Fringeville #218: Memorial Day, 2020: Smiles and Tears

"America without her soldiers would be like God without His angels.”– Claudia Pemberton, author

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This is how I remember my sister. It's my favorite picture.

I spent part of my morning in tears, not something that happens very often. I was working on billing for my one and only bookkeeping client and my iPhone was streaming my music into my cochlear implants. Good and loud. And only I could hear it. I tried not to sing along, because everyone else was asleep.

I was streaming the music alphabetically, and I was into the B’s. Here’s some of what I was listening to:

Brass in Pocket (The Pretenders)
Breakfast in America (Supertramp)
Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
Bright Lights, Big City (Neil Young)
Brown Eyed Girl (Van Morrison)
Brown Sugar (The Rolling Stones)

Oh, I was just bopping along, bookkeeping like a bookkeeping machine.

The Foundations “Build Me Up Buttercup” came up next. And that’s where I shifted from a bopping bookkeeper to a grown man bawling in his nook. It actually wasn’t a mere shift; it was a seismic event. I froze, my fingers over the keyboard. My eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t read the screen in front of me.

This was my sister Mitty’s favorite song when we were growing up. I had my head in Beatles’ music 24x7, and she played this record until she damned near wore the grooves out.

Mitty died last year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’ve heard the song several times since, but it never hit me like it did today. Today, though, is Memorial Day. I am not one for visiting cemeteries regularly. Memorial Day, however, is a day the missus and I make the rounds to the family gravesites. We visit our parent’s graves (hers at Denison Cemetery in Swoyersville, mine at the West Pittston Cemetery).

Today we will visit with my sister as well (she also rests at Denison). I have not been there since she was buried. I simply have not had the strength to do it.

I miss her. I will always miss her. I will probably always be overwhelmed when I hear that Foundations song. But it makes me remember my sister’s dancing around the house, smiling and singing when we were kids. Smiles and tears, smiles and tears.

…be good to each other, because we are all we have …and we do not have each other for very long.

 

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