One Less

I sat to write words of memory this afternoon. No matter how I tried, I kept returning to the places surrounding the person who departed Monroe County, Arkansas, yesterday. Though she lived in Memphis for a time, she came back to Holly Grove and lived a long life. She had the iron in her bones to outlive her husband, Poor Bob. She shared that almost indomitable spirit with my Grandma Nellie. I could write a volume about how much I misunderstood my aunt when I was younger. My childhood was both an enclave and a firestorm. When I was very young, she stood ready to voice her opinions loudly. Her gaze unnerved me. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how fierce her sense of humor was. She needed it to do battle with my mom. My aunt was a hard worker and had iron in her hands that my mom didn’t.

Monroe County no longer exists, but it’s still on the map. Citizens still dot the places within with their presence. But it is a place largely holding its breath and studiously peering away from its dwindling ranks. From 2010 until 2022, it lost 19.3% of its population. In that same time frame, it lost 1/3 of its 35-49 age group. Brinkley, Roe, Clarendon, Fargo, Holly Grove, Indian Bay, Blackton, Smales, Pine Ridge, Dixon, and Keevil; all these places sit in careful silence, awaiting their turn to be memories and names of places once filled with people living their lives. They’ll survive as census notes. I’ve learned more about them as an adult than I ever did as a child living there or as an adult returning to visit.

I did not appreciate the beauty of those small places until much later. To me, Monroe County was where my grandparents lived. Truthfully, Monroe County could have been almost anywhere in the delta, on either side of the Great River. Most of the places share a similar heartbeat and footprint. The odd asphalt roads, the infinite number of dusty dirt roads, miles of telephone wire stretching lazily across the flat land, interrupted by crops, mosquitoes, swamps, and irrigation ditches. Community was everywhere, regardless of the distance between neighbors.

Although I better understand it now, the prejudices seemed disconnected. I didn’t know that the same small town that held my aunt in its embrace was also the crucible for a sister that I hadn’t known for almost five decades. Now, Monroe County has a citizenship rate of almost 100% and no household reported being secondarily English-speaking. Monroe is not a place to go to; rather, it is a place to leave or retire and await one’s fate. For those who love the places of Monroe County, they feel it in their bones and wish their bones to rest there.

I cannot observe a storm without recalling the austere beauty of watching the weather move in across the open spaces, the towers of lightning and clouds visible for miles. I cannot sit on a swing without remembering summer nights. Nostalgia mostly erases the agony and buzz of mosquitoes.

Now? The last of those in my family who followed the beacon of Monroe County have gone to visit other places, ones to which we cannot tread. Not yet, anyway.

Monroe County now has one less to claim as a citizen.

But if you tally her voice and character, it lost something precious in her that is hard to define. People might be easy to come by, but there are so few remaining who, upon hearing them speak, evoke in us the spine and vitality of the places that are becoming shadows.

I can’t return to my hometown of Brinkley or Monroe County, which holds a place in my head. The same winds blow, and the same crops withstand the blistering sun. There is some wisdom that only older age can provide. Among that knowledge is that you carry some places so deeply inside you that you can’t quite identify what’s missing until you take the place of your ancestors, remembering what once was.

You can return and stand next to a recently plowed field. Or up to your knees in growing cotton. The only thing that has changed is everything.

One less.

With some, we lose more than one with their passing.

Love, X

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