Happy Valentine's Day; Memory Eternal

Great Aunt Marion

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Here’s a peek at some of my crafting, as well as at a little bouquet for my sister’s arrival. Our redbuds are just beginning to bloom; these are the only branches I could reach to snip. I’m so excited for her visit with my little nephew. We’ve had more out-of-town visitors than usual the last few months, and we’re really enjoying it. Of course, it does mean that I’m fairly absent on my own blog, as well as yours! I do miss keeping up with all of you.

This little bouquet is also serving as a small memorial of sorts. Late last night we found out that my Great Aunt Marion passed away (sister of my grandma and Uncle Louis). She became rather reclusive in the last decade or so, but I have very fond memories of visiting her in the tiny North Dakota town where she lived. She had a large old house; mourning doves were always cooing in the cottonwoods and elms outside. We didn’t have mourning doves in western South Dakota, so their sound was novel and new to me. It is a sound I will forever associate with peaceful visits to my family. Like her siblings, she was a character. Also like her siblings, she didn’t talk much about things that happened in the family many years ago, leaving many of us in the dark about things we’d really like to know more about. I’m mourning her passing. I can still hear her sweet voice with its heavy northern accent, see her sitting on her porch with a cigarette. I’m also mourning the family history that was lost with her. Lives are such mysteries to me. For how complex and rich our lives are, so often what I know about my older relatives can be summarized into a single paragraph. This seems like such an injustice to who they must have been. I wish there was a better way to hold onto the essence of who our loved ones were. For all the photographs and memories we have, they still fall short of capturing who the person completely was. No doubt this is at least a small reason for the pain of death.

Uncle Louis - Memory Eternal

Uncle Louis is the one on the left, as a youngster

As my sister said, it seemed like he would live forever. Yesterday we lost our great uncle, Louis, 86 years young, one of my dear Grandma Helen’s brothers. It still seems a bit unbelievable to me, as deaths so often do at first. Louis was a lifelong bachelor, full of stories and tall tales, big dreams and clever inventions. We spent a lot of time with him, since he came down often from North Dakota to spend a few months every year with our grandma. Much of our time was spent around the kitchen table playing cards, snacking on donuts and drinking percolator coffee while Grandma and Louis (and their brother Frank) beat us most of the time. My earliest memories of Louis are from my pre-school days, when we would visit him, his brother Steve, and their father, our Great Grandpa John, at their bachelor pad in rural NoDak. Louis liked to sing and play the guitar and reminisce about old girlfriends from his soldier days in WW II. More thoughts and emotions are filling my mind right now than I can express here. Louis, you will be greatly missed, along with Grandma Helen and Uncle Frank. I pray you are all reunited now, laughing with each other and telling jokes again.