Sometimes, having a heart of stone is not about being cold or unfeeling. Sometimes, it is about being strong and unbreakable, a foundation for things to come, a protective repository for dreams and ambitions, and sometimes it is just a rock reminder of where you have come from and how it feels to be here and present, cracks and all, sending a little message of hope, for those in need…to see.
My sister Margaret was born within a few weeks of my second birthday. She came into the world at a difficult time in America. Born at the end of September only a few weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in October of 1962, she was barely six weeks old when our family life blew apart in a way that could never be repaired. While the rest of the world was still catching its breath after the compromise between Kennedy and Khrushchev, our lives were spinning off in terrible directions that we would not be able to control.
A year ago today when I wrote the post Peanut Butter & Jelly for her, I offered a bit of insight into the challenges we faced as children. If you take a moment to read that post, found below the baby bracelet, the rest of this will make more sense.
Margaret was blond to my brunette with blue/grey/green eyes to my brown ones. Growing up no one ever questioned that I was our mother’s child having her hair and eye coloring in addition to a bit of her overall look. Margaret however, took after our father’s side of the family with her fair coloring and light eyes.
It must have been so obvious to our mother who still maintained throughout Margaret’s early years, ” I don’t know who you look like ” saying it in a way intended to keep her at arms length even more than she did with her other behaviors. Never a warm or loving woman, it was one more way she found to inflict pain on someone she should have loved and protected.
I wish I could have stated what was so obvious back then, but we barely knew our father’s family and they were all but strangers to us when we finally had a opportunity to spend time with them in the summer of 1970. Children don’t always see things as clearly as adults and we certainly don’t always know the right thing to say.
As Margaret and I age, the physical differences are shrinking, I can’t look at my hands without seeing hers and although our mouths have a slightly different shape, the laugh lines around them look the same and we share a worry line right between our eyes that is always there when we’re trying to solve a problem. We both are short waisted although she has me on height and if you were to hear us laughing together you might have trouble telling us apart.
Margaret is and always has been, courageous and talented. She is a woman of many skills with an attitude that defies the possibility that what she wants is not within her reach. As someone who can design and build just about anything, if I were ever trapped on an island, she’d be someone I’d want there to help me sort things out. A tender message of love and affection has more value to her than any material possession and the welfare of her family is foremost in all of her decisions. We’ve struggled through some difficult times together and apart, but I hope she can hear me when I say, you are my family Margaret, and you look like me.
Happy Birthday Margaret
Kansas 1984
Alaska – December 2008
We were warriors together from our earliest days, standing together in defense as children against things too terrible to speak of even to those closest to us.
Born two years after me, she is part of my earliest memories. She was my first audience, listening as I created elaborate eulogies for the roly-poly bugs we found belly up in the back yard when we were six and eight. Seated among the stuffed animals who made up the mourners at these morbid dramas, her face was the gauge by which I measured my ability to connect with the heart of my audience. It was through her that I first learned the power of my own words and awakened my love of storytelling. Shy and outgoing, blond and brunette, quiet and chatty, we have been opposites, but so alike in different ways.
For years we were always,“ Elizabeth and Margaret,” said in the same mouthful like peanut butter and jelly or cake and ice cream. Never just Elizabeth or Margaret, until one day, thinking only of my own salvation, I fled from the daily war-zone of our lives and I lost my sister. Her name was changed and she was taken away to a state where I couldn’t find her. Suddenly, I was no longer one of two, no more Elizabeth and Margaret, just Elizabeth with no peanut butter for my jelly. Not knowing where she was or more importantly how she was, was an open wound to my young heart.
At fifteen, I convinced an older boy with a car to drive me 636 miles round-trip back to the last house I’d lived in with her. I told my dad and step-mom a bodacious lie and jumped into the car that covered the distance like it had wings attached to the roof rack. She was already gone but I didn’t know it then. I was too afraid to venture down the rocky driveway to get close enough to look for her, but I stood at the end of the road wringing my hands and thinking of escape plans that had no place in a mind that should have been focused on teen worries.
I wondered for years if I would recognize her if she passed me on the street and I felt her missing presence during all the times you’d like to share with a sister. Our father suffered terribly in his quiet way and sometimes in an unguarded moment our normally stoic dad would drop his calm demeanor and his sadness would leak out through his eyes.
