The Mark of a Life…

Ten days ago, everything came together.  The weather was just cold enough and just warm enough. It was snowing, and each flake was like a fluff of feather down, so the ground looked as comforting as a feather bed. And then there was that silence…that gorgeous, cozy silence that is less absence of sound and more just the…absorption of noise. 

 

I was standing in the front field of Dean’s parent’s farm, trying to capture the three brothers on camera…but with that silence and that heavy snow, I could not find them through my lens.  Behind me I heard a commotion as my sister-in-law stood in the open doorway of the house, calling to my niece and daughter to come inside and get their winter clothes on…I guess they, too, wanted to catch a glimpse of the spectacle and in their excitement had run out of the house without boots, jackets, hats, mitts or snow pants.  Finally, the three of us and my camera caught sight of the boys…Luke was driving the tractor and Dean and Todd were riding behind …being towed on GT Racers.  Every thirty seconds or so, either Todd or Dean was tossed high in the air when Luke took a corner too fast.  Maybe Luke would stop the tractor until they caught up again, or maybe he would make his brothers run full tilt to catch up with their toboggans.  Being the baby of the family by eight years, and having been the brunt of his much older brothers’ many pranks, he mostly made them work for it.

 

I think, in the years to come, this will be my most vivid memory of the hours and days after the death of my father-in-law…watching his three boys playing together…finding creative ways to enjoy the gift of a beautiful snowy day…every once in a while catching the sound of their laughter through the snow-silence.  And later, when Bill’s much-beloved four granddaughters were finally suited up properly, their fathers and their Uncle Luke spent the rest of the afternoon finding new and wonderful ways to make them smile…taking their father’s gifts of love, gentleness and play and paying them forward.

 

I suppose that if Bill had been standing beside me that afternoon, watching his boys playing with his tractor, he would have been smiling and shaking his head, or maybe he would have had one of his Eeyore moments and just have settled for shaking his head.  I wonder if he would have recognized the bits of himself in those moments?  Because even though we were all walking through those days with a Bill shaped hole in our lives, we were all still able to find a bit of play here, a sense of adventure there and a whisper of gentleness everywhere.  That was the mark he left on our hearts.

 

 

 

Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation.  For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.  ~Albert Einstein

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