T he old man dressed like a silent film star: black and white suit, shiny shoes, a cane, and even a top hat. The hat sat on the bench and the cane leaned against the back of it. His head of curly white hair moved like a Bobblehead doll.
Everything he’d loved he had to sacrifice until he had nothing but stones.
“This pain, that runs so deep, shows me the height of the love we once shared.”
“You ever watch bees? One goes out, finds nectar, and starts buzzing. Pretty soon the air is full of them. People ain’t any different.”
Buddy told Father Simpson the whole story in one breath… “We want you to resurrect him.”
“Last warnin’, to the pair of ya. Git out’n here now fore I let loose. Emsie, you come first, girl. I ain’t meaning’ to shoot ya, but I sure am itchin’ with this trigger.”
Sylvia was the first to arrive, twenty-two minutes before the class was scheduled to begin. Scanning the six long tables arranged in a rectangle, she decided to take a seat in the middle along the far wall, her back to the windows overlooking the parking lot. The flyer carried in her purse calmed the buzz of fearful embarrassment that she might have arrived on the wrong day or at the wrong time.
S now sugared the lawn and whitened the balsam wreathes at the twin bay windows flanking the front door painted red as holly berries. Lacy flakes drifted to earth, one tethering itself to the sleeve of the old black wool jacket that Delwyn Edward Morgan wore.
L ife happens and then it just stops. The “happens” part, with all the starts and pauses, joys and disappointments, make up modern family life. My family consisted of my parents, my son and his wife, and my precocious granddaughter. The modern label is the “club-sandwich” generation; here, in the South, we just call it family. Life, too, is full of obvious truths that in any family are either ignored or unaddressed. It’s called “the elephant in the room.”
