Goodbye to a soldier

Today is Memorial Day. Maybe it’s appropriate that I said goodbye to a soldier over the weekend. He was a WWII veteran, one of the thousands who served his country well and quietly. He came home with several awards: the Asiatic-Pacific Service Medal, World War II Victory Medal, American Defense Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal and the American Service Medal prior to his honorable discharge on Jan. 1, 1946. I don’t remember him ever talking about the war or his medals. He may have reserved that for the American Legion which he was a long and proud member of. I went to a small town in the mountains for the service, where there aren’t too many of his generation, his war left - in fact there might only be one at this point. He was 95 when he died, and besides serving his country, he served his town and his family and friends for the whole 60+ years I’d known him. He was active in his church, the volunteer fire and ambulance departments, a town councilman, and one of the people that others went to for advice on how something to do with the town or a function of it – or something in their life - might be best handled.
He’s one of the thousands that we should thank every day for the life we know – quiet, unassuming, faithful, hard-working men and women who served their country, helped their family, friends, neighbors and just went on about their business. They did what they had to do and moved on to what had to be done next. No fanfare, no expectations, they just did what they saw needed to be done.
Leroy, as the priest said, you’ve ‘changed your residence’. You’ll always be right next door in memory, though. To you and all those like you – Goodbye and Thank You.
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A funeral in the mountains; ‘changed residence’ and Coming Home

Had to go to Indian Lake Saturday, for Uncle Leroy’s funeral. He had every right to be having a funeral, having been 95 and active and alert up until fairly recently. He wasn’t really an uncle by family, but his family and my folks were very close and so he became our uncle and his sister our Aunt Margaret. He was the last of their generation in that group, another thing making it a sad passage.
The priest remarked that his predecessor had kept a book of all the parishioners and the events in their lives he tended to, and that when someone died he would write ‘change of residence’. Thinking on it, whatever you do or don’t believe in, that’s a pretty good way to describe the final move. Personally I’d like to think I’m just moving on to another new place, maybe seeing some old friends, and having some new adventures. And, there’s the whole Rainbow Bridge thing.
It was fitting that the funeral was on Memorial Day weekend; Leroy served in the U.S. Army during World War II earning the Asiatic-Pacific Service Medal, World War II Victory Medal, American Defense Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal and the American Service Medal prior to his honorable discharge on Jan. 1, 1946. He was active in the American Legion and they gave him a 21-gun salute at the graveside service.
That I recall he wasn’t one to talk a lot about his military time, even with that impressive list of awards - he preferred to talk about hunting and fishing and family. Leroy, your final resting place is near my parents. I hope you find them in your ‘change of residence’ and that you’re telling stories about hunting and fishing and family together there. Where they lie is a near perfect spot, near enough the Cedar River to hear the water racing by, surrounded by trees, mountain views. There’s two more places in our family plot, I claim one.
Speaking of change of residence, it occurred to me as I was driving up Route 28 that on every trip to Indian Lake, somewhere past the top of the North River hill I get a feeling of coming home. There’s the place where if you look off to the left you can get a glimpse of Snow Mountain – when we were kids we’d vie to be the first one to call that we saw it. Then you get to the top of another hill and can see the village water tower and top of the ski slope. Down the hill on the right is where George and Ida Osgood lived with their daughters, and then the barn where George kept the school bus he drove. Cross the inlet between the lakes, up and down another small hill and past the dam and the boat launch, and then you’re in the village. Even though we don’t have the house there any more, and Margaret’s old house where we spent so much time is gone, it’s still home. And I’m glad I got to go there, and to say goodbye to Leroy, and see long-time friends. For too short a time, I was home again.
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Happy Birthday, Stephen!

Today is my grandson’s 23rd birthday – how did that happen? It wasn’t all that long ago he was graduating, eager to try a new life in a new place and gone from our immediate lives. Just a short time before that I was going to football games and track meets to cheer him on. And that was only a little bit of time after teaching him to drive the stick shift pickup his mother got for him – yeah and that he rolled over into a corn field after getting forced off the road by a vehicle that drove away – heard all of that on the scanner and was getting up to get dressed because I was sure from the location who it was, when his mother called to say he was all right – she’d called the guys in the ambulance that responded to make sure. Shortly after that he moved into my house, and for the last couple of years of school it was my job to get him up in the mornings. He wasn’t an eager student, and when he graduated the truant officer told me ‘now I can take your number off my speed dial’. That, btw, carried over from his mother. Gee, it was just a little bit ago that he was twelve and consoling Mom over the breakup with a guy by saying ‘since I’m the man of the house now is it ok if I have one of those beers he left in the refrigerator?’ Not long before that he told me, upon hearing me talk about donating a kidney to a friend, and donating blood after 9/11 “Geez, Meema, you gotta stop doin’ that stuff!” “What stuff, Stephen?” “Well, givin’ away blood, givin’ away body parts – you gotta stop doin’ that!” PS, neither happened. Going to California with me in the truck – he has inherited my love of travel and seeing new places, what’s over the next mountain and around the next bend in the road. Anguish on that trip when his game boy got broken – we had to time the stop for the night so that we were close to a Walmart in Oklahome to get a new one, and then find another Walmart in NY when that one malfunctioned. So much more…. Scares like when he fell from we’re not sure how high up a tree in the yard when he was just past a toddler, and when he drank some medicine and ended up in the ER. And now he’s 23 and 2/3 of the country away. When he’s here there’s never enough time to visit a lot, and it’s not like the too few years when a visit to Meema meant renting 3 movies – one for him, one for me and one for us to watch together. He’ll be here again in July for his mother’s wedding, and there will be a few minutes to catch up, and then I get to get up early to take him to the airport again-how come I get all those early flights? Part of the job. Happy Birthday, Boo – love you lots.

