The Sands Of Time Run Out Fast

We had an assembly at school the other day. Test scores and raising them are both the focus of our lives at pretty much any school nowadays. We had a pirate theme going on and everyone had eye patches and pirate hats and there was more than one "Aaaarr" to be heard. I was talking to a friend about the assembly last fall when we were all gung-ho about the Star Wars theme and I was thinking aloud that I didn't remember being there when that was introduced and I must have missed it and then...I remembered.

That was when dad died.

We went to the pumpkin patch the other day to pick out pumpkins and eat apple pie and take a hay ride with the little blonde boy who is the center of all our lives and I was trying to remember why I didn't go to the pumpkin patch last year and then...I remembered.

I was at the funeral home that day making arrangements.

Hard to believe it's been a year. And yet it's easy to believe as well. Time slips by so quickly, so quietly, so seamlessly knitting up the days that you don't notice it at all. The days and weeks and months slip through our grasp until a year has passed and it seems like just yesterday they handed that folded up flag to my mom while the Marines saluted and it was a cool fall day and we were all crying.

Things change. Life happens. When I handed Wes a little wooden toy train car I got free from Toys R Us the other day, he laughed aloud and said "Thomas!". Clearly. Understandably.

When dad died, Wes wasn't talking at all.

Things change. Life happens. Some of it is sad. But we have to remember. Some of it is good. Very good.

Everything and Nothing

We went up north this weekend to Ohio for a family birthday party for my uncle, who was turning 80. There were seven brothers and three sisters in my dad's family, raised in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky with very little money and a whole lot of beans and cornbread. Three brothers and one sister are still with us.

My dad passed away last fall so it meant a lot to me to be able to see his brothers again. Tom and I rode up together and my mom came up with some other relatives, so I didn't see her until she walked into my uncle's house. In that roomful of relatives, we looked at each other and both began crying. I was shocked when my throat clenched up and I knew the tears were inevitable. I didn't expect it. I thought the crying for my dad was over. But something about seeing my ever-more fragile mother in company with the graying brothers just made my dad's death suddenly very real. Painfully real.

The brothers are really very wonderful people. They are generous, kind, very family oriented and great, funny storytellers. We sat all day and drank, and ate and just talked. Talked and talked and talked. And laughed and laughed. I laughed until I cried. But these were good tears.

My cousin Pam had told me the night before that my Uncle Bill had beginning dementia. She said in the half hour drive from the airport to their house, he had told the same story three times. He told me the same story a couple of times that night. And again the next day. That's OK. I'm just glad he is still here. He can tell me that story as many times as he wants.

We didn't really do much over the weekend.We really did nothing. But it meant everything.


"One who died is only a little ahead of the procession, all moving that way. When we round the corner we'll see him again. We have only lost him for a moment, because we fell behind stopping to tie a shoe-lace."
-J.M. Barrie