there are no brakes

"If we learn the art of yielding what must be yielded to the changing present, we can save the best of the past." ~Dean Acheson

Change... Is change the one constant in life? Is there any "one" thing in life at all? Isn't everything perception? or how confusing and off tangent can I get with these thoughts...

My trip to Indiana proved to be another strange chapter. I thought I was there to scatter my father's ashes. My maternal uncle, who knew and was very close to my father for half a century was there to scatter my father's ashes. Childhood friends of my father's were there and ooops, my father's wife "forgot" to pick up the ashes from the mortuary and it was closed. So we who came for this final event for my father sat through a conservancy meeting, and a lot of paper honors and speeches from people who didn't know him naming him to the list of distinguished Hoosiers (the governor signed that), naming a "Larry lastname" day in the city of Bloomington, honoring his work (as one of a very tiny not quite handful of folks in this particular effort) on moving the the lake to conservancy district and managing its care for many years. These things were wonderful posthumous honors, but I didn't fly back to Indiana for them and likely wouldn't have. No ashes. No apology. It all shouldn't have been a surprise, given the exceptional number of other stunts this woman has pulled during the last few months, but it was.

I've recovered. Mostly. I think. Life seems a little strange still in some moments to think my father is no longer here... So many conversations left we didn't have. I felt and still feel that way about my mother sometimes too, but the ache is not quite as immediate or as sharp after twenty four years.

And another new stage of life is about to begin too. My child is leaving home, moving out on his own. Less than twenty minutes away, but not in my house any longer. This will happen in two weeks. Another ending, another beginning, another change.


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