At 23, after a tip from a young cousin, I made a few phone calls to a college in the middle of nowhere and told a couple of lies so big even I wouldn’t have believed them to an unsuspecting soul in the registrars office. It worked somehow and she confirmed my sister was enrolled that semester before giving me her home phone number. I was scared as I called the number and I held my breath waiting as I said, “Margaret…this is Elizabeth, don’t hang up.”
We saw each other for first time in ten years a few months later on my 24th birthday when I flew in to surprise her. She said later that she had a feeling she was going to see me that day. Sister connections and DNA …she knew I was coming. I wish I made it back to her sooner. I wish I could have gotten her to a safe place before she found it on her own. I wish I could have explained 34 years ago that I wasn’t trying to leave her, but trying desperately to save myself. There are a lot of things I’d change if I had the power, but there’s one thing she can count on now. I’m not going anywhere….anymore.
Today is a special day for me. It’s the 46th anniversary of the day my sister was born.
I’ve missed a lot of her birthdays in the past and it feels really good to be able to say that I hope today will be a happy day to the peanut butter to my jelly.
Happy Birthday Margaret.
Margaret Turns Six-1968
Twenty-two years ago, I was in the hospital having just given birth to my only child. I didn’t know it at the time, but this precious gift would steal my heart like no one else ever could. If you’ve followed my blog for any length time, you’ve seen snippets of Miranda scattered throughout my posts. I’ve tried to protect her privacy as much as any proud mother can. If I had my way Gifts Of The Journey might end up looking like a mommy blog as I could write post after post about smothering, I mean mothering Miranda over the years.
It is difficult for me to remember sometimes that she is grown now. Miranda is the same age I was when I was finishing my tour of duty with the Army and some days I have to remind myself that while 22 doesn’t seem all that old to a mother’s heart, she really has grown into a lovely quite capable young woman. With each conversation we have lately, I am able to see that she is doing just fine without a lot of input from me these days. That makes it easier to step back and enjoy her in a whole new way.
While I will not be with her physically this year, I will be ichatting with her in a few hours so seeing her on camera while we speak will have to do for now. When she was a baby, I used to kiss her all over her sweet face telling people I was stocking up for the days to come when she’d be too big for my exuberant displays of affection. While I’m sure I could still embarrass her with the delight I feel when close enough to smother her with the kisses she’s too old for now, today I’d settle for a big birthday hug and wish I was close enough to deliver it. Happy Birthday baby girl!
Below is the post I wrote last year for her 21 birthday…I wanted to share it again today as she turns 22.
In a few days, my precious daughter will be twenty-one.
That’s twenty-one years since I heard a chorus of voices in the delivery room saying in unison, “ 8:03.” Exhausted by a labor that had gone on for over two days, I remember thinking for about half second, “okay, so it’s 8:03” before realizing that the medical team were all marking time of birth.
So there it was, a Monday morning in September when my world changed forever at 8:03.
Married only three months and pregnant at twenty-six, I worried about how ill prepared I felt in my ability to parent anyone. Even though I had joined the Army at eighteen and done more adventurous things by twenty-one than some people do their whole lives, I worried incessantly about the most basic of things…being a mother. That changed quickly as I held her that first night after everyone had gone home and we were completely alone for the first time. I whispered my fears to her as I told her who I was and where I’d been. I told her I’d do my very best, but I was bound to make mistakes so some things we might need to learn together.
As you can imagine it was a very one sided conversation. I talked, she stretched and yawned and then she slept…doing all the things a newborn does naturally. Holding this tiny person in my arms, I made a promise to love and protect her and to stay open to the things she might teach me too along the way. Life lessons come from unexpected places and the gifts that come from opening yourself to loving someone else deeply despite your fears can create a ripple effect that has the potential to positively touch the lives of more people than we realize.
Letting go, I learned what it’s like to love another without reservation, sweet unconditional love… no matter what. My daughter, born four days after my twenty-seventh birthday has been the best gift of my life. A blessing from the beginning, I learned how to love others by loving her first. I expect she may take a look at this post, but it won’t be the first time she’s heard me say this. I’ve been telling her whole life that she has been the best blessing of mine.
Happy Birthday, baby girl – make a bold wish with those birthday candles and blow!
