27 Connections

(Harold Martin and Matt, Bobby, Jackie/ Cheryl/ Peggy 1969, Melinda, Dad and Matt 1989, Cousins, Dad's apartment)

Day 27 - February 15

We purchased a home, moving from the near north side of Chicago to the suburb of Oak Park in 1987. Matthew was ten years old. For the first time, having our own driveway and garage, we contemplated installing a basketball hoop. Upon father and mother’s return from Europe two years later, during their first visit, father--sixty at the time--was the first one up on the garage roof with Matthew. They worked together to secure the hoop structure--the promise of hours of pleasure for years to come.

Matt’s little brother, Harold Martin, joined his first basketball league at the YMCA that year when he was only five years old. The teams played half court with lowered baskets. Father relived the game he attended, many times over in the years that followed. He beamed with pride and amusement recounting the way little Harold Martin dribbled with one hand while directing his teammates with the other, and when the game points were on the line, stepped back to sink a three pointer!

The two boys, young men now, ready to lead Grandpa's pall bearers, join Melinda on a flight to Rochester. Harold M.'s girlfriend, Leslie, who joined us for Christmas only weeks before, accompanies him. Bobby waits at the airport to drive them directly to the funeral home. A white house at the top of a hill in Lima becomes an intersection for the players in father’s life.

His children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces, his sister and brother in-law, pastors, former parishioners, neighbors and doctors, his confidants, prayer partners, co-workers and friends, form an honoring and loving parade. Friends from around the country and around the world are there in the flower bouquets. Former school friends of Steven’s and mine surprise us with their support--the line-up almost historic East Bloomfield and Holcomb--Saxby, Rayburn, Hamlin and Murphy…our past met our present.

Matt, Melinda and Harold Martin put faces on the many stories father had told his friends about his grandchildren. They are astounded to discover person after person shaking their hands knows all about our Christmas vacation at Bristol Harbour. In the six weeks since the holiday, father has told all his friends every detail about the meaningful week by the lake with his family.

Uncle Frank’s daughter, Gloria and her husband are here. Out of the corner of my eye I watch relationships developing as she spends time with my children. Her brother, Ron, will arrive the next morning to participate as a pall bearer. Uncle Walter’s children--Norma, Walt, Melody and Dale--are here with their families. Walt will join Ron tomorrow, also a pall bearer. Aunt Anne’s daughter, Nancy and husband Floyd represent her brothers and sisters.

Over the last few years these family members have experienced their own losses. They know. Part of that knowing is a need to connect, part of that knowing is an ability to go out of their way to support, and part of it is the realization of this one more complete loss.

I do not spend time at the casket. Father isn’t there. Rather, he is in the room full of animated conversation, his spirit flowing and reveling in the coming together of friends and family.

Into the cold night, our extended family caravans back to father’s apartment. Church members have prepared a buffet feast across the hall for the thirty or so of us. We travel back and forth between the buffet and father’s welcoming rooms--not quite the big Polish funeral parties I remember attending in Dupont as a child, but, our own version of finding a way to reach out to each other again...finding a way to be father's guest one last time.

Families retire, to tuck away in guest rooms and hotels, on strange beds and multiple air mattresses.

I look it all over, read, re-read, and re-read again, thoroughly reviewing this intersection, I almost can't move...

...when "Clear right, Cher," sails into my night.