Tennessee Colors

Beyond Politics and Well on Into Life

Photo by Kostiantyn Vierkieiev on Unsplash

My sister, Cathy, should turn 74 on Halloween. Instead, she died in March a year-and-a-half ago. We were not close over the last several years, maybe decades. She was an ultrareligious, conservative Republican. She once wrote a letter to each of her six siblings telling us she loved us, but we were all going to hell. This because we are not members of her particular Christian sect.

When she became gravely ill 200 miles deep into Alabama, we remaining Tennessee siblings followed social media and occasional personal family contacts for updates. My sister, Karen, called me to say that her son was taking her to see Cathy. Did I want to go? Of course. My nephew, John, who lives in Nashville, picked me up in Murfreesboro, his mom in Pulaski, and drove us to the Birmingham hospital.

We knew instantly that Cathy wouldn’t live through the day. The death rattles were prevalent. We sat close to her bed. I stroked her face, kissed her forehead, told her I loved her. We sang to her. Out of tune. Those childhood songs whose lyrics pop into your head all disremembered and jangled. When I was five and Cathy was not quite eight, we five sisters sang “Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley” in a school talent show. We did not win. We fumbled it even worse that day near Cathy’s deathbed. Probably a good thing. It was not an appropriate song. We rallied, though, and ended with “You Are My Sunshine.” A tune our father sang to us many times.

In the last hours of her life, I held her and sang to her, because I love her. She is my sister. Her political/religious views never crossed my mind.

I am a liberal Tennessean. A progressive Tennessean. A Democrat Tennessean. None of which is an oxymoron. Even if that’s what the right-wing thinks. That we don’t exist. In my world, there are a lot of us. In their world, we are anomalies.

The truth is we live together in our one and only world. In the same workplaces. In the same neighborhoods. In the same houses. Even in the same beds. We shop at the same Kroger. Eat at the same Cracker Barrel. Sometimes attend the same houses of worship where Jesus comes packaged in red. Not in the liberal blue I was taught in Sunday school. Where He took care of the poor and admonished the rich.

I love many Republicans. Not just my deceased sister. But several in my extended family. And dear friends. I don’t compromise my views nor interfere with theirs. And vice versa. We’re okay with that. Mostly.

I can’t say I live in purple. In Tennessee, we reserve that color for our irises. It’s more like we’re a bunch of blue and red patches sewn into a raggedy crazy quilt. Red patches gerrymandered to dominate the polling sites. Blue patches scattered throughout, never to meet in bunches too large to tip the vote. The old quilt is worn, faded, frayed, ripped, resewn, in need of a wash. But it smells like home. And keeps me warm.