Fred Rogers & Benjamin Wagner (Photo Courtesy Of Benjamin Wagner)
About a year ago I posted Deep And Simple on my first Gifts Of The Journey website. A few things have changed since then, one being that I can no longer find the direct link to the essay published in the original “2DO Before I Die” book, but you can read about how he met Mister Rogers by going to Benjamin Wagner’s blog. After funding the making of this documentary out of their own pockets with an investment of $30,000 dollars so far, Benjamin and his brother Chris Wagner need a little help to finish this worthy project and get it out to a wider audience. I know everyone is hanging on to their money a good bit tighter in this economy, but if you’ll read his story I think you may decide this film has a message we can all benefit from…especially now. Please consider making a donation to get this film completed.
If you’re a blogger reading this, you might include the ” Please Help Mister Rogers & Me “ link or forward this post on to friends to increase awareness. Thanks for taking time to read this and I’ll leave you with a Mister Rogers quote from, ” The World According to Mister Rogers ”
” I hope you’re proud of yourself for all the times you’ve said ” yes,” when all it meant was extra work for you and was seemingly helpful only to someone else.”
In bookstores everywhere it only takes about half a minute to glance around and see book titles referencing lists of things to do or see before you die. These types of books have been around for quite some time, but a few of us actually had a list long before Oprah and every one else began promoting them. My list dates back to my college days and at 47, I’m only about a third of the way through it. While I’ve crossed off and enjoyed a goodly few of the important ones, at the pace I’m going I may be the oldest person Running with the Bulls in Pamplona in 2041. Maybe number fifty should be something like walking to the mailbox unassisted instead of dodging livestock when I’m old and wrinkly.
Lists can be important though and while I won’t share the complete contents of mine, I’m glad I had an opportunity to read about just one of the things that Benjamin Wagner accomplished on his list. It has made a tremendous difference in my life and I hope you’ll be as positively affected as I was when I read about it a couple of years ago. Reading about Benjamin’s meeting with Mr. Rogers, the gentle creator of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood made me cry then and it still does each time I read it. It’s sweet in the telling, because Benjamin Wagner knows how to reach into your heart and pull out an emotional memory you thought you’d locked away for safekeeping. Deeply feeling, he is able to convey his own fears and vulnerability in a way that makes it feel safe to share your own. Benjamin is an unusual mix of singer songwriter, MTV Executive, and documentary filmmaker. And while I love his newest CD release, it is his work on the documentary, “ Mr Rogers & Me “ that I want you to know about today.
Take a minute to read ‘Meet Mr. Rogers’ and then see if you can shake the message from your thoughts. If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself talking with perfect strangers about it and hearing the words, deep and simple cross your lips over and over until it sounds as natural as telling someone your own name.
Benjamin Wagner and his brother Chris have been working on “Mr. Rogers & Me” on their own time and with their own money for the last four years. Both of them lead mega busy lives already without all that goes into creating this film. Take a look at this site and see some of the people they’ve interviewed for it like this great woman and this good man and then start spreading the word. I believe so strongly in this message, that the best things in our lives really are the ones that are deep and simple. And if I may quote Benjamin Wagner regarding the goal of the documentary, “ to afford the viewer the opportunity to reflect not just on a great man, but also on the values he espoused and embodied every day: compassion, kindness, and reflection.”
Just remember there are five words to put you right when life becomes too shallow and complex.
Five words to bring you back to your best self… compassion, kindness, reflection, and say them with me now….deep and simple.
As the world started spinning, Gary thought, “What did Amy put in my drink?”
Gary reached out for the wall hoping to steady himself, but slipped instead scraping his head against the bricks as he tried to sit rather than fall down onto the sidewalk. He’d only had a couple of drinks with this woman he’d met in person a few hours ago, but he felt like he’d been drinking all night. “What is going on…” he thought to himself? They’d talked on the phone a couple of times after meeting online and had decided to take a chance and meet in person. He’d found her easy to talk with sharing parts of his life he never spoke about, not to anyone. It was easier most days to just keep quiet, but drinking with her had opened doors he thought he had closed and locked years ago and he listened as he shared a little more each time he signaled the waiter to bring them another round. After a couple of drinks, she’d had enough and now that he thought about it, maybe he had more to drink than he’d realized.
