Hailstorm

We sat on the front porch early that morning, right as the sun should’ve risen, listening to ping-pong balls of hail pound against the tin awning from the sickly green sky. Tornado weather, an annual event for Oklahoma. My feet kicked back and forth, 7-year-old legs too short to reach the cold concrete from my spot on the bench. My grandfather rested beside me, guardian in the absence of an irresponsible father, flicking the ash from the end of the Marlboro burning bright in his right hand. The potential for tornadoes halted city activities for the day, including work and school. So instead, Papoo and I watched the rain. Thunder shook the earth, and we both jumped, my heart an electric hummingbird frantically beating in my chest. I looked out to the wooden cross in the corner of our yard, a pair of two-by-fours nailed perpendicular, convinced it had been struck from the ferocity of the crack. The wood remained in place, uncharred.

After days of severe storm coverage, Oklahoma’s favorite weatherman, Gary England, had promised some midday relief. As a pioneer in meteorology credited with being the first on-air personality to track storms via satellite, Gary England had more than earned Oklahomans’ trust. However, if the rising waters on our suburban street and the swirling skies were indicators, the rain didn’t look to be letting up any time soon.

“Damn, Gary England, callin’er wrong again. ‘Dried up by noon’ my ass. This here is God laughing.”

Papoo huffed loudly, shouting, “Can you believe this?” through the screen door to Meme, who busily made breakfast in the kitchen. I walked to the edge of the porch, stretching a thin arm out into the typhoon and catching a few bits of hail. I cupped the icy clumps in my hands, presenting them to Papoo. “Kids at school say rain is angels crying. So, what’re these?” His calloused fingers brushed my smooth palm as he lifted a chunk of ice up to his eye, squinting through his glasses as if to zoom in on the object.

“Maybe it’s just chilly up there today,” he responded boringly, tossing the ice into the front yard. Unsatisfied with his answer, I continued my questioning: “Why is God laughing at us?” Without missing a beat, Papoo quipped back, “Because we pretend to understand Him.”

Again his dismissal frustrated me. I stared down at the melting ice in my hands, wondering why my family bothered to care so much about God if he was just going to laugh at us for trying. While we’d never had a solid home church, Christianity surged through my grandparents’ veins, seeped into our everyday lives: bible stories before bed; gospel music in the kitchen tape player; personal bibles emblazoned with our names. But often my young questions of faith were met with these adult pronouncements of wisdom I never understood

“God is mean,” I finally replied.

I flung the remaining water from my palms, wiping my hands on my jeans. Looking up, I met Papoo’s eyes as he stared down at me. “He can be,” Papoo began, glancing out into the now totally flooded street, darker clouds rolling in above us. “And maybe you won’t always like how things are going, but that’s why you gotta have faith, Girly Girl.” He paused then, pulling another cigarette from the silver pack with his teeth. Lighter ablaze, he puffed a few times until the tip glowed red, exhaling smoke and scripture: “’Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.’ That’s from Hebrews. We’ll mark the page in your bible when we head in.” He stood up then, groaning as he stretched. In the street, a stray dog dashed through the floodwaters searching for shelter from the storm. I turned to ask Papoo if God would give the dog mercy in its time of need, too, but he had already gone into the house.

Tornado

Nine years later and nine point five miles away, an F5 tornado ripped through the town of Moore, Oklahoma, passing less than a mile from my high school. The storm struck at 2:56 p.m. before classes had dismissed for the day. Papoo would tell me that upon hearing Gary England confirm a cyclone at 19th Street and Santa Fe, he immediately headed to the school, tornado be damned. “I just prayed,” he’d say, “For you. For them all.” Frantically he dialed my number over and over again, always to receive a robotic, “I’m sorry, but the AT&T cust-,” before slapping his phone shut and trying again. During a tornado, cell phones are nothing but hunks of frustration as phone calls flood local authorities to report injuries and loved ones desperately dial those who may have been hit; and that’s only if the cell towers in town are still standing.

