TheBanyanTree: You Can't Go Home Again

[Margaret R. Kramer]

8/9/07
Hi all:              GOOD NEWS!!!
     On Wednesday I went to the clinic for my follow up CAT scans.  Traffic
was a little tight because of the I 35 bridge collapse  . The scan went very
fast, I was told to wait in the room and the doc. would be in about 5
minutes.------------------WELL I waited 35 minutes and then asked someone,
they said he would be right in. 
      He open the door with his fists in the air and then thumbed to the
right. He told me that the CANCER had broken up and was distributed along
the chest wall . 
   SO RESULTS ARE THE CANCER IS GONE!!!  
  I have another app. in two months _--then he can tell for sure. 
Love you all 
 Dad Ray Etc.

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There are times I wish dead people and living people could be together all
the time, just like before, except they're dead and you're alive.  I suppose
in some way this happens already, because the dead do kind of flitter around
us, but it's like flicker in our brains.  It's like a memory light, bright
and unexpected and gone just as fast.

I miss Ray more than ever.  This kind of loneliness is so awful, I can't
even describe it.  I can be in midst of people, laughing and smiling, but
I'm alone, because Ray is not here.  The person who knew me best and always
had my back is gone.  

I love thinking about Ray and going through our lives like rereading an old
familiar novel, but at the same time, it's very painful, because as I
examine my previous life, and I realize the best part of my life is gone, it
makes this current life hard to bear.

But today, I went back to Rayland, and spent some time.

Susan, boys, and I went to the Ramsey County Fair.  It's a family tradition;
we do it every year.  It's a cute little fair.  It has farm animals, crafts,
music, food, rides, and bingo.  It's a warm up for the State Fair later this
summer.

Susan lives out by our old house, so after we picked her up, we drove by the
old house - the house that Ray and I built.  It was a mess when Ray came and
he worked very hard to make it nice again.  By the time we sold the house,
it was beautiful.

The people who bought it were kind of weird, but whatever, the house was out
of our hands, and we began new lives in a new house, which actually suited
us much better.  Joe and I drove by my old house last year, and the people
were there, although the house looked worn out and not well kept up.

Well, this year, our old house was a foreclosed house, and it was vacant.
The yard looked terrible.  The beautiful deck Ray had lovingly built was
dismantled and pieces of wood lay strewn across the backyard.  I wouldn't
even want to know what the inside of the house looked like.  I'm sure the
house was trashed on the inside.  

I felt detached in a way, because I left that house emotionally when we put
it up for sale, but I also felt sad, because Ray put so much work into the
house.

Then we drove out to the cemetery where my parents, grandmother, and uncle
are buried.  Ray and I used to go out there quite a bit after my grandmother
had died, and we would straighten up other people's graves and wonder about
them.

I left flowers for the family group.  I'm glad Ray had a chance to meet
three of these people, my dad, my grandma, and my uncle, and they all liked
him.

And finally, we drove through my idyllic middle class neighborhood where I
grew up, and it's still idyllic.  My childhood home looks well kept up.

We went to the fair and then I dropped Susan and the boys off at her house.
I drove through our old neighborhood and stopped at a grocery store where
Ray and I shopped.

And I headed west, back home.  And while driving with the windows down and
the sunroof open, catching the warm summer air, and the beginning of the
long dusk, I remember all the times Ray and I would head west in our early
years together to play bingo.  It was our Saturday night thing to do, head
to bingo and sit among the smokers and cover numbers hoping to win a few
bucks.

Now the bingo place is gone and Ray is gone, just like the summer sun
setting in the west.  I want to grab it and hold it and keep experiencing
the perfect summer day, but it doesn't work like that.

I did visit Ray earlier in the afternoon.  I asked him if he had met Michael
Jackson yet.  Not that he would have sought him out.  Michael Jackson wasn't
his idea of an entertainer, but you never know what the dead do when a new
dead person joins the group.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net
margaret.kramer at polarispublications.com
www.polarispublications.com

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.
-George Eliot