Said and Done

At last the snow is melting!Which means flooding for a lot of people. Yesterday the creeks were running high and I expected the reservoir to be cresting. A peanutbutter fog crept in after dark and hangs outside even though it's after 11 am.

I call my father's widow more in a week than I have in months. I wonder now how his passing will affect our relationship. I wonder now if out of six kids, six will remain on good terms with her or visit when they come to town. I haven't anyone else to visit.

This gets me thinking about all the ways she invested in me over the years, from cook books to lessons to getting dad on the phone. You know, our relationship was always eclipsed my the one with my dad. Sort of like a sapling growing in the shade of a giant oak.

But there it is. A little tree, over ten years old.

I pictured us going to the cemetery together leaving flags and flowers and blotting our eyes with tissue. Becoming a holiday cemetery visitors.

Today, from the coffee shop I can see the crosses of the memorial cemetery of the Ohio Fallen Heroes. As long as I live here I will never forget my dad was a vet.

I didn't get him a brick to add to that as I had wanted. I got to re-thinking it when I filled out the application. He was still living, and I didn't want it to seem like I was writing him off in anyway. He may have been pleased to see it, I'll never know. I just remember thinking how lucky we all were that he had survived the heart attack and aneurism. I couldn't assign him a place in with the dead at that time.

Now it doesn't matter.