It was the first time in a long as he could remember that he’d met someone he even wanted to talk with about more than the weather or what kind of prices were down at the gas pumps. Working at the fire station, he lived a life of extremes with every thing being either too boring or too terrible to share with his mother who seemed like the only person around lately to keep him company when he wasn’t working his shifts down at the station. Gary had lived with her for the last four years moving back home after his dad had died suddenly. He’d only meant to stay long enough to help her adjust to life without the old man, but before he knew it, his leave of absence from his job in North Carolina had run out and he’d made a decision to stay with her in the small town where he’d grown up.
He hated sleeping in his old bedroom smelling the scent of his youth day after day. After 16 years, you’d think the smell of sweaty socks and grubby football jerseys would have disappeared or at least have been covered over by all that damn air fresher his mom keep spraying around the house, Hell, you’d think she was trying to hide a dead body as often as she had that hot pink aerosol can in her hand. Still the smell of canned potpourri was better in some ways than the memories he had when he walked through the door into his room at night. It was like stepping back in time, as if four years of football games and wrestling matches was still ongoing instead of just gone.
Gary didn’t like to remember those days…not anymore. He had struggled at first, fighting his memories of a time that for the most part, had been the happiest days of his life. He’d had a girl back then who looked at him like he was all she could see and he’d loved that. It was kind of like being the star quarterback on a winning team and even though he’d never played the quarterback position, his high school had gone all the way to the state finals in his senior year before losing in the last 4 seconds of what some people still talked about as the stolen game. He had been so angry that night over sudden loss that he drank more than he usually did after a game. Gary was always pretty careful about how much beer he had not wanting to lose control like some of the people closest to him. He didn’t like it when saw his dad stumbling over the last step of the home they’d outgrown after the birth of his two brothers. If he hadn’t carved out his attic room he never would have had any privacy. He hadn’t thought much then about the smallness of the house or how it must have made his dad feel never being able to afford move up as the walls of the tiny two bedroom house strained to contain it all with the addition of each child.
Gary swore though that he’d never be like his dad watching him bounce off the living room wall coming through the front door every night and made a silent promise each time he heard his parents fighting in the kitchen, that he would never let booze run his life like it did his dad’s. Losing that night in the state finals had done something to him though and he found himself drinking vodka straight from the bottle with one of the boys he’d grown up with. Seventeen years of fighting over playground equipment, football and who’s girlfriend was the prettiest made for some close friendships or at least that’s what he’d thought until that night. When Joe Little had handed him the bottle with the clear liquid in it he’d resisted at first looking around for another beer. Joe had pushed it back at him saying. ” Go on…it’s practically like drinking water.” Gary had taken it after realizing that the six pack of Coors he’d brought with him was gone. He wondered how he’d managed to drink six beers so quickly as he took the bottle from Joe. Closing his eyes, he put his lips on the bottle trying not to think about how Joe had just had his mouth all over it wondering if the whispered rumors about him were true.
Taking a long pull on the bottle he felt the burn of the liquor as it filled his mouth before swallowing it down quickly, impatient to get away from the taste. The warmth of the 80 proof alcohol hit his body like stepping in from the cold just as he was handing the bottle back to Joe. “Go on man, have some more.” Joe had said and Gary drank holding on to the bottle afterward thinking he’d have just one more and then give it back to Joe. This feeling was different from the slow steady buzz he got by drinking a few beers and he found himself free of the edginess he’d felt after the game. It was as if all the anger had been softened somehow and he felt his adrenaline fading as he took another drink from the bottle.
He struggled for a second to focus his eyes realizing as he read the writing on the bottle that the words didn’t quite make sense especially since it seemed he could only pick out one or two instead of reading the blurred words that made up the paragraph on the front of the bottle. Picking out the word distilled, he wondered to himself if distilled meant the same thing as diluted and for a minute he thought about sitting in Mrs. Hull’s English class and how maybe he’d know more of what words meant if he’d payed more attention to what she was saying then and less about things at home. Passing the bottle back to Joe, Gary thought he could say he was feeling either distilled or diluted inside… he didn’t care which and wrapped as he was in the comfort of his alcohol haze, he guessed either might be a good fit.
