Together Forever

 

This is a photograph of my mother and father from the 1940’s when Papa Callan was at the Yale University V-12 officer training program. One day, my mother and her friend, Geraldine, took the train from their hometown of Milford to New Haven, with the idea of meeting a Yale man. An officer and a gentleman, so to speak. They attended a U.S.O. dance and the rest is history.

This past week, Dr. Thompson and I visited the cemetery where my parents are buried, along with my grandparents. We were shopping for our forever home. There we were--standing on the tree lined path in the crisp autumn sunshine as the maple leaves—orange, red and yellow—slowly floated down over the rows of gravestones.

A charming cemetery lady showed us an available spot--not far from my parents, and in the neighborhood adjacent to my grandparents.

The cemetery lady suggested side-by-side accommodations. She said that it would be like the two of us are sleeping in a double bed. Except, nobody’s getting up in the middle of the night.

We stood there, holding hands, and said: yes, we’ll take it!

Fun times--shopping for living space in the next dimension. The very profundity of it brought out thoughts of Spoon River Anthology and the possibility of late night parties in the graveyard, family dinners with my mother and Papa Callan and Grandma and Grandpa. We have so much to catch up on! And I’m sure they’ll show us the ropes and introduce us to who’s really fun, who to cozy up to, and who it would be best to avoid.

Gallows humor, I suppose.

Creative Friends--there will be times in your life when you are tasked with doing something challenging, perhaps painful. You want to avoid the doing. But, I suggest you embrace the task. Give it a big hug. Tell it a little joke. Open your imagination to the possibility of realms beyond this one. After all, no one really knows for sure.

Love,

Jamie