I Lost My Lunch Lady

I was teaching a class today, when my cell phone rang. It was my sister Laura, and she never calls me. Eeeks, feels like bad news. The class was close to a break, so I called Laura back.

She told me what her twin sister Lisa told me Saturday. Rosie Malone, our lunch lady from junior high, had passed away from hemorrhaging of an inoperable brain tumor.

I know this sort of sounds like the start of a sick, dark joke. Dead Lunch Lady jokes, if there is such a category... I wish I were kidding. The thing is; if you’re from a small Midwestern town, you end up knowing people pretty well. Even your Lunch Lady. Rosie watched out for all of us kids. She knew the names and ages of all 11 of us. Rosie baked healthy breakfast cookies she’d sell for a quarter each, so that kids wouldn’t go without breakfast. She smoked like a chimney and drank a lot, but she did love the kids she served lunch to.

Rosie had a son, Cameron, who was a couple of years older than me and best friends with my older brother Chris. When they were sophomores in high school, Cameron told Chris he was gay. Chris beat him up. Cameron ran away…away from his mom and from Chris and his little hometown. “Cam” ran away to another town to live with his dad, finish school, and hide from the secret he’d told Chris until he could move somewhere “safer.” Somewhere safer to be gay.

Chris later apologized to a lot of people for beating Cameron up, though his feelings on homosexuality haven’t changed a whole lot, I’ve found recently, even with having me as a brother. He says homosexuality ain’t Christian. (Apparently, Chris’ judgment, hatred, binge drinking, cussing, fist-fighting, and lack of general charity are Christian. Nice.)

Rosie later worked with me at the gummy bear factory (insert joke here), and I think she knew about me back then before I was out. She and I would laugh about people we both knew, kids I went to school with. Rosie once, out of the blue, called me a “real trooper, a survivor,” and I never forgot it.

These last few years, my sister Laura would see Rosie at church or at ballgames or elsewhere, and again, Rosie remembered all 11 of us.

Laura told me these facts this morning and started crying. Laura said, “She was always, always asking when she was going to get to see you again, Steve. She never got to.” And Laura just sobbed. And I had a class waiting, so I had to promise to call Laura back later...

Laura knows. Because, like Cameron, I don’t go back to that shit-box town (the few nice people like Rosie aside) unless I absolutely have to.

And now Cameron is going back to bury his mom. Chris told me Cameron died of AIDS some time ago, but Cameron is quite alive. I don’t know if Cam is HIV-positive or why Chris lied.

And I don’t want to find out. I don’t need a second helping of that, thank you. I’ll just grieve the loss of Rosie the Lunch Lady safely from here.