Two miles out from the school and the tornado’s main path, Papoo pulled his truck to the side of the road, flooding, powerlines, and emergency lights barricading his way. He continued the journey on foot, talking to God out loud, his leather cowboy boots sinking into the soft earth as he trudged through a pasture, passing shredded photo albums, battered old wicker cabinets, and chunks of people’s driveways.

As Papoo was beginning his walk, I sat bored and huddled underneath a lab table in Mrs. Winkler’s sophomore zoology class. When the principal announced all students were being held until the storm was over, he was met with general apathy. Living in Moore for any period of time meant dealing with more than a handful of tornados. With weekly siren tests, tornado procedure practices multiple times a semester, and a storm shelter in every backyard, residents of Moore often shrug off cyclones. We’ve all done this before. Smack dab in the middle of Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley, Moore is notorious for deadly twisters, with witty websites calling it “Tornado Town, USA.” While violent, Twister-esque tornados are often portrayed to be a normal occurrence in popular culture, most tornados actually result in no casualties at all, staying on the ground for mere moments before retreating into the clouds. In 2017, Oklahoma had 84 confirmed tornadoes resulting in one death for the entire year.

Because of its geographic location bordered by wide swathes of farmland, Moore sits in the perfect zone for tornados to build over miles and miles without obstruction before crashing down onto the town of 60,000. In the last 20 years, Moore tornados have caused 64 deaths, nearly triple the Oklahoma average. On May 20th, 2013, while I played Candy Crush in zoology, a black vortex of wind spinning at over 210 miles per hour ripped through our city, resulting in 24 deaths and $2 billion in damages. Among the dead: a mother and newborn holed up in a 7/11 deep freeze, nine children from Briarwood Elementary, and a 14-year-old survivor with PTSD who took his life five years later.

After an hour under the lab tables, students were released from classes and herded towards the gym, still in the dark about the magnitude of the storm. A few of us, though, had to sneak a glance. Looking out the glass double -doors at the end of the freshman hallway, I spotted my red ‘94 Mustang in the parking lot, layers of attic insulation clinging to the windows. We all fell silent, quickly wondering about the state of the houses whose pieces we saw flung across our campus. Silently we proceeded to the gym.

Papoo said the rain let up about halfway through his walk, just around the time he heard a bang in the pasture to his left. The sound of a .22 startled his gait as he spun in the direction of the shot. About a hundred years away he spotted a man with his back turned, holstering his pistol and standing in front of a black horse, dead on the ground in front of him. Papoo approached the man with a yell, “This yer property?” The gunman turned to my grandfather, his face like stone.

“Yessir,” he replied, “And these are my horses.” Papoo looked closer as he approached the horse, eyes locked on the single bullet wound in the beast’s forehead. Farther into the field, he counted four more horses dead by their owner’s hand. Papoo looked again at the man, whose eyes shone glass as he stared down at the animal. Horses are one of the most common casualties in Moore tornados. While located in the outskirts of Oklahoma City, Moore has acres of farmland, most of which is used for livestock. In the event of a tornado, farmers set their horses loose in a pasture, giving the animals more of a chance to find shelter on their own rather than trapping them in their stalls. While many of his horses had survived the initial cyclone, suffered with broken limbs, punctured lungs, and internal bleeding. “And this here,” the man said, motioning to the gun on his hip, “is all we can do for them now.”

When Papoo walked into Southmoore’s gym more than two hours after abandoning his truck, he greeted me with a hug that could have deflated the Hindenburg. Crushed between his arms, I felt the slight sobs that shook his frame, but said nothing. We walked to my car in silence, passing weeping students and praying faculty as we went, pulling the debris free from the car windows and collapsing into the seats, our faces caked in sweat from the post-twister humidity.

