Jim and I stay in Utah for Thanksgiving, since R'el and David are on a road trip: to Wisconsin to visit Annie in Madison, then to Chicago to help Matt move apartments and enjoy Thanksgiving with Meemaw Charlotte. The guy with leukemia keeps up a good pace as they walk all around Lincoln Park ZooLights.
Post-Thanksgiving 2016
Before sacrament meeting, my friend Elaine asks me how I am. I shake my head as tears well up. Jim is at another chapel (he was called as a counselor in the Cambridge Stake Presidency November 6), so Elaine offers to sit with me. I can’t speak without sobbing, so I scribble a note, “This is an unexpectedly harder holiday season than last year. I just am having a painful time. Not constantly, but intensely.”
Elaine says something that makes me laugh. I ask, “Please make me laugh.” She quotes Steel Magnolias, “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” During the opening hymn, my throat constricts, tears well up, and I can't sing. Elaine puts her arm around my shoulders. I'm grateful.
I have a strange dream. I’m walking in a huge grassy cemetery, with markers flush to the ground. An Army sergeant is showing me a large area under development at the far end of the cemetery. It’s a massive excavation. The soil is slate-colored and textured like flaky clay; the sides are perfectly squared off. The excavation pit is about 20 feet deep and covers many acres. The sergeant explains that they dig the entire area out, then replace the soil in large blocks, about 4 feet by 6 feet. That way the graves are squared and uniform when they are dug.
Where does that dream come from? (I’m open to suggestions.) As I think of it in passing over the next several days, It seems related to the perfectly squared hole the cemetery workers dug for David’s gravestone. I took a picture of it, before the stone was installed, which occasionally appears on my computer screen. (My screen-saver is a random slideshow of all my photos.)
Other photos that flash by: David in a helmet and blue jumpsuit, strapped to a smiling helmeted stranger with dark googles. David's cheeks look like rubber. It's the sky-diving jump he made, on June 12, 2010, back when he was living with us, before we know what acute myeloid leukemia was. David looks so alive, so happy. Another picture shows him about to enter the small plane, turning back to the camera with a smile and a thumbs up. It makes me smile.
Where does that dream come from? (I’m open to suggestions.) As I think of it in passing over the next several days, It seems related to the perfectly squared hole the cemetery workers dug for David’s gravestone. I took a picture of it, before the stone was installed, which occasionally appears on my computer screen. (My screen-saver is a random slideshow of all my photos.)
Other photos that flash by: David in a helmet and blue jumpsuit, strapped to a smiling helmeted stranger with dark googles. David's cheeks look like rubber. It's the sky-diving jump he made, on June 12, 2010, back when he was living with us, before we know what acute myeloid leukemia was. David looks so alive, so happy. Another picture shows him about to enter the small plane, turning back to the camera with a smile and a thumbs up. It makes me smile.
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