really, is that whatever grief looks like today, I would bet it's wearing Cardinal Red.