I

It was Memorial Day.  A year ago was like 5 and like yesterday at the same time.  A year ago I visited with my father about making the rounds to all his grandparents.

I thought it was important that he knew the things he cared about would continue to get done.  A year later I did not make it back to their graves.  Instead I spent some time at his.

On the freeway through Des Moines the sun had set, and the pavement was covered in shadow.  Above me the sun still hit in full the upper reaches of the sky.  To the west were two distant planes, which would have looked to be little more than specks were it not for their short contrails that gave them the appearance of comets burning across the sky.

North of the freeway was the Waveland Golf Course and in the middle was the Drake Municipal Observatory.  From its telescope one can see that even the stars above grow old and die.

Years to them must be like seconds.  There’s 2.5 billion of them in the span of 80 years.  A medium star, like the sun, will burn for 10 billion years.  The poor sun will never know the apprehension, or joy we feel in but a second.

In that moment I stood down a little harder on the gas pedal of a 64 Galaxie, burning a little hotter 5.20 premium through the 4 barrel carb of a 390.

II

“It’s like you feel it now, you know, a year later.  There’s not something about the situation to figure out, or communicate, there isn’t a parade of doctors and nurses, and no need to show him that you can get done all that needs to be. 

Yet there’s this residual feeling that you need to keep doing it.  That it wasn’t just a show for him.  Sometimes I think all of it has me in one of the most productive periods of my life.  Wake up early and get to work.  And now, a year later, it”s like you come back again, for the first time.”

“How does revisiting it hit you?”

“Like a ton of bricks, and sometimes like it doesn’t hit you hard enough.”

“I think that’s a common thought I hear people share.”

“I spent most everyday with him, and now they come one after another without him.  Sometimes you think you must be some kind of sonofabitch for going on, still focused on the task at hand.  It’s like you’ll find him in the work.”

“Do you?”

“All the time.

One of our dogs, Olive, developed some sort of autoimmune deal attacking her blood platelets.  She was in danger of bleeding to death.  We weren’t sure what would happen.

It was like she unlocked a door, and all of these emotions poured out of the commutes and the stress, and the uncertainty that greeted you every day.  Ones I had went nearly a year without entertaining.  They were so incredibly vividly, reminding me of what you told me once.”

“What was that?”

“That the past is present.”

III

307 had a calf the first week into May.  Most of the cows had already calved by now.  So when I turned her out, it was just her and her calf.

It was in the evening.  There was a nice, cool breeze.  And the grass was so green it was nearly blue.  A year ago I had fertilized every acre so if my father made it home and saw it, it would look the best it ever had.

We had him out in it for 20 minutes.

When 307’s calf hit the ground, the calf paused with her hooves in the soft green grass.  Her mother stepped off not far from him, and immediately put her head down and began to eat.

They were in a little grass trap, to keep one from running off from the other.  Neither 307 or her calf knew yet that the grass would go on all summer.

“You don’t know how big it is,” I chuckled.

I opened the gate and went out to check the 50 cows in that group.  When I came back, 307 and her calf hadn’t went 10 feet.

“Let’s go, ladies,” I told them, and walked them through the gate.  When 307 lifted her head, the two bounded off down the ridge and into the end of spring and the coming days of summer.