Electric Storm

Papoo collapsed at a Sam’s Club in the bread aisle. I was walking through my apartment’s front door, clutching a carnival-won stuffed Squirtle in my arms when Meme called about the heart attack. Resuscitation was required, they’re in the ambulance headed to the VA hospital in Midwest City, and, no, she doesn’t know how he is, but it looks bad. My boyfriend drove us to the hospital over an hour from our college town, my hands shaking too much to attempt operating a motor vehicle. As we sped by hillsides and pastures filled to the brim with fall foals, I repeated a question on loop: “What if he dies?”

After giving my name to the receptionist, I was taken to the Family Room in the ER, a small, stale room painted a terrible puke salmon and overflowing with my family members. Immediately Meme’s arms were around me, my shoulder instantaneously soaked in her tears. She stuttered with sobs as she spoke, releasing her embrace to say, “The doctor said the tests will take a few hours. We can see him after that. Now, all we can do is pray.” Around the cramped room, my relatives sipped black coffee and clasped hands in prayer, continuously reminding my grandmother, “it’s in God’s hands now.” From my corner of the room, I stared at my lap, frantically picking away black nail polish as the center of my universe lay unconscious in an MRI machine.

Hours later after a few breakdowns in the Family Room, endless phone calls to out-of-state relatives, and a ventilator tube forced down my Papoo’s throat to keep him alive, his cardiologist met with us in the ICU suite, my family huddled around my grandfather’s still form, his hand grasped limply in mine.

“He has suffered what we call a cardiac Electric Storm,” the faceless doctor said, his features blurred through the torrential tears streaming down my face. Electric Storms get their name from the continuous bursts of ventricular arrhythmia they create, like cracks of lighting to the bottom chamber of the heart. During a Storm, the heart beats too quickly, stopping the proper distribution of blood to the brain. Without medical intervention, an oxygen-deprived body eventually reacts, typically with a stroke or a cardiac arrest. This marked Papoo’s second heart attack after a quadruple bypass when I was three.

“He was most likely experiencing chest pain for the last day or so,” the doctor tells us. My grandmother looked at her husband forlornly, calling him a damn fool before burying her face against his chest, her shoulders shaking with sobs. My family breathlessly waited for anything to hint at a life behind the dead state and the ventilator, after five days of poking his heels with thumbtacks and holding blinding pen lights up to his pupils, my family breathless as we wait for anything to hint at a life behind the dead stare and the ventilator, the doctors declared Papoo brain dead:. “We are afraid there is nothing we can do but make him comfortable. We’ll give you some time to think over your options.”

The only sound was the click of the respirator robotically pumping oxygen into my grandfather’s lungs, inflating them fully with a grotesque pop. From another patient’s room, we could hear David Payne’s fall forecast playing over the ancient analog television suspended from the ceiling. Gary England had retired after the May 20th tornado, to every Oklahoman’s dismay, minus Papoo. In our room, there was no debate, no shouts of outrage or insistences of patience. My grandmother signed the paperwork to discontinue life support that same day, a tear blurring the “J” on her last name. “It’s time for him to go home,” she said. “But Lord, I don’t want to let him.”

We all got our moment to say goodbye before they officially removed the tube. I took mine last, walking into the curtained-off quadrant with my hands in my pockets. Outside rain tapped against the windows, Papoo’s favorite season, autumn, in full force. I made my final plea there, begging him to wiggle a toe or wink one eye, both of my hands desperately clasping his, pinching at the skin hoping for a jerk. Papoo remained still, his chest rising and falling mechanically, his fingers cold as ice. I held my breath a moment before letting my shoulders fall in defeat. I leaned my cheek into the palm of my Papoo’s rough hands, asking a God I didn’t believe in to save him.

“Your loved one will breathe differently after we remove the ventilator,” read the hospital’s guide for removing life support. “Their breathing may become faster than normal… Their breathing may also stop for short amounts of time. These pauses may get longer as your loved one nears death.” Papoo’s breathing had reached this stuttering phase within 10 minutes of removing the tube, which the doctors told us was very quick for a patient in his state. He occasionally coughed, and I was tempted to record the noise, preserving something of him even if just the sound of his cough. As his pauses became longer, the nurse told us that my grandmother could stay, but the rest of us would need to leave. They had a policy, of course.

