It's all about going home, even in your mind
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- February 25, 2023
- 421
Let’s say you’ve put on a couple of pounds every year since you graduated from high school.
Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?
But then, with your 50th reunion looming, you do some quick math.
“Holy crap,” you think in a panic. “That’s 100 pounds. I’m fat!”
That’s how easy it is for some people to decide to stay away. All it takes is one tiny scrap of specious logic to tip the balance, and just like that, there’s an empty space in the class photograph, one that might have been yours, just because you fell for a flawed premise.
Faithful readers may recall that among my more dubious claims to fame is the fact I’ve never missed a class reunion.
That’s right.
I’ve earned a perfect attendance record.
Folks ponder that truth and have one of two reactions, considering it either brave or pathetic. In the former case, it’s all about facing up to the aging process with no fear; in the latter, it speaks to a sad need to hang onto memories that ceased to be relevant around the time Nixon was feeling the noose of Watergate tightening.
Speaking of inevitability, I think I’ll head home this summer, not because I want to keep the streak intact but because I’ve been gone for nearly five years, a yawning chasm of time that seems unreal.
There are reasons for my too-long-away absence, not the least of which is the gnawing realization there’s not a lot I miss.
Though it would be nice to visit the cemetery once again.
On a Sunday night in August of the last summer I lived back home, a tornado roared through the heart of the town, uprooting trees, downing power lines, shattering storefront windows and ripping the roofs off houses that had the misfortune to stand in its way.
You’d think I’d have spent that scary interlude hunkered down in the basement of the old red-brick house my fiancée and I rented, one that came with a walk-in refrigerator, a sort of combination fallout shelter/panic room, but it was always locked.
Not that it would have mattered.
I’ve always felt a strong attraction to thunderstorms — the more violent, the better — and when a nasty one’s bearing down, you’re more likely than not to find me outside, sometimes not alone.
I remember a stormy night a few short weeks before my college graduation and the way my girlfriend and I danced around in the howling wind and driving rain, in some sort of blissful rapture, totally unafraid of the jagged lightning and the booming thunder.
Part of it was being young, part of it was because we had just watched “Easy Rider” and needed an escape valve to release the pent-up anger the movie’s ending created and part of it was no doubt the fifth of Lynchburg’s finest we passed back and forth.
The night of the tornado found me on the front porch, listening to the oldies station on my transistor radio, unaware that less than a mile to the west, a funnel cloud had touched down and was, with no exaggeration, heading right for our neighborhood. Fortunately and in keeping with ridiculously capricious nature of storms like that, it hopped up and sped by, sparing us and those who lived near.
In the morning we were on TV, and so we rode our bikes into town.
Our destination, once we eased through the destruction and all the emergency personnel, was the cemetery. It seemed important to me that I get a firsthand look at the site where my parents were buried, knowing a centuries-old oak tree stood silent vigil quite nearby.
That place of quiet reflection resembled a war zone, like something out of “Apocalypse Now,” but I was relieved to see that aside from a few branches scattered like jackstraws, everything was intact in the grassy expanse that, just nine months before, had been the site where we had gathered to witness my father’s burial service, one that included the folded-flag presentation and a 21-gun salute.
In the years that have followed my leaving home, the cemetery has always been among my first stops. I understand Mom and Dad remain alive in my heart and soul and memories, but there’s something reassuring about visiting that little patch of ground.
And now it’s been almost five years since I stood in that spot.
Have I put on 10 pounds in the intervening half-decade?
Probably.
But does it matter?
Hardly.
If — and I’m leaning that way — I decide to head home this summer, I’ll return to the cemetery, this time to make arrangements for my own internment. From what I understand, the place has expanded considerably since I was last there, so there might be room for me.
To quote Nate Fisher in “Six Feet Under,” none of us knows how long we’ve got, which is why we have to make each day matter.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join the fun on his Facebook page, where reunions are not at all uncommon.