Autumn is a good time to reminisce.
Bare trees are partly responsible.
Nature is about to doze. It’s not a renewal like spring.
It’s a gentle reminder of time and tide.
In October, seven years ago, my sister and I left our mother and father in Ann Arbor. One under a tree and the other in Michigan Stadium.
Ashes to ashes.
There is not a day — or night, in dreams — that I don’t think about both of them. Memories of each of them are very different.
Our mother was difficult. A “Long Day’s Journey into Night” difficult.
Harry was the opposite. He was a truly warm and kind man.
Our mother, who had been excessively orderly and driven by cleaning everything around her, ended up in diapers, in bed, watching “Cops” all day.
She refused to eat anything. She drank dietary supplements, and thought that was good enough.
She was on the brutal edges of dementia.
Our father was hospitalized for the final six months of his life, progressively having more and more technology attached to his shrinking body.
Nothing now will ever grieve me more than watching him like that.
Indicators in my readership tell me that I am not alone.
Friends often send me obituaries now. Parents and even brothers and sisters.
Mom and dad were like theater masks, one frowning and one smiling.
I have some of each in me.
My mother could find a complaint on a sunny day.
My father could make me smile on a cloudy day.
Together they looked like a couple that had been joined by a prankster.
Opposites may attract. At first.
But the oppositions will eventually take it down.
I was attracted to an opposite. She was most beautiful girl in town. I am not the most beautiful boy in town.
This will give you some idea. Her hair meant everything to her. She colored it and modeled it and chopped it.
One day after a haircut, she cried in the car and asked me to pull over in a residential neighborhood.
One lawn was being watered. She went to a sprinkler and stuck her head in the water.
The true love of my life and I had 999 things in common. The one thing we did not have in common was very important. Children.
Shirley and Harry didn’t seem to have anything in common. Other than Cindy and Craig.
There is almost nothing more disturbing and strange than the absence of my mother and father.
If it has happened to you, you know.
We moved and moved and moved, but at the end of each move, they were there. Constantly and consistently. Not two other people.
I was lucky.
The “Wednesday’s Child” feature on local news breaks the heart of an old bit of crust. Me.
One boy, I wanted to adopt.
He looked just like I did, except that he had been in one foster home after another.
They have the kids play. This one threw a baseball, and he knew how.
I was a Little League star, and I rode my bike home. To our home, and I never gave it much thought.
I do now.
It was my home, but it was full of impossibilities.
I am difficult. I know that, and I know where it comes from.
But I think I have a sense of humor, and I know where that comes from too.
Someone said, “The leaves are falling like they are in love with the ground.”