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| Richard Wayne Butterick, 1963 |
When you died, George H.W. Bush was President of the United States. We had completed Operation Desert Storm in February. The Soviet Union still existed. The Dow Jones Industrial 30 topped 3,000 for the first time. Something called the World Wide Web was launched and Microsoft.com. Many people said when gasoline prices get over $1.50 per gallon, they were going to walk!
I could not even drive. Nathan was in 7th grade. Brian was in his first apartment, I think.
I still struggle whenever Mothers' Day weekend arrives, because it is always around this date. Our family day of infamy. Followed by seasons of grief, anger, guilt, and regret.
Life moves at the same pace, yet it is hard to believe that this coming weekend one of your grandsons will graduate from high school. You did not get to meet any of your grandchildren on this side of life. You live for them whenever we recall you to life, and every once in a while, whether it is a gleam in the eye, a particular physical gesture or response, we see a little bit of you in them.
The dark clouds of your unexpected passing have faded towards the horizon as we moved through other seasons of our lives. The feeling of absence has never left us, but the reality of life pushed us forward, onward into what felt like a distant future now present today. I have lived twice as much time without you as I was able to have with you. In those first days, weeks, months, and years, I wondered if I could.
Absent from us in body, present with us in our hearts. From time to time finding ourselves wondering how you would have responded, what you would have said and whether you would be pleased with our life choices and responses. We suspect some paths we would have not followed or gone. We suspect other paths could or would have been.
We have had other joys as well as sorrows. Other worries as well as peace. A few hellos and a few goodbyes. Comedy and tragedy. Life experience in all of its sunshine and shades. We still live, laugh, and love, even with the hole in our hearts your leaving all too soon opened.
How can it be thirty years since we heard your laugh, your voice, or felt your hand or see you coming to us? The glasses off-center, as you sat napping in the recliner, still clutching the remote that Nathan and I could never retrieve from your firm hand. That annoyed look when Mom was trying to talk to you while you read the afternoon Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette. The short pants and t-shirt dripping with sweat as you have put up the weed-wacker and enjoying a cold one (Michelob, if I remember correctly...) after a few hours of yard work. You popping a tape cassette with your distinctive handwriting declaring "Who Else? Big "O" on the label. Making the greyest shredded potatoes for breakfast, along with corned beef hash in the muffin tins. That weird habit of making lime jello with shredded carrots in it. Or the kidney bean salad. Wondering why I wanted to be a lawyer instead of a musician when I got done with high school.
And yet it is true. It has been thirty years. And I can still remember you. And those thirty years now distant fall away, and I am back in the family room at 248 E Franklin, Bement, Illinois, impressed with the picture-in-picture on our new 30-inch Magnavox in the entertainment cabinet, listening to the dryer run and the patio door open to let the springtime air into the home again.
You are dozing off in the recliner again. And this time I will get that remote....
