Not to conservativecave. of course.
Earlier this week took place the funeral of a relative in northeastern Pennsylvania; she had been my mother’s youngest sister, and my favorite aunt.
When driving around the area (we are talking about Pennsylvania a little bit south of Wilkes-Barre), I became aware this was probably the last time in my life I will see it, given that there is no longer anyone or anything there to hold me to it.
I had spent many summers and Christmases as a child and then a teenager, there.
But there is nothing there any more, not even memories; memories are sharper the further one is away.
Just as I had bid farewell to northwestern Pennsylvania (the Warren-down-to-Clarion are) about ten years ago, after a cousin of my father had died.
It is the people who hold me to an area, not the things in it.
Once the people are gone, a place is just another place.
I left the Sandhills town where I had been an adolescent at the age of 17 years, going to college, and while my mother and brothers and sisters were still in this world, the place still had a hold on me, but that hold was lost a long time ago. I have been there off-and-on the past several years, but any more—even the house or the school or the playground or the railway trestle—it’s just another place, nothing more.
I’ve been away from this place for a couple of months now, but I’ll be back—my mission in life after all is make life miserable for Democrats, liberals, and primitives (as if they need any help on that)—however, that all depends upon whenever I can get my own house into order; unlike many people, I do not have a parent or spouse or children to take care of things—I have to take care of everything myself, and sometimes get behind.
The last two months, I’ve been saying “farewell†of a different nature, as a distant relative very close to my family (especially my parents) has been fading away.
It struck me two months that this is the last person who knows certain things; and once he is gone, history dies.
Upon learning of his condition, I felt some urgency. Over the past years, decades, I had asked him questions here and there, inquiries about which he was either mum or ambiguous. But now he is suddenly responding to my questions, in clarity and thoroughness, explaining things to me.
“Why did my father do that?†“