It was the week after Christmas before New Year’s Eve–1975. That in between week. Around Christmas we kept busy with friends having us over to eat and to visit. This helped the emptiness.
We went to church together. This consoled us. The community brought food. This nurtured us. It was a whirl of activity. Then we slowed down. Rick and Beth returned to DC.
Aunt Liz was still with us—-Dale, Paul, John and me. We needed a project. We needed to be busy. No mention was made of the shootings here in our home where we gathered but it lingered in our minds.
Mother and Daddy planned to make changes to our family living room—upholster couch and chairs, replace rugs and paint. We decided to continue with their plan. There were scatterings of Christmas–cookie boxes, ornament packages, wrapping paper rolls which added to the extra clutter of the season.
We ate our sandwich lunch and cleaned up. As we sat around the table we made plans. How about painting the living room? It was agreed we would do this. The boys moved all the furniture into the middle of the living room and rolled up the carpet to make a row to work around the room. We took the curtains off the windows.
We all changed into old jeans and flannel shirts except for Aunt Liz. She only had her nice clothes with her so she needed some work clothes, too. How could we remedy this? John with a smile on his face headed to Daddy’s closet and found work clothes for Liz to wear.
She dressed in Daddy’s brown work shirt and pants. Daddy made orchard visits with these clothes. As I recall, the pants fit a little tight. When she came out of the bedroom from changing, she made a big scene prancing around in her cherished new wardrobe. We all laughed and laughed. What comic relief we felt. We all made funny remarks as Liz began working as a painter in Daddy’s orchard clothes.
Liz could have supervised us and not actually painted but she chose to work with us. Paul teased Liz about her fashion outfit. She chuckled and said, “I am making a fashion statement. Next year all women will dress like me.”
Dale rolled the walls. Paul painted the trim. Aunt Liz helped Dale with the walls. John and I ended up cutting the hard to reach spots.
At the time my left arm was still in sling from being shot but I managed to paint with my right arm and hand just fine. I needed to help paint with my family.
Working as a group was a typical family response to tragedy. We needed to keep busy to keep going. I could feel the intense sadness in the room but I could feel our intense joy in tackling a job planned by our parents. We moved forward. This set the tone for later years.
It was a cold sunny day. We could see the billowy clouds in the blue sky from the huge picture window. At times cars drove by. The leaves were all gone from the trees in our front yard. The frost left our garden in the back dead for another year.
All of us in one room proved to be crowded. Three 6 plus foot brothers and my tall aunt and me not so short, but we managed. I was able to maneuver around with my arm in a sling. I needed help sometimes but that was forth coming.
Here we were–heavy at heart. It all seemed so normal. Christmas holiday at 706 Burruss Drive. But where were Mother and Daddy? Each morning we woke up to reality. No more parents.
But as we painted it seemed they were with us in spirit. They would love us all being together working on our family living room.
The jokes continued. Liz showed off her uniform more that once especially with paint stains that now she acquired. Once she got in the way of Dale’s fast pace and she got smeared with paint on her face. “I don’t need make-up, thank you.” We cracked up laughing. The atmosphere was light and we felt carried along by the humor, working together and accomplishing a planned task.
John and I sat on the floor and got corners and bottom edges where the roller wouldn’t reach. We’d bump into each other at times since space was at the limit. John accused me of dancing the bump that was so popular at the time. More laughter.
How could we feel so elated when we had all walked through a nightmare 3 weeks ago? It didn’t seem so bad as we painted and joked and kept each entertained. Another day in the life at of the Dreilings.
But we had 2 people missing and where were they? In many ways the reality had not sunk in. It would take months. Three weeks ago our parents lay shot dead on this same living room floor and now we resurrected the down to live on.
As Paul meticulously painted the trim on the front double hung windows around the picture window he sang, “Love Will Keep Us Together.” We heard this song many times on the radio but who needed the radio. We had Paul.
In one afternoon we finished the project. It was time to clean up. We washed the rollers and the paint brushes and canned the paint and stored it in the basement.
Dale, Paul and John moved the furniture back and we removed the sheets from the furniture and rolled back the carpet over the hardwood floors. We hung the curtains back up.
Here was our new living room.
It seemed so different and fresh. The 5 of us accomplished a lot in one afternoon and lifted out spirits in the process.
The humor and comradery and song and chatter comforted us all. It was solace.
Healing from Gun Shots 