Adam’s last comment provided me with the perfect time to post this photo .
For better or worse, now that Diane has a camera of her own, there are now photos of the photographer.

Last Sunday we celebrated Patti’s fiftieth birthday a bit early. Okay, so there aren’t many photos of Patti, none of her opening any presents, nor of her blowing out candles, but there are good shots of Kate and her friend Mallory.

These two photographs taken of Jimmy in his (Victory?) garden in Columbia Heights, MN arrived in the mail today. Diane flew home on Saturday with a container full of his tomatoes. On Tuesday, we sliced two and used them for our first and only BLT of the season.

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The house is quiet, night has settled in and I’m back in South Haven chillin’ in Jimmy’s easy chair as he sits at his computer and plays songs I request. In his retirement, Jim has digitized his past – from old albums to black and white family photos and far beyond. We’re listening to Kris Kristofferson’s version of “Loving Her Was Easier(Than Anything I’ll Ever Do)”

Dressed in dark slacks, and a long-sleeved blue knit shirt with matching suspenders, Jim searches his song files as I ask,

“Jim, I suppose you had tomatoes by the fourth of July?”

“It was a dry summer, but yes, there were tomatoes.”

“You can’t imagine how many people I brag to about your early tomatoes.”

Laughter

“I’ll wait for the right moment. Someone will complain about our short season, or they’ll come from a more southern state and announce how they used to eat them by sometime in July. I then drop the bomb. ‘My brother-in-law’s in Minnesota are ripe by the fourth.’ “

More laughter.

“But you know what? No one is as impressed as I am. Maybe it’s because I gardened for so many years, maybe because I love tomatoes so much. I don’t know.”

“You’ve seen my mulch piles. You know I get started early. When we moved from Columbia Heights, I was worried about how much sun they would get down by the lake.”

Kris’s voice trails off and I ask for another song,

“How about Willie Nelson’s ‘You’re always On My Mind,’ or ‘Always On My Mind,’ or ‘I Don’t Have a Mind?’ It’s one of those. “ Again, not an iTunes download, but another song from his album collection.

“You know, Jimmy, another thing that keeps rattling around in my brain? Remember when you told me the one person you’d like to talk to, if you could bring anyone back, was your father?”

“I didn’t know him very well, and now that I’ve been working on my family tree, there are so many questions I’d like to ask him. I know more about the Gansers, on my mother’s side, than the Stochls.”

This week, I relived our family visit two summers ago to Torroemore, Susan and Jim Stochl’s property in Minnesota. I’ve done it often since our visit. Usually I leave out the conversation and simply settle into Jimmy’s brown leather chair waiting for him to queue another song.

I’ve found myself adding bits to what we used to talk about and finishing some of the sentences. Because these dialogues now exist only in my head, they feel like cold, dry echoes. But they’re really unfinished conversations given birth by death.

My sister-in-law, Susan, called last Saturday morning to tell us, “Jimmy died,” that he awoke at 2 AM feeling sick and was gone minutes later in spite of her cries, “I love you, please don’t die on me,” and the paramedics’ best attempts.

I can’t speak for Susan, I’ve probably said more than I should, but I know how I feel. My daily tasks are littered with short conversations with Jim, or, like the one above, entire vignettes assembled from the past and added to by the longing of the present.

When I convert a taped recording of “This American Life” to a CD burned on my computer, I listen to his instructions. When I move a stone, I see Jimmy’s latest terracing project. When I’m cutting through an electrical line, I hear his cautions. When I look at Matthew, I feel not only my love, but his love and admiration.

When I think of that summer, I want one more song.

Matt gave me a CD full of Cel’s photos and I’ve posted only a small number of them. Yes, I did edit some, but mostly I tried to keep my grubby fingers off.

Cel’s Spain Photos.

One-armed rakkity has been camping in the wild west. And on his return home, “My cast & two pins (titanium 8-penny nails) were removed from my wrist this morning. Calloo callay!”
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Dan’s mother, Bertha, died Wednesday morning.

Photo taken in April by Dan.

As a young woman.

As I walked up to Bertha in the living room, flattered to be in the presence of this woman who taught Dan about emotional strength, I said, “Welcome to Lincoln.” She greeted me with a broad smile and an open heart as she had the first day we met, some ten years earlier. With Emerson I sometimes felt I had to prove myself, with Bertha I only felt I had to be myself.

She sat upright, with her perfectly combed dark hair, her hands crossed on her lap, and exuded elegance. I suddenly felt that maybe these new white shorts with the frayed legs weren’t so nifty. Bertha must have sensed my unease because she said, “Take off those shorts and I’ll hem them.”

I slipped my pants off in front of her and then, fifteen minutes later, back on, newly hemmed. I looked down for the third time that day and I thought, “Bertha made a better me.”

Bertha, you made all of us better. We’ll miss you.

Kristen and Goose
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John and Karen, Goose’s parents, invited me for dinner last night. Matt, too, but he already had plans to be with Debbie and her folks. We enjoyed a perfect end of summer meal: corn, rice, salad with fresh tomatoes and steak from the grill. I’d also grabbed a tall smoky glass with a dark band of blue from the kitchen cabinet and filled it with, ice, tonic water, a jigger of gin and perfect wedge of lime.

We talked about many things, from school to developers, to John’s Insight’s gas mileage and house repair. Every once in a while I’d look at John and hint at things more political. He and I inhabit a lonely corner of left field and because he is receptive, I tend to expose my most rabid thoughts. But with Goose at the table, the topics remained airy, such as the incoming class.

“You should see this freshman’s neck,” Goose said, “It’s only about this wide.” He help his thumbs and forefingers together to make a circle not much large than my glass.

“Makes you want to snap if off, doesn’t it?” An innocent, natural reply, I thought.

Karen had already left the table, but from above the sound of running water and clattering dishes I heard, “Now why would you even think of saying that?”

Diane (the itty bitty person passing through the metal detector) on her way to Minnesota.

Selecting A Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
“For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned.” And she will.

Ted Kooser

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Mary Oliver