In Memoriam

It was bright and sunny three hours ago when my husband David’s Uncle Ed said he wanted to go to the cemetery where his wife Fran lies. He just had to see the grave he said, tired as he was from our trip to the dentist, but for some reason we just couldn't find it, in spite of my sprinting down the grassy lanes like some kind of loony Irish setter.Uncle Ed is 89 and can’t walk on smooth surfaces never mind rough ones so I left him in the car as I did this; but it must have irked him that I kept coming up empty because at one point I looked back from some 100 yards away and there he was, handing himself tentatively along between the monuments.The thing is, Auntie Fran is buried right next to the grave I still think of as David’s father’s grave though his mother Ruth is there now too. Ralph Marotta sickened in his early 40s and was gone by 45 when his second son was a carefree 12 and the next brothers down were only nine and six. Ruth never told any of her four boys that their father was dying - those were different days, is all - and only big brother Toby, 15, seemed to understand. He  remembers him leaving for his final trip to the hospital; he remembers going to sit in his lap and kiss him goodbye.There’s more to this story, which I can tell on another such brilliant day that all too soon goes down to darkness but for now I will only say How we miss them: Pretty Aunt Fran seen here on her wedding night pointing mischievously to the bed. Meek-seeming Ruth Payne Marotta who was secretly made of steel and didn’t care what anyone thought. She modeled such great courage for me, a daughter-in-law scarce out of her teens.With his extra weight and congestive heart failure Uncle Ed knows well that he will soon be here himself. Maybe he just wanted to be sure that on future days I would know just where to find him.Go back now through these lines  and click on every word that's a different color, 'lit up' in hypertext and see their pictures up close: Uncle Ed with little David long ago, and Fran, and Ruth when all were young and the world was new and the grass was ever greening.