3 posts tagged “memories”

It has been 86 days since my son left us for heaven.  I still have a hard time using the word died.  That has such a finality that I guess I am not ready to mentally process yet.  Ryan was a 29 year old US Marine full of life, which is why I spent so much time taking him to hospitals from injuries, sneaking in a Big Mac as he spent several days in jail for tickets, or trying to straighten up my credit damaged when I co-signed a car loan or an apartment lease for him.  I knew some of his friends as they all came over to the house.  Bonnie, my wife, knew them better than I did and would sit in the backyard with them as they had a beer and shared their experiences.  I wish I had gotten to know Ryan more as an adult.  He was…and still always will be my little curly haired blond little boy.  He was my little cub scout.  Even then he was full of mischief.  A trait he never grew out of.  I still can close my eyes and see his crooked smile…his eyes full of fun and wonder.  He loved Christmas, especially my wife’s incredible turkey, gravy and stuffing.  On his last birthday, June 19^th, he had asked Bonnie for her special turkey dinner instead of a birthday present.  My wife Bonnie, who is dealing with the after effects of massive brain surgery last year, did feel up to making her turkey for him.  It is a big job doing all that cooking.  I know she wishes she could go back in time and make him his favorite dinner.  It almost feels unreal that he is gone.  Almost like any moment he will call me here at work on nightshift to ask me to come over and fix something at his apartment or with his vehicle…or to tell me about an upcoming fight with MMA…or to ask me questions about the Bible.  God knows how much I miss that.  I stay pretty busy between work, sleep and doing stuff  around the house.  It is in those down times when I think about Ryan….like now, that the protective walls fall away and a great sadness envelops me.  Sometimes I can’t help but weep…and I know that that release is a good thing.  My wife has had it incredibly hard.  Last year she was diagnosed with a 4.7cm acoustic neuroma ( brain tumor) and had to have surgery at the Fort Worth Brain and Spine Center/Harris Hospital.  The 13 hour surgery left her with stroke like effects on her left side.  The cranial pain is continuous and has required massive pain blockers.  Loss of balance, inability for her left eye to tear..and now dental problems caused by the lack of salvia production.  She calls the brain tumor…the gift that keeps on giving.  Now last week, we find out that she has kidney cancer.  Both kidneys have tumors.  The one on her left side is huge (4 cm) and so they will remove her kidney right after Thanksgiving to avoid a rupture.  I don’t know what they can do for the other kidney tumor.  My mind cannot fathom what I will do if my wife of 33 years is taken from me.  Already the weight of grief and pain is almost overpowering.  Over the years Bonnie and I have drifted farther and farther away from each other.  Sometimes I feel that there is nothing I can do to please her.  She seems to find fault in everything I do.  Any yet she is so much a part of me, I feel like I could not survive this world without her.  I don’t think she can understand how much I love her.  Old hurts, resentments and unforgiveness … make a barrier in not only expressing love and compassion…but being able to feel it from others.  I think we start to feel comfortable in our wounded state for so long that we are not sure what normal is anymore.  Like a bird that does not fly, it has limited itself.  Without love, we limit ourselves from the way we were originally created to live.  I wish she knew what an impact just a smile…a kind word…a touch of compassion or a hug…can have on my day, when it comes from her.  After the loss of my son, life without my Bonnie would be a sadness and darkness that would smother the light of my life.

Both of these are part of my collection but there meaning has been greatly applified by the loss of my youngest son.

The first is actually a discription and impressions of my grandparents bedroom.  The second of their big old chests in the attic full of stuff.  I now have a special chest for things that were special to my son Ryan.  Copyright... 1991

DAYS GONE BY

Piercing thru the morning mist,
Light enters her silent room,
Passing lace curtains of antiquity,
Yellowing under layers of dust,
A reminder of days gone by.

The wicker rocker sits still,
Facing the window and the street below,
White paint chipping away,
Revealing varied hand painted hues,
A reminder of days gone by.

Neatly folded and draped,
A shawl lays upon the rockers back,
Lovingly made thru tears of pain,
With gnarled and twisted fingers,
A reminder of days gone by.

Framed photographs, black and white,
Faded in age, yet ageless in youth,
Staring into emptyness,
With eyes of uncertainty and doubt,
All reminders of days gone by.

MEMORIES     

Memories.
Packed in a trunk.
Hidden,
In a dark attic.

Thoughts and dreams.
Hopes and accomplishments.     
Collecting dust,
Through neglect

Only....very seldom,
To be seen again.

By the flick of a switch.                 

