Friday, November 29, 2002

my great grandparents who died the summer after my dad's oldest sister was born

a 'permanent' reminder that even the grass hasn't started to obscure

"Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, but that the dead are living."

Chesterton

We meet the gang at 8am and my cousin Bob takes us to the Café Brasil for breakfast. It's a twenty-four hour joint and they have lots of stuff available. I have some great spinach crêpes with some spicy potatoes. And lots of coffee.

Then we split up. My cousins Bob and Larry take their Dad on an outing, we drop my cousin Jody off to shop with Bob's daughters and Dad and I take my Aunt Sally and go pick up my Aunt Cappy (Anna Katherine really but Cappy was her nickname and it stuck with us).

We drive to Plano and to the nursing home where their brother, my Uncle James, lives. He will be 89 next week. He seems pleased with the visit but doesn't seem to know much about what's going on. When Dad asks him where his pickup is, though, he says, "I guess my damn son-in-law has it." So, yeah, not entirely out of it. I notice his hands, large from work, looking still capable of wrestling cattle or wrestling an old rusty tractor into submission.

Then we drive through Plano getting Dad's tour of the past. Parked next to an alley between rows of suburban houses we are asked to see the rise with a house and ciruclar drive with water falling naturally away from it. Here the channelized creek is the creek of their childhood. They tell plowing stories and the one little rural enclave in the city belongs still to a known family or, at least, they think so. We find the cemetery amid this where my grandparents, great grandparents, two aunts, an uncle who died as an infant and a cousin are buried.

A visit here always triggers memories of the services I attended here (the aunts) and of the cousin who died at forty after a valiant battle against breast cancer. I was away in Europe on business and couldn't be at her funeral.

Then we try to visit another relative, a cousin of my dad's, but she isn't home.

We go to the vast Restland cemetery. I don't have my map and initially I'm confused about where Mom is but I find it and look at the marker. We test out the knob on the top which reveals a metal vase you can flip over and fill with flowers. But we don't have any today.

We take my Aunt Cappy to her apartment and then we decide to eat at Luby's. She drives us. Then Dad, Aunt Sally and I go back to my cousin's house and talk and mess with the jigsaw puzzle. We finish it. Dad and I go to the hotel and meet my Aunt Cappy and Uncle E.C. and go to Pappadeux's to meet his friend who is going to take him to Germany. Other former neighbors of his are supposed to come but couldn't make it. We have a big meal and then we stop off at my cousin's house for a goodbye and get involved in a huge game of Chickenfoot with Double-Nine dominoes. We have coffee, some eat desserts. Finally we go back to the hotel. My cousin says we should come by at seven for coffee. I make the mistake of telling Dad and he insists we should be ready to go at 6:30.

JUST TYPING
Memory.
Has all kinds of triggers.
Of people.
Of place.
But never completely accurate.
Always somewhat suspect.