Speaking Well of the Dead: Kathay, R.I.P.

(reflections on the life of Kathay Walters, friend and neighbor, and on the sermon given at her memorial service in little Alamo, Georgia.)

A preacher at the Methodist church of Alamo, Georgia began his memorial sermon this way (as I rermember it):

I have to admit that I didn't know Kathay Walters. I only met her once, two months ago, at the funeral of her mother. All I know is what I've heard from you [her family]. And I don't know who started it . . .

He was referring to a family feud with allegations of malfeasance, allegations of mistreatment of aged parents, all tangled with property, wills, and harsh words. The minister guessed that he was the first ever to choose Philippians 4 at a funeral oration. It's the passage that I set to music for my brother's marriage, "One thing I know, forgetting what lies behind. . . straining for the prize of the upward call of Jesus." The preacher went on:

. . . I don't know who was right or wrong. But I know this: No one here is going to speak ill of the dead. . . . You, her family, her daughter, her sisters. . . you all remember times when she loved you and you loved her, and you all remember good times. Remember those, and remember that Jesus said no one is fit to be a judge but Jesus alone.

It was a remarkably candid and forceful statement in a situation where preachers usually resort to bromides about death and vague "memories" about a person they knew only in their Sunday best -- or in a hospital gown. The little brick church, whitewashed inside, was big enough to hold about one hundred - fifty people if they squeezed. There was a group at the back of one side, separated by a gulf of ten pews from a family group at the front. Pall bearers across the aisle were separated by another ten pews from where I sat with Nikhil (who moved three years ago into the home where I used to live across the street from her) with his wife Mallika and cousin Amar. At the point when he said to remember the times when she'd loved them, the separated groups began to cry.

With us was Kathay's dearest neighbor friend Dottie, who'd laughed with me on the phone just a week before as she was helping Kathay to plan out a lifetime of reforming her eating habits to accommodate diabetes. Dottie had taken Kathay to the hospital with acute symptoms on the Tuesday, and stayed with her through overnight surgery and violent, excruciating aftermath.

Since the preacher didn't know Kathay, I offer my perspective. There's a lot that I didn't want to know, and there's a lot that was so different from my experience that I just laughed.

I know that her candor was shocking. She was fearless. She wouldn't sit still when she perceived that she or someone else wasn't being treated fairly. When teens down our street attracted a clientele of thugs in loud cars, she called the police to report drug dealing and over-loud car radios. She sat on her front porch with a cell phone to call 911 and a gun in her lap. When the cleaners lost her clothes smoke-smudged in a house fire (that I slept through - notwithstanding the firetrucks and sirens across the street), she sent to insurance companies and small-claims court her long inventories of every gown, blouse, and article of underwear with estimated costs -- dictated to me at my computer. On other issues, she dictated letters to me addressed to the Governor, our Senators, our Insurance Commissioner, the owner of Home Depot (to expedite the opening of his aquarium), and her divorce lawyer, and Oprah.

When I moved into the Owens Meadow subdivision of Kennesaw, GA back in 1998, she introduced herself, demanded that we trade house keys "because neighbors should be able to take care of each other," and she put me to work clearing weeds out of the vacant zone between my house and the next, so that she wouldn't have to look at them. (She also didn't want any haven for snakes.) But she also mowed lawns up and down the street as a service to the neighborhood -- riding her tractor in her short shorts (Kathay was not a petite woman), red hair, hat, sunglasses, cigarette dangling from her mouth.

When I called her from the hospital the morning after a car crash, she took care of my house and my dogs Cleo and Bo, who adored her always. During my long convalescence, she provided me with meals, too.

Some years later, after I'd moved, and Cleo died suddenly, I drove to tell her. I couldn't even get the words out, "Cleo died." She comforted me, and led me straight across the street to demand that the next door neighbor give me his little dog -- who'd played often with Bo and Cleo, and who otherwise never got off the rope tied to the side of the garage -- saying, "You don't care for the dog, and he'll give him a good home." That's how I got Luis. By the way, I'd done the driving for her when her beloved old cat suddenly fell ill (poisoned, perhaps). She buried him in the backyard and swore she'd never leave that house, because he was back there.

She taught me how to make martinis, having been the cute blond waitress in a miniskirt at the Holiday Inn on Windy Hill Road. Back in 1970, she told me, that was about the only place in Cobb County where a man could get a good drink. Late nights in winter, she also liked it when I brought eggnog, which she'd make "dirty" by adding Grand Marnier or Bourbon -- in a proportion about 50-50. She also worked as the head of dining services in a large retirement center, and after planning meals for hundreds a day, she never did learn to cook for one guest. I always left her dinner table stuffed, and carrying tubs of leftovers besides.


When I'd come home frustrated by students, feeling beaten down, she'd sit me on the porch, put a huge snifter of plum wine in my hands, and share her opinions.

Her house was always dark, except for the big-screen TV. She kept it super - cool in the summer, insulated with screens and blankets and curtains on the windows.

I never did write down the words that she would say without having seen them -- "honeysuckers" were weeds on my fence, and the neighbors had a hot tub "ka-huzzi." But I felt it would be a kind of betrayal to write down the words for someone else's amusement, and they're all gone, now. Still, there's one story along those lines that I love: She had little ceramic birdhouses, and little carved ones, too, arrayed on the tops of the kitchen cabinets. She proudly pointed to new wallpaper trim she'd pasted along the ceiling -- "birdhouses," she said. But I looked more closely and saw that those "birdhouses" had moons carved on them, and human ankles visible within -- she'd plastered the kitchen with outhouses. She was embarrassed, but she left them up.

Our friend Nikhil did a bold and fitting thing, writing an appreciation of her in rhyme that took up a full page of the funeral home's sign-in book, an improvised verse that mentioned her big heart and sharp tongue, how she was never shy about speaking what was on her mind.

I'd long been in the habit of taking her out to some of our favorite places, and taking her to some events, besides. We saw The Color Purple and The Lion King, and the new aquarium. We ate often at Buffalo's and Copeland's, and recently, the OK Cafe. She'd dress to the nines in glittery tops and tight black pants, with jewelry and eye shadow. But I waited 'til March 23, a beautiful afternoon, to suggest that we go down to Buckhead to the pricey and trendy Atlanta Seafood Company, with its three-storey copper fish in front. She loved it - had lobster, "white ziffandel," and some of my dessert. It was the last time I saw her.