Thanks to Judy Harper for her sentence above and more importantly for joining me today with a story of her own to share. Please take a minute to go by and read Judy’s contribution to TMAST. If you’d like to join us next week you can do it by leaving a topic sentence for others to choose from or by taking a sentence that has been left and using it to write your own short story. Remember it’s practice writing and just for fun. This morning my story took off in a completely different direction that I imagined just as this type of writing often does. It’s a good opportunity to find your authentic story telling voice and even if you think you’ve got nothing to say…you may surprise yourself. I hope more of you will join in next week and even if you don’t join the story writing piece please go here and leave me a topic sentence to work with next week. You’ll find three photographs to choose from or you can comment on all three. Thanks for playing and I’ll look forward to reading your words.
At 18, On A Weekend Pass Between Basic & AIT Training (Letting My Hair Down)
I am generally not bothered by birthdays. I tend to see getting older as just a different set of opportunities and I haven’t been worried in any significant way about the proximity of 50 as I turn 49 in a few weeks, but something shifted this morning.
Yesterday, I spent a good deal of the day scanning slides and old photographs into the computer. These images captured moments from my army days or just before and I was reminded how very young I really was then. I can’t believe how much responsibility the military gave a woman barely old enough to vote, someone whose parents still wanted her in by midnight when she was already 18. Going from grumbling about a midnight curfew, to rushing down to the motor pool on alert at 3:00 am before getting my M-16 rifle from the Arms Room was a shift of substantial proportions.
Sometimes I forget how significant that time period that was when I think back to the decisions that led me to where I am now. Looking back at those photographs, I see a young woman… still a girl in many ways, jumping into the water with barely a look to see how deep the level or even a pause to test the temperature. I’ve always been someone ready to take a chance, but seeing all the people and places in pictures yesterday made me go back to memories I’d packed away..many of them shut away in a small box of slides I’ve been moving from place to place over the years. I found myself reflecting with sadness at times about some of the decisions I’ve made over the last 30 years and I am amazed how easy it can be for both regret and gratitude to share the same space.
It’s good you don’t know everything when you’re 18, but I do wish I’d had a better understanding of one thing back then. It’s a simple concept that took me years to get…that a moment lost is really gone forever. I still struggle with letting go of worry about the future and even worse…looking back at things I wish I’d done differently. It sounds trite and we hear it all the time, this talk of living in the moment, being present in your own life, but it is a common theme and one which has been illuminated by a variety of quotes for hundreds of years. I’ll leave you with the one that makes the most sense to me this morning. If you have one you’d like to share, I hope you’ll take a minute to leave it in a comment.
We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow.
~Fulton Oursler
Christmas 1992
When you marry a divorced man with children especially in 1972, you can generally feel pretty secure that interaction with his children will be limited to weekend visits and school vacations. At most, you might have to adapt your summer work schedule to accommodate a few consecutive weeks for a longer visit, but you never consider that a few years later and directly on the heels of giving birth to a child of your own, that your household and your heart will suddenly be asked to stretch open enough for a mixed up fourteen year old girl to make her home there.
Looking back now 35 years later, I am still in awe by the way my step-mother Cullene handled this major life change. Despite juggling multiple responsibilities including a six month old baby, a full time job and helping to care for assorted elderly relatives, she welcomed me into the home she had created with my father. If she had concerns about adding one more to the list of those who needed her, I never felt it as she made room for me with an amazing amount of compassion and grace.
She wouldn’t have known then how desperately I needed a place of refuge and how if my request to live with them had met with resistance, I would have headed for the streets which would have seemed safer than the home I was in. Their home was a direct contrast to my previous life and for the first time, I felt safe.
I like to tell people than most of what I know about hosting a party or event along with good manners and appropriate behavior I learned by observing Cullene during my teen years. What I don’t always say is that Cullene inspired me early on with her business style and her stories of smoky rooms filled with tough talking journalists who thought a woman’s only place on the news page was in the society section. Her tales of taking on editors or working her way up later in positions generally reserved for men made me see a larger world for myself. I didn’t know then what my life or work might look like later, but listening to her I was sure that I wanted to be like her pushing the barriers others might try to impose.
It would be a one sided view of this generous woman if I didn’t say that much of what I’ve learned about giving of myself has come from observing Cullene do for others. She is always at the ready with a healing word of support or assistance for people in need often to the point of denying herself. While I could never be as unselfish as she so often is with others, I do know that there have been many times when in doubt that I have considered what Cullene might do in a similar situation.
