Someone on Facebook said Memorial Day is NOT "about" games, and I let the remark pass without comment. Can't rightly figure why this young woman's statement stuck with me. But it did. So I tucked it away for further study and went on with my Looney Old Man (LOM)chores.
Seems to me Memorial Day is about remembering. The root memorial reaches back to the 14th century, meaning "preserving the memory of a person or thing." The Old Testament takes the concept all the way back to ancient Egypt and the first Passover. Twelfth chapter of Exodus. Look it up, children.
The toughest challenge a man can face is burying his child. The Good Lord bless and keep Don Lansaw for giving his life to save his wife's during the Joplin tornado, but I submit any man with a heart and soul would do the same. Failing to protect your little girl, laying her in her grave.... Friends, burdens don't come heavier than that.
Melissa Kaye Miller is my oldest of two. I was in a classroom in Washington, D.C., on that hot August afternoon in 1969 when she was delivered at the old Wichita General Hospital. Since I was a Seaman Deuce fresh out of the Naval Recruit Training Center, Orlando, FL, her birth set me back a whole $3.50--so Mom could have a box of Kleenex in their room. Sixteen rounds were bought that night at the NCO club in Arlington. I know, 'cause I paid for eighteen of 'em myself!
In those last few years before Melissa was taken from us, we generally celebrated Memorial Day weekend with a big camp out. Our hardcore group only consisted of bits and remains of three families, a Miller and two Porters. Dean Porter and I met in Don Cowan's mixed choir at Rider High School. His big sister, Betty, was in Don's elite A Capella Choir, and all the guys who knew Dean were in lust with Betty! Dean had a surprisingly large following for a short, dumpy Boy Scout, but before he and I made it into A Cap ourselves, we had become like one, "Jim 'n' I" twins.
Older still than Dean and Betty was Big Brother Paul whom I did not get to know very well in those early days at Rider. Paul, you see, already had a wife and kids by then and was always handy to make those Friday night runs to the liquor store for us.
The first Memorial Day Weekend Campout back about, oh, 1974-75 was us--First Ex-wife, Melissa, Brian, myself--Dean, his wife Laverne and their son Joey. A few others may have passed through our camp at Lake Arrowhead, but those were the primary cast of characters for the beginning years. Paul joined up sometime during his second marriage.
I don't recall many games being played, except by the kids when they were younger. Oh, there was the occasional hide-n-seek-in-the-dark which fizzled after Dean slid head first through the campfire in a mad attempt to beat IT, Paul, to base. I was dead on Dean's heels, too, until that tree came out of nowhere! Generally a heap of steam got blown off, guitars got picked poorly and songs sung loudly between sessions of burning meat on the fire and passing out somewhere near a tent and out of traffic.
I got a telephone call early on a cold April morning in 1989. Melissa had been stabbed to death in her own apartment in front of her son Michael, 2, and daughter Diana, not yet a year old. Talk about the day the music died. I all but died inside.
The case remains open, Melissa's killer not yet positively identified. For that reason her case will not be discussed in these pages.
Michael and Diana came calling last weekend, first I'd seen them since days after their mother's memorial services. Childishly young adults now, we spent a fair part of last weekend around The Cave, and from that arose this Memorial Day Weekend Campout revival, being observed concurrently in River City, Estes Park, CO and on line and dedicated to all the priceless memories of Melissa Kaye Miller Sodeman and Paul Davis Porter.
It's Friday afternoon, children. Let the games begin!
No comments:
Post a Comment