MEMORIES OF MY FATHER

Fathers Day was just yesterday and it was a time for me to sit back a reflect on my father.  He died in 1988 and my mother died 9 months later.  My two older brothers and I have very different memories on my father.  They remember him primarily as a colleague or someone that took them to their different activities.  My memories I think are more as a child who my father taught to throw a football and who was my scoutmaster.  Out of the three boys, I had probably the most normal relationship with my father.  Camping, going to baseball or hockey games, going in the basement and sitting in his special chair and reading, building snow forts, snowball fights, listening to his stories about the war or spooky stories around a campfire.  My father was an unusual man.  I recently got his records from his time in service during WWII which confirmed much of what I had been told as a child.  At 17 my father, Lewis E Robinson Jr., with a permission slip signed by his mother, joined the US Marine Corps in 1939.  He had served for over a year as an adjutant orderly bodyguard of Admiral Kimmel at Pearl Harbor and was there when attacked by the Japanese, Dec. 7^th, 1941.  He continued in that position after Kimmel was relieved under Nimitz for several months, until his reassignment to the 2^nd Marine Raider Division, often referred as “Carlson’s Raiders”.  There were actually four Raider divisions but they were disbanded in 1944 and absorbed into standard Marine infantry divisions. His pay stub said he made $109.00 per month…combat pay, at his discharge in 1945.  I saw his picture that they took when he signed up.  I almost did not recognize him…except for his eyes.  He was just a boy.  He was at Makin Island and served on the “long Patrol” behind enemy lines at Gudalcanal from Nov 4^th, 1942 to Dec 4^th, 1942.  He also saw action in Saipan.  After developing “dingy” fever he finally was transferred to the Great Lakes Hospital where he met a young nurse, Evelyn Anderson, my mother.  When he was discharged he had lost so much weight, he looked like a starved POW.  Several of his uniforms, metals and  the black shirt from the Raiders are now at the Nimitz Museum, donated by my mother after his death.  After the end of the war, using his GI Bill, he entered College at Monmouth, Illinois and continued through University of Southern Illinois, University of Iowa, MIT...ending with a PhD in Physics.  He continued his career at Alice Chambers Labs and Arrgone National Laboratory.  He was also a professor at University of Chicago.  But with all that, he was the one who taught me astronomy, how to use a sexton, how to tie knots and make a fire, how to throw a football and make a snow fort.  I got married at 24 and had my first son within  the  year.  As an Airman First Class in the USAF force, stationed at Altus AFB, I don’t think my either of my parents understood how poor we were.  I did not have enough rank to qualify for on base housing and there was no where for my wife to work.  I worked extra jobs and we lived on credit cards.  When I could not go up to Chicago for my  fathers 60^th birthday party or his retirement or contribute to his gift, both my mother and brothers felt I was just being “cheap” or petty.  They just did not understand.  Later I sold his rifle that he had given me (which had been a present to him from my mother).  I sold it for food for my family.  All those hurts festered (probably with the help of my mother) for years.  It was twelve years later when I went to their retirement community in  Florida, that I finally got things taken care of with my father.  We forgave each other...and it was the only time I ever saw my father cry.  The medications he was on made my normally very unemotional father….cry as he told me how much he loved me and that he was sorry for those lost years and past misunderstandings.  He only lived eight months more after that and died in 1988.  There was still much more I wish I had said and time I wish I had.  He really was an enigma.  A man  born out of time who was a master chess player and loved the complexity of mathematics…and yet who taught me to listen to the trees sing as the wind passed through the branches.  He told each tree had its own song.  I remember his deep bass voice in the choir at church and his whistle that he taught all of us when he needed us to get back home for dinner.  I remember his (ugly colored) green upholstered chair/rocker in the basement that he had modified as a writing table, with a coffee holder.  I would sit in it and rock..only to be ousted out when he got home from work.  I remember all the things he built and his workshop.  How many times was I grounded for using his tools without permission…or losing a tool?  I remember the smell of his leather jacket, “British Sterling” aftershave, and the smell of his pipe.  I remember his funny coffee cup, with a whistle in the top that mom had given him.  The whistle never did work.  I remember how he liked to play golf and the times he took me on the course while in High School.  I never did get into golf…but he loved it.  I remember his India-Jones Hat he wore.  Popular at that time.  Maybe it will come back.  I remember his bolo ties with the beautiful turquoise stones and silver.  I remember going to the shooting ranges with my brothers, my own 22 rifle and his 45 revolver.  I still have both.  So many memories.  I miss you Dad.