She has been a sweet fallback of love and support during times when I needed it most, generously offering what I was frequently too stubborn to accept. I am enormously grateful my father made the wise decision he did when he asked her to be his wife 37 years ago and more importantly for me, that when the situation required it, she assumed the position of mother to a teenager with little experience other than a strong internal foundation supported by heart and grace.
Today is Cullene’s birthday and even though I sent a little something by mail, I wanted to say more to honor this day and her significance in my life.
Happy Happy Birthday Cullene…I hope it’s great one!
The photo above is my favorite picture of the two of us and I love how there is a little heart hanging over our heads.
We all know that things don’t matter as much as people, but sometimes when the people you love are far away there are some things you just don’t want to be without. Yesterday, after 78 days and trip that began back in America, some of my special things finally arrived from Georgia. It was a bit surreal seeing the things I had pared down to as the most essential from my American life taken off a truck in the tiny village in England I now call home.
I had to open some boxes right away to ensure there was no damage and my art pieces were the first ones I tore into. I was opening at a good pace with an excitement similar to a child on Christmas morning when the watercolor piece above stopped my excited frenzy of paper tearing with an audible ooooooh… followed by a loud ,”John, come look at this one….”
This sweet little watercolor is a tender connection to my daughter’s childhood and to her every time I see it. She brought it home one day very early in her school career somewhat rumpled as large project can be when carried by small hands. I loved it from the beginning and after claiming a space on the side of the refrigerator reserved for special things, I eventually took it down and rolled it up intending to have it framed. It took about five years before I could make up my mind how I wanted to frame it which occurred right about the time my daughter would have preferred that her middle school age friends not see the art work of her early years. She called this little bunny, “Cerit Body” or “Carrot Body” as she told me when I mispronounced it the first time based on her written words at the top of the painting and if you look closely at the bottom, you can just make out the young artist’s signature too.
I felt a bit tearful seeing this little watercolor painting and held it so closely that John picked up the camera to capture my emotional moment. I am so glad to have it with me and I’m already thinking about the best place to hang it when the dust settles around here.
Some things will have to stay boxed until my new space is finished and since our master bedroom is going through a renovation and extension too with the addition on an en-suite bath, nothing can be unpacked for that room yet either. Yesterday afternoon, John and I moved boxes of clothes and linens & towels up to the attic while creating a temporary holding space in the living room corner for the 9 boxes of books I shipped over along with a section for art and other collectables. The kitchen is overflowing with dishes and china, along with bowls and cooking things my grandmother once used on a regular basis. The wooden bread bowl carved by my great grandfather quickly replaced the basket that John kept fruit in and will have a place on the table once it’s cleared of all the pieces I placed there while unpacking yesterday.
Last night when all the lights were out and I was heading for bed, I followed my nightly routine of checking all the doors to be sure the house was locked up tight for the night. This habit is one I inherited from my father who always made this a part of his bedtime ritual. He called it shutting down the house. That I do it now reminds me of my father on a more frequent and personal level than seeing his photograph on my shelf…proving that sometimes a memory or tradition can be as valuable in some ways as our possessions. Last night however, as I lingered at the kitchen door and looked back into the messy room, I was more than happy and content to see the physical examples of my family and my story waiting to find a place in this new home.
1948 Bringing In The Milk
A young boy about 7 or 8 walks with his little brother as they follow the tall man into the garage to see what waits inside. Watching intently, he listens as his cousin seventeen years his senior explains patiently and carefully that the boat they’re standing in front of is a varnished, clinker built, sailing dinghy. The boy has never seen one this close before, but he knows from the excitement in his cousin’s voice that this is very special to him. He listens and tries to remember as this kind man takes time to explain the purpose and names of the riggings and fittings. His little brother fidgets beside him too young to absorb much of what is being said. Only 3, his brother won’t remember this day, but later he’ll help his older brother as they build the first of two dinghies when they are only 9 and 13. When they’re grown men, they’ll each buy their own sailboats, but still sail together at times, as they explore the Cornish coastline not too from the Bristol Channel where they first rowed the dinghy they built together as children.