For Dawn

My grandson’s birthday and the happiness of it also brings some sadness. He was born a year to the day after a dear friend was killed in a car accident. In the way that these things sometimes happen, I feel there’s a reason they share a day. Maybe some of her spirit lives on in him. She would have liked him. She’s no doubt one of several who have watched over him when it was needed, like when he rolled the pickup and fell out of the tree. She’s in many memories. This morning her sister posted in Facebook: “24 years later and I still can not find forgivness for you. I hope karma gets you! I remember and if I find you, You'll remember too.” I share some of that, but I think there’s been at least some karma. Goodbye again, Dawn – we will always miss you.

Mother’s Day 2011

Looking at past posts, I’ve said most of what I have to say about mothers, my own, and the mother’s my daughters have become. I’m waiting to become a great-grandmother for the 4th time any day now, and that’s a whole different thing for sure. Never thought when I was a granddaughter, or even a mother that would happen, but it has. So I’ll just repeat from the past couple of years: from 2009, about my mother: “She is honored just about every day in my memory, and I repeat what I said at her funeral: ‘Some people say ‘Oh, no, I’m becoming my mother’ – I say ‘I should be so lucky’.” Thanks, Mommy.”
And from 2010: “So, somehow, somewhere, sometime, I did something right. And I have to thank my girls for helping me be a mother to help them become what they did. I’m sorry for everything I did wrong and I’m glad we all got beyond it. And I’m proud that you became the great mothers you are. I love you. Happy Mother’s Day. “
Happy Mother’s Day to us all!

Part 2: celebratingl

A friend’s Facebook post led me to a blog about the celebrating that followed the news of Osama’s killing. It was a good post with interesting references and reactions, I agreed with some, didn't with some. The writer was likening the celebrations to rioting in Boston after the Red Sox won the World Series some years ago. He cited a story by an NYC reporter who went to the WTC site to find scores of young people, he made it seem like all the people were college students and no doubt a majority were. The writer pointed out that these people were only 10 or 11 years old when the WTC attacks happened, and how much could they really grasp – yes, they were that young when the attacks happened, but they have lived with it ever since, and with the war(s) that have followed 9/11. They do have a grasp on the significance, since some of their family, friends, their generation are fighting those wars. And, being young and college students, most of them will celebrate anything. C’mon – even though you didn’t join the ‘rioting’ with the Red Sox win please don’t tell me you’ve never done a ‘wooo’ or the equivalent about something. Yes, I agree some of the participants were overboard. Yes, perhaps the WTC site should be considered above such actions, but to some, what better place? I would have preferred to go to the side street across from the site, laid my hand on the heart-breakingly touching brass plaque that commemorates the fallen firemen, police and emergency workers and told them that they have, in a way and to some extent, been avenged. Rather than a mob drinking and dancing, I prefer to have the image of the photo of firemen on their ladder truck, one with his arms raised in a victory pose, looking at the NYC building with the scrolling headline “Osama bin Ladin is dead” as my own mark of the event. But if theirs is waving a flag, or raising a beer – that is, after all, what America is about, the freedom to do things like this as we wish. That’s why we eliminated one symbol of a vastly different way of life.

Ding dong, the Witch is dead.........

“Ding dong, the Witch is dead.” This innocent phrase, originally penned as part of a song for the movie version of a children’s fantasy story, seems to have become a catch phrase for the killing of Osama bin Ladin. Someone actually sang it to me in the gas station yesterday morning. By now, of course, there are stories, replays, photos, in-depth reports, columns, blogs and more world wide about the event. I turned off the news last night as it was showing film footage that panned to a pool of blood, I didn’t even wait to find out if it was his or someone else’s. I’ve seen pools of blood, thanks anyway. There are understandable ranges of emotions in our country: jubilation, relief, pride, and yes, concern. We are entitled to all of them. We have eliminated the symbol of a dark day in our country, our history. We have prevailed over that face of evil. We have won a battle. We have not, unfortunately, won the war, and those who feel we have should reexamine their thoughts. Osama was one man. His followers are many. As one friend put it, and I can’t improve on this: “The thing to appreciate here is not so much the fact that the man is dead, but something or someone as bad or worse will fill in the void of his passing.
His flavor of evil has been discontinued, but that was just him. Like something from Ben and Jerry, a different flavor will fill the shelf space.
Nature abhors a vacuum.” (Ken Walker 5/2/11)
We should not relax our vigilance, indeed we should strengthen it. As long as there are different people on earth, there will be different. My Facebook post yesterday: “While I join all Americans in celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden, I can't help but wonder what his fanatical followers might do now....................”
And in retrospect, celebrating is the wrong word to use here, and the wrong feeling to have. I did not ‘celebrate’. I felt pride that my country had found this one bad man, relief that this one particular threat has been eliminated. I also feel concern because I am convinced that his followers will retaliate and I am worried as to how. I watched the towers fall on television, saw the remains first hand and close up ( http://www.picturesandwordsbybarb.com/WTC.Story.pdf ).
We are now waiting for the other shoe to drop. Hope and pray in whatever manner and to whatever entity you do that it does not happen, but be prepared that it will..