Anniversaries

Dear You,

Another couple of mileposts drifted by yesterday. The more recent one -- thirty years' standing -- was the death of my mother. The cancer beat her to her 53rd birthday, and her death was a relief from more than two years of torment . . . operations and radiation and pills. With shame I note that our relationship in the years just before had been strained. Pride -- another of the rightly called "deadly" sins -- kept me away from her, turned away her overtures, stayed my hand from writing a letter or dialing a telephone. Then the cancer. Some reconciliation, but not enough. Thirty years has not lessened the guilt I carry when I think of her, and I think of Mother often.

The other was a promise I made on an August 17 just three years earlier, which if kept would mean celebrating 33 years of marriage. In a box in my bureau drawer is an antique gold pocket watch and a hand-made gold ring -- gifts on that long-ago day from my then-wife, and objects I rarely look at and cannot dispose of: ironically, because unlike the woman who gave them they cannot be discarded.

When I think about my life, I am aware that women have been more important than men to me, that women have affected me, shaped me, informed me more than those of my own gender. And I wonder -- often -- why I have been too often cavalier in my treatment of them. The passing of years has not done enough to solve this riddle.

Missing You

Dear You,

As a school teacher I often was greeted at my classroom door by a student who had missed class the previous day. "Did I miss anything?" Sometimes I laughingly responded that, because s/he was absent, we had decided to do nothing that day, so the answer was "No, you didn't miss anything at all." If I had a couple of extra moments, however, my customary answer was more serious, and I explained that whatever s/he had missed, it was far less important than what the rest of us had missed -- "You."

I would explain that a class was the sum of its parts, not just whatever was in my lesson plan for that day. And if anyone was missing, the sum was diminished. So often, a student would ask a question or offer an opinion, and the entire lesson turned a different corner . . . many times to a surprising and remarkable place. I learned to watch for such opportunities.

It seems to me that it's what happens when someone goes missing from my life. Whatever a day might hold for me, it will be less than it was. An easy example is what my parents might still be teaching me if they had been granted longer lives. If one of the purposes is, as I believe, to continue learning, the loss of every potential teacher is profound. I am now old enough to know when I am diminished . . . and why.

Headstones

Dear You,
I've been spending part of this morning on MapQuest, making maps for Memorial Day visits to cemeteries in Ohio. Years ago, the generation before me took to visiting Amanda, OH Dutch Hollow Cemetery (the Hartman side) and Lancaster, OH Forest Rose Cemetery (the Littrell side) to leave flowers and remember relatives.

Now most of them have joined their ancestors and those left are too old to travel much. Thanks to Cousin Mike, the weekend has become an annual Cousins Gathering. Mike, Paul, Marlin, David, Walt, and Suzie -- with "significant others" if any -- punctuate the day of visiting graves with lunch and catching up on each others' stories.

In late afternoon, we head off on our own. In my case, to Glen Rest, outside of Columbus, where my parents' graves and those of my grandparents and some aunts and uncles are buried.

This is a happy task, despite the occasional tear and speechless pause -- just another way to "Honor Thy Father and Mother." I wouldn't miss it.