I kissed Papoo on the cheek, his salt and pepper stubble scratching my face one last time. His eyes were open, boring into me as I brushed a stray hair from his forehead. I stared back, attempting to memorize every wrinkle and line in his face, willing myself to always remember what he looked like in his last few minutes on Earth. While Meme truly believed she would see him again, I didn’t, couldn’t. My atheism had solidified in adulthood, and I knew hugging him goodbye in the curtained off space of the ICU was the last time I would feel the warmth of my grandfather’s body. I bent down to Meme before I left her alone with her dying husband, kissing her on the cheek. I wrapped my arms tightly around her shoulders, telling her I wished there were something, anything I could do for her to make this easier. She squeezed my arms tightly, patting me three times and leaning closer into me as she whispered, “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.”

In the waiting room, my family had begun the clean-up process, filling old Walmart sacks with our junk food trash and completed crossword books. As I gathered my bags, contents strewn across the floor, I attempted to imagine the new Papoo-less reality in front of me. I worried: for me, for Meme, for all of us. In everything I had accomplished, he was behind me, to forgive, to provide, to reassure. I rarely made a decision without calling him for the reminder that he always believed in me. In the week before the heart attack, we had talked nearly every day. Sitting in the hospital parking lot, I left my car in park, turned on Papoo’s favorite Willie Nelson song, and prayed out loud.

Snowstorm

Snow falls so rarely in Oklahoma, any sticking shuts down entire towns. It’s early February, and I can tell immediate that something’s different as I wake up, the early afternoon outside oddly quiet, my sheer curtains showing white. My dog follows my excited steps to the front door, floppy black paws skittering to a halt as she sees the blanket of snow covering the yard. I step onto my small porch, the distinct smell of snow and ice cooling my face, a few snowflakes still falling.

As Bella sniffs the edges of the porch, I spot a red dot in the corner of my yard, blurry without my glasses. The dot, however, helps, rising from its spot in the corner and flying to the center of the yard, the cardinal bouncing through the fresh snow. I freeze, scared any noise will send the bird off to someone else’s front yard.

Red Cardinals can symbolize a lot of things, but Oklahomans, or my family at least, believe they’re the spirits of our loved ones stopping by to say, “Hi.” Maybe they’re angel birds, or just a messenger of good faith. Or maybe they’re relatively common North American birds that migrate through Oklahoma. And while I may not believe in angels or messages, I still hold my breath, kneeling down on the cold concrete and watching the bird. Papoo and I used to count cardinals and blue jays, keeping track with our fingers, ice cream promised to the highest counter (that was somehow always me). So when the cardinal flies from the center of my yard, loops around my neighbor’s tree, and disappears, I say, “Goodbye. I love you,” and have faith my message is received.

Aftermath

Papoo’s fingers clung to the Mustang’s steering wheel as he attempted to drive us out of the debris field, following endless detours and traffic controllers with bright flashlights directing us around the tornado’s destruction. Next to me, Papoo prayed, asking for mercy and grace. As we passed the hospital, now with a giant hole missing from the center, I had to ask him one thing.

“How do you have faith through something like this?” My tone was cold, oozing with spite for God and his plans.

Next to me Papoo stared at the medical center, his eyes bloodshot. I jumped slightly as he grabbed my hand, his fingers twisting tightly around mine. “In this, faith is all we have.” He reached into his jean pocket and produced a single, bent cigarette. I reminded him that he’d promised to quit after his diagnosis of COPD last month. “Lord have mercy, you sound just like your Meme,” he replied, holding the emergency cigarette butt between his teeth and pressing the orange coil of my car lighter against the end, smoke and fire crackling from the tip. Wordlessly, I extended my hand toward him, fingers poised to accept the Marlboro. We passed the cigarette back and forth, the only cigarette we would ever share, as we made our way home through the wreckage.