Remembering the past

It took a persistent persuasion to convince my dad that he needed a break from caring for my mother in the nursing home, and that the semi-annual family reunion in Kansas (his born home) would be just the break he needed. Dad was never a talker, but he was unusually tight lipped on the journey to his childhood home, and I knew he was thinking about leaving Mom “unattended” even though it was doubtful that she knew who he was anymore.

The family homestead was about ten miles outside what had become in the intervening years a ghost town with an old unpainted store building the meeting place for the reunion. Dad pointed the building out as we motored through on what appeared to be the only street to actually carry traffic to some other place. Twenty minutes or so later, Dad indicated that we stop. There was nothing of note at first glance, so I was interested when he exited the car and walked a few steps into an empty field, stooped and gathered a handful of soil. Turning to me, he said, “ This is where my grandfather’s house was, and where I was born. “

He pointed at an old rundown, barely standing building in the distance saying, “That’s where I went to school.” Pointing in another direction at a suddenly visible building in similar condition, “That’s where we bought the necessities we didn’t create ourselves,” he continued.

Then, falling silent, he gazed in another direction, and motioned to the car saying, “Come. I want to show you something.”

The three-family cemetery contained maybe 150 markers. An unusually large number of which were 1’x6” signifying a baby or youth that couldn’t be saved by early 20th century medicine. As we walked through the graveyard, Dad identified many as relatives or friends, but when we reached the top of the hill holding the departed, there was but one grave. Dad turned to me and said, “That’s where my Grampa is buried.”

Wouldn’t it be great if somewhere and sometime, a grandchild could speak with pride and the sadness of separation about Grampa (or Gramma)?