SWINGING AND CLINGING
A Widow Bit – Sept. 27, 2009
By Mary Koch

If you’re looking to set a date for some kind of annual outdoor autumn event, like a picnic or a marathon, I would suggest Sept. 25. I’ve been keeping a record for only three years now, but each of those years Sept. 25 been a splendid day with sun warm as summer and air crisply promising fall.

            That’s the kind of day it was in 2007, when it turned out to be John’s last day on earth. It was that kind of day last year, when I lay flat on my back on the grass by his grave, remembering, remembering, and staring at a vibrant blue sky where giant clouds floated past like massive schooners on a brilliant sea.

            Again this year, another perfect day. I wash the convertible and put the top down, figuring that whenever you’re en route to the cemetery, go with gusto. I park in the shade and walk toward the grave, flowers from John’s daughter Kerrie in one hand, John’s complete and unabridged collection of Robert Frost poetry in the other. The route from the gravel road to the grave is short, but it takes a while. There are grave markers for friends along the way, and I pause at each, remembering, remembering.

            Once, John and I saw a live stage dramatization of “Spoon River Anthology,” Edgar Lee Masters’ classic collection of epitaphs for the deceased in a fictional small-town cemetery. The dimly lighted stage created a ghostly aura as the actors, seated primly on straight-backed chairs, rose one by one to intone their lines.

            I smile as I imagine these now-deceased friends of ours placed – through no fault of their own – companionably close in the cemetery, forced into eternal conversation about the slights and errors of life in the Okanogan. That would drive John crazy. He’d be haunting me with demands for a new location.

            But there is nothing ghostly about the cemetery on this shining, brilliant Sept. 25. I sit for a while, absorbing the panoramic view of the valley, noting the distant wail of a fire engine, remembering the years when sirens were a signal for John to grab his camera and go document a newsworthy moment.

            I open Frost to one of his favorites:

                        Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

                        I took the one less traveled by,

                        And that has made all the difference.

            John devoted his life to those less traveled roads and what a difference it did make, both painful and joyous.

            From another of John’s favorites:

                        So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

                        And so I dream of going back to be …

                        … Earth’s the right place for love:

                        I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

            I hope … no, I believe, that both Robert Frost and John have discovered a place where love does go even better. Like clinging to the swinging birch branch, I cling to that belief and that promise.