As we draw this Fall to Remember project to a close at Thanksgiving, I want to thank you for spending it with me.
There is something to be learned by looking back – by reconnecting through reminiscence. So, as we gather around the table this holiday season with our family and friends, let’s keep a place set at the open table of our hearts. There is room enough for those we live our lives with, those who we have lost and need to find, and those who we’ll someday see again.
The End of AThing
I was fifteen when I wrote the simple poem depicted above. It was October of 1994, at a time when my Uncle Sam’s death was still fresh on my mind and heavy on my heart. There is little in life that forces us to pause and take count of our blessings like the death of a loved one. Ecclesiastes 7:3 may say it the best: “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.”
Sitting there, my knee bouncing anxiously in the wooden pew, I fixed my gaze on the casket. In a moment, devoid of time and place, I saw it. I saw Uncle Sam, sitting on an overturned bucket just between the open mouth of two long rows of Silver Queen sweet corn. His hunter’s orange ball cap sitting precariously on top of his head and his checked shirt buttoned only once, half way up; white chest hair mounding out of the open neck. Blue eyes twinkling and a smile – a smile that could warm a room like a potbellied stove. He was shelling peas into a brown paper bag that was so often rolled down at the top that it glossed like glass. The leaves of the tall corn seemed to arch above him as the vaulted ceilings of some grand cathedral. The crookneck squash on either side crawled up towards the corn stalks as flying buttresses adorned with glowing, golden flowers. The morning sun spilled down through the Clemson Spineless okra, set like altar candles, to cast long shadows against the red-orange glow of the day’s rebirth, flashing brilliantly across his generous eyes. Amen.
The Preacher, The Fisherman, and the Cahaba
A work in process by L. R. McDonald
