post celebration

Something about the farm feels so safe, so familiar, even though it's not the same since my Uncle's death. It's not  a "working farm" like it was when I was a kid. Yet, there is something so reassuring walking out in the field of soybeans listening to them grow. Seeing those fuzzy bean pods hanging down like ornaments, earrings and knowing their story. Sensing the nitrogen moving into the soil and the nutrients moving into the beans. There is a sense of theprocess of photosynthesis making music with the sun. The air is filled with a loving presence as if there really are angels moving up and down the rows singing to the plants, "grow, my darlings, grow". It's not a real farm simply in the sense that it doesn't have to make money in the same way it did when my Aunt and Uncle first started out...There is a relaxed atmosphere as if it were a museum or an out-of-the-way theme park. You can walk in the fields of clover and look down to find a "cow-pie" as if it were treasure or memorabilia to be noticed, rather than avoided and shunned. I watched three young cousins hanging around on the trampoline, quietly chatting in the sunshine. They looked so blissful for the moment and pleased to have the time to spend in each other's company. While their elders relaxed on the front deck, waiting, wondering who will be next to cross over the threshold; to move to the next station. And how? Will it hurt? Will people cry, and remember?  Or shrug and forget...A couple of weeks ago I went out to dinner with my Dad. Inadvertently I selected a place that was a little pricier than I remembered. But he didn't seem to care. He said he considered that we were spending my money, since he was planning to give it to me anyway and that this way he could see what I spent it on, and enjoy it with me. It's the thing that really bothers him about dying: missing the party and seeing how his money is spent. It's important for me to remember him like this: generous and easy. And when I said good by, he held me fiercely, tightly and for a long time. Right in front of his widowed sisters. And I let him, maybe for the last time, because he's still here. And, sooner than I care to imagine, he won't be...