The weather widget on my Droid has a red exclamation point, and when I click through to the Severe Weather Alert I find a Wind Advisory. The wind certainly feels severe as I start my run headed west, up the small hill past the cemetery.
Eight hours later: Just as I wrote the above the phone rang. Eric’s brother was calling to let me know that Uncle Benny died last night. So that changed the day, of course. The words that had been swirling through my head for this post, like the brown oak leaves whipping in the wind as I ran, swam away, and I spent the next couple of hours on the phone, rearranging the Thanksgiving weekend plans, calling Adrienne and Sam, checking in with Eric’s cousin Burton and my mother-in-law Natalie, figuring out what to do about the double Thanksgiving dinner plans, the baby shower plans, feeling the inexorable pull of life and all it brings crashing and thrashing around me, around all of us.
And now it’s another four hours later and the cooking is done and the table is set for tomorrow. Friday morning I’ll be on the road at 6:00 a.m. to get to Connecticut in time for the funeral. More phone calls, more shifting of plans, more thinking about Uncle Ben.
Whenever a visit was coming to an end, Ben would say, “It’s been nice for you to see me,” grinning, loving his joke, the biggest joke being it was true, it always was nice to see Ben because he was funny and warm and interesting.
Today has been quite a November run.
Grace Mattern 