Two Lads In The Dinghy Built In 1956
John Winchurch 1956
Mom Takes A Ride In The New Dinghy With David
It’s this early childhood memory that John will recall 6o years later when he stands before about 30 or so of his cousin Michael’s family and friends as they gather together to share stories of this erudite man whose sense of humor generally made him the life and soul of any party. After his memorial service, they’ll all gather round to look at the photographs that various people will bring to share. Most will contain images of Michael, some from 50 years ago like the one below when he served as best man at the marriage of John Collins and his late wife.
Michael J. Bench - Best Man - 1959 (Far Left In Photo)
After sharing his childhood memory of Michael, John will listen with great interest as John Collins, the groom above tells him how he met Michael when they were architecture students and how together with another friend they’d bought the dinghy that Michael had shown the boys in the garage all those years ago. John Collins will say he was interested to hear the dinghy mentioned during the memorial service and he how he can’t quite remember what happened to it. He’ll also add how it came to be in that particular garage when the three of them owned it jointly. Being students still, Michael was the only one with a place to store it and so it was there… tucked in the garage of Michael’s parents, Auntie Millie and Uncle Horace when John and his brother David visited the Bench family around 1948.
John And Cousin Mary, Remembering With Michael's Friends
This picture probably more than any other reminds me of the day and how in the end what remains are the memories and stories we share. Michael was well loved and there were many conversations as we talked and talked lingering even as we moved towards our cars reluctant to have the day be at an end. Mary was not really interested in being photographed as so many of us are particularly as we get older, but this sweet photograph of her alone is one I just had to share because with her brother Michael’s recent death and the loss of their younger brother two years ago, in their circle of three, she is what remains now.
Mary Bench Levack
HUGH LEE STEPHENS
While June 6, 1944 is a day that many will gather to remember the 65th anniversary of the D-Day Invasion and the wartime sacrifice of human life, in my family there is another date that we remember someone lost to us on French soil in 1944. Like many other families it’s more personal than just another breaking news story where they bring out the oldest surviving vets and listen as they recount the horrors of that horrible time.
Stories are powerful, they shape opinion and leave a lasting impression on how we view the world around us. I grew up hearing stories about my great-uncle, Hugh Lee Stephens. He was one of only two children born to my father’s maternal grandparents in a time when families were usually larger, when more children in families like ours meant more hands to work the farm and fields. On the day my family learned of Uncle Hugh’s death, his mother, my great-grandmother, had what I believe was first of several heart attacks she would have throughout her life. She was 53. She forever mourned her dead son acting in some ways as if her life ended with his. By the time I was born she almost seemed like a frail reflection of the sturdy woman I saw in family photographs before 1944.
My father was only a few days away from his 10th birthday when he heard the news and spoke often of how he’d looked up to his uncle who at 18 years his senior, was in many ways like a second father to him. My grandmother Clara Mae, his only sibling, told the kind of stories one might expect from a someone still clinging to the unfinished business of sibling rivalry … choosing to hold onto old hurts instead of feeling the pain and finality that comes with death. Each one had a different story … each one the truth for them. As for his father, my great-grandfather, I cannot ever remember him sharing any stories of his lost son … almost as if it was too much to remember what must have been to painful for him to recall.
Hugh Lee, as he was called by his mother and father also left behind a wife who loved him. When he died at 27, he was just a simple Georgia boy in a foreign country. He found himself in a country he never imagined he’d be growing up as he did on a rural farm in the south. A place across the ocean where he’d struggle to find his footing and fall dying as he did beside his fellow soldiers, the sons and fathers and husbands we still remember 65 years later.
Because I had served as a soldier in the U.S. Army, when it came time to pass Uncle Hugh’s flag to the next generation for safe keeping my father offered it to me, the eldest of his three daughters. I took this photograph in Georgia just before I passed it on to my daughter Miranda who while only 21, was appreciative and eager to accept it into her care. While packing up the small amount of things that I value most to send over to England, I made the decision to leave behind the flag that draped the casket at his military funeral not because I did not value its meaning or because there was no room, but because I believed my great-uncle Hugh’s American flag should stay in the country he called home.
The reflection of the empty chairs in this photograph of his flag reminds me of the family and life experiences he never got to have. Leaving no children of his own, his story exists now only in a few genealogy notes, this flag and the memories we share. I honor his service and sacrifice in the best way I know how by sharing his story with a group larger than the boundaries of our little family and hope that he like so many others who gave their lives on the battlefield, will never be forgotten.
Gifts Of The Journey 