Miss Me When I'm Gone

chapter 23



Loretta Lynn’s Ranch and Museum

Hurricane Mills, Tennessee

Admission to Loretta’s museum is ten bucks. It’s still early and I’ve got the place to myself. It feels like Graceland here, except emptier of guests and yet somehow less sad. I move slowly around the dark maze of glass cases, at first attracted to Loretta’s various sparkly stage outfits, many of which I recognize from my obsessive YouTubing of her performances.

There are two significantly less flashy sets of cases, however, that eventually draw me in much more.

First, there are the cases full of random gifts from other celebrities. There are some expected items: Patsy Cline’s earrings, and the nightie she gave Loretta shortly before she died (just as documented in Coal Miner’s Daughter). But then there are the unexpected ones: A note and mug from Ellen DeGeneres, thanking her for being on her show. A Kermit the Frog stuffed animal and Muppet Show jacket. An apron that says DOMESTIC GODDESS on it, signed by Roseanne Barr. Little things from people arguably less famous than Loretta—the sort of swag someone who understood herself to be a legend might toss into the trash on her way to her next gig. There are also signed books from Jimmy Carter, both George Bushes, and Caroline Kennedy, plus a Bush-Cheney campaign sign and a cheerful pair of yellow pumps that once belonged to Barbara Bush.

I feel humbled by the gratitude exuded by this odd collection. There’s a sense of every opportunity treasured, and little taken for granted.

Even more striking to me is the wall-length display case labeled simply FAMILY. Again, there are the expected items: a scrip from the Van Leer Mining Company that belonged to her father, an apron of her mother’s with hands clasped in prayer embroidered onto it, a butter churn from her family’s old home in Butcher Holler—artifacts of her famously humble roots. Her rags-to-riches story is partly what makes Loretta so beloved, so it’s not surprising that it’s documented here in these cases.

More startling to me are the cases a few paces down, which are devoted to her children. Here are her children’s baby books, bowling trophies, prom dresses, sequined gymnastic leotards, baseball mitts, a blue-and-white high school cardigan that says WAVERLY WILDCATS, even a crusty old signed cast from a child’s broken arm.

And then my gaze settles on Loretta’s daughters’ report cards. Year after year, arranged into a fan. I bend down to squint at the grades. They’re average.

As I straighten up, I feel myself begin to lose it. So this is what it’s come to: I’m tearing up over Loretta Lynn’s daughters’ mediocre report cards.

I take a few steps back to a bench in front of Loretta’s brother’s leisure suit. I sit down, cover my face, and weep. Good thing it’s too early for other tourists. And my quiet sniffling is drowned out by the video of Loretta highlights that plays on a loop around the corner from this case.

It’s not that I’ve not had enough maternal admiration in my own life. My mom has kept all of my report cards, too. She’d put them in her museum, if she had one. And surely she’d put in my sweaters and my favorite stuffed turtle and my good citizenship award from sixth grade.

It’s that there are two sides to mother love, and I know that I’ll only ever experience one. The decision for me was never about wanting to attend cocktail parties and sleep late on Sundays in my thirties and forties, or traveling to India or maintaining my girlish figure. It’s not a decision that gives me pleasure; it’s simply how I know it has to be—how I simply know it will be. It isn’t about selfishness at all. In this moment I see that clearly. Because certainly there’s part of me that would like to be the warm, nurturing collector of trophies and outgrown toys. There is part of me—as there is part of almost everyone—that wants to love someone in that way. It doesn’t make me happy that I can’t and won’t. There is a difference between happiness and acceptance.

So I sit on the bench before Loretta Lynn’s daughters’ report cards and weep.

I sniffle quietly for a couple of minutes. I wonder if there is a surveillance camera. Probably not. Just as I reassure myself of this, the young woman who took my admission approaches me.

“Sorry, I’m almost done here,” I say. I’ve spent an awful lot of time here, surely more than your average customer. And an obsessive amount of time in the “Family” section, which most people probably pass through quickly, on their way to look at Loretta’s colorful dresses, or the suits of Ernest Tubb, Ray Price, George Jones.

“Take your time,” she says uneasily.

She hesitates, then says, “Did you see that we have Johnny Cash’s black coat? And his Folsom Prison shirt? On the other side?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “I saw that.”

“Where are you from?”

I realize I don’t want to fulfill some stereotype of the sniveling Yankee who comes down here and doesn’t know how to act. I don’t want to say “Massachusetts” of all things.

“Pennsylvania,” I say, since that sounds much more neutral to me.

“Oh. Whereabouts?”

“Pittsburgh area.”

And the lie brings me out of my melancholy, refreshes me. I shove my stringy, sweaty tissue back into my pocket and hope the young woman never saw it. I’m reminded that you can be—or feel—whatever you want to be, if you can get yourself to say it enough times. If you can convince yourself of how convincing you are.

“I’m almost done here,” I say.



—Tammyland