by Harry Francis

Created on: May 18, 2008

The death of a loved one is a very significant event that is retained in the deepest part of your memory. I remember to this day certain scenes from going to the funeral home and seeing my grandmother in her coffin holding her rosary beads. I remember my mother crying in the bath tub for her mother, I remember my uncle at the kitchen table in my grandmothers house sobbing, "I want my mommy!" It creates a feeling of utter,total loss and emptiness. When my father died I felt so drained that I just couldn't fathom life without him. I was in the military and immediately volunteered for some of the most horrible missions that could be had from picking up cigarette buts on the six acre parade field to living in the woods by myself for extended periods of time. But every thing that I did, and everywhere I went there was something of my father around me.

Performing police call on the parade field on a warm morning in August, I stopped right in my tracks when the sudden realization came over me that it was the same field that my father had stood on in 1942 when he was being sworn in to the U.S. Army and the same field he had stood on when he was mustered out in 1946, I wondered if I was standing in the same place? On that military post I was subjected to constant feelings of loneliness because every where I turned I wondered if he had been there to that exact spot, had he driven down this road, had he road in a vehicle going down this road. Was he watching me as I conducted business in an office within one of the old World War II era buildings? The feelings just never went away and to this day I still wonder.

The same goes for animals when they become a permanent part of our family as Candy did in 1993. She was a half beagle, half schnauzer mix that had been abandoned to the local pound and was in need of some loving. What we found out was that we could never be as giving with our love as she was with hers. For her unconditional love was a given, it was a constant twenty four hour a day display of emotion that could not be ignored. She graced us with her present everyday that she was with us just by being there. If we were in the Arden working she was right there beside us digging, sniffing or just laying there waiting for us. That it was ninety degrees outside didn't matter to her she stayed right by our side until it was time to go in, and if there were too many squirrels running around the area she refused to come in opting for a spot of shade where she would wait

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• Next Page >>