He would have been 88 today. His mother lived to be 90; she was the only biological grandparent I knew. Dad's dad died young. I think my dad was 17 when his dad died. I'll have to look it up. Dad died a month short of his 69th birthday, 19 years ago. And Mom died 6 months ago yesterday.
So many dates and anniversaries, I begin to wonder if there are too many to really mean anything, other than I get lots of memory prompts in the summer. They each mean a little less the farther I move away from them. I used to go to the shore of Lake Michigan and send Dad a Happy Birthday balloon every year on this date. After 3 or 4 years I stopped. I no longer felt that need.
Yet I also notice that I do not forget these dates. I make a point not to forget all these dates. They must mean something; in fact, I feel as though their meaning is probably fairly obvious. Maybe it's too close, staring me in the face, as they say, so that I cannot make out the relevance of remembering these milestones. Or maybe that's the point, remembering. Those casually tossed off "memory prompts" are the meaning. Wisdom has it that one mustn't live in the past. Ignoring the past is, on the other hand, ignoring what made us what we are in the present.
Whatever the meaning, the memories are here, as is the love (and the fights and the laughs and the dysfunction). Another milestone, more memories, another summer day.
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