Lessons in the losses

We should stop and try to learn something from this season, these moments of loss. Over the past few days, I have heard so many of my relatives talk about how this has been a terrible summer. My uncle's brother died earlier in the year. Then my own father passed away in July. Finally, my aunt has now passed away in Florida. So my family has been gathering over the past few months to touch, commiserate with each other, and think about the brevity of life.

On the positive side, I have been able to sit down and eat with my family, together like we rarely are able to do so when something significant like the loss of family members doesn't happen. We have reconnected with each other, even for such a short time, and I feel that I have been able to recognize (think again) how much I really like my family members. We were drawn together by these losses and came together to offer each other support. In my mind, we also were able to enjoy each other and realize that we did do so.

Sure, there are differences and we don't all live together in some Kennedy compound of the Baynham-Morris variety. Some of us live in Atlanta, some in Pinellas County, Florida, some in Palm Beach County, Florida. Some of us are older, some in the middle, some quite young. One is in college, some are retired, some work, some do not. Some are Catholic, some Baptist, some Presbyterian, some don't seem to know.

But last night, I found myself in my parent's bedroom with my brother and mother, looking over some of the physical leavings of my father. For a time, we could talk, question each other, consider matters and laugh at our failings and our past and our connections, even though I no longer get up in the morning in the bed next to my brother and dress for school and eat a breakfast provided by our mother. Despite the changes over time, we still do enjoy each other and can smile and laugh with each other.

Summer is a time of recreation, a time of release and relaxation. All those re-s. Kate asked me yesterday when Summer would be over. From a factual standpoint, I told her that Summer would be over on September 21. From a traditional point, it will end on the weekend of Labor Day on September 4th. But I do hope we can hold on to a bit of Summer, in the sense that we look back on our lives from time to time and remember those Summer vacations in Florida, visiting our family in St. Pete and Hopkinsville and Clarksville. I hope we can remember the watermelon and peaches and baseball and fireworks and family picnics. I hope we can remember two a day football practices and the first day of Summer vacation from school when we would get up early, eat some cereal and drink some orange juice and step out of the house and gather with our friends up the street at the corner down from the Balfours' house and feel like the Summer ahead of us, with baseball and bicycles and hotdogs and hand-churned ice cream, was eternal and never-ending.

I hope that as the years continue, I will be able to sit in my chair and feel myself on a wooden porch in a farmhouse in Montgomery County, Tennessee, and help my grandmother snap beans into a pot for our supper and feel the breeze off the corn outside the screen window. Later, I will leave the dining room table, having eaten my share of green beans and corn and tomatoes and those tiny, buttery biscuits my grandmother made which were always amazing, but always apologized for by my grandmother as she asked us to "take two, because they're small." And I will step outside the house, and play with the English setter puppies living in the little wooden doghouse by the coal house, and I will walk around the house and watch the sun go down in the broad, full day. And we, the whole family, will sit together and enjoy the leavings of the day. And even though the day will be over, who can really say that the day is over. After all, sitting in my chair, I can live it all over again without any effort on my own.

In the season of loss, we need to remember the ones we love who are still around us, take the time to remember how much we do love each other, and take the time to remember those warm, sweet moments which are behind us, but never really gone.