Just Write {137}

My bare feet were up on the dash. The windows were open. No radio, no iPod, no talking, no thinking….just the night sounds of Minnesota.

I got to sit where I am the most at home, engulfed in those night sounds and peace. At least for a few hours, the croaking frog chorus, the birds saying good night, the crickets and the back drop of a deeply still silence that makes all the creature sounds beautiful.

A few days ago, in Texas, we turned on to our street and Miles pointed out the cemetery. He said, Whenever we turn that corner, or pass another cemetery, I get this weird feeling in my stomach, I don’t know why. 

Yeah honey, I know what you mean. 

Many might think of evil, of spirits or even zombies, but I think what we feel is grief, goodbyes and all the memory stories of lives left.

Yesterday we visited the graves of my grandparents. Elsie was oblivious, of course. My grandma carefully water a plant by my grandpa’s head stone and we stood out in the heat. Elsie and I sat on the ground and I focused all my thoughts on memories of grandpa, the way he danced his way through the hallway after his shower every night, to make us laugh. How he hated tomatoes like I do, and how he gave us a quarter if we were the first one to spy the water tower on the way through the farm country back to town.

Then we headed to where my mom’s parent’s graves are and I stayed with Elsie in the car, fighting a wasp that wanted to come in. It was partly cloudy, with darkness over the horizon, raining somewhere else. We heard a boom of thunder while my dad pounded crosses with flowers on them by the graves and my mom tried to get a flag to stand up straight next to her dad’s grave. I thought about these grandparents, the way they lived in the brown house on the corner, the one that is a mess of cracked paint and worn wood now. It still stands on the corner, not at all cared for and lonely for people laughing while playing Uno, or singing next to the piano.

No one sits in the living room petting the cat or the dog and watching Wheel of Fortune.

This is what I feel at cemeteries, the heavy weight of loss mixed with the joy of having had something to lose. And in the night sounds of Minnesota, I feel wrapped in the best of times, the hard memories stripped away by the deafening grace chorus.

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This is the 137th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. There are really no rules, besides Just Write! (Then link back to this post in your post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

Also. Please take a moment to visit someone else who has linked up! It’s a really good way to meet new writers and get inspired by the meaning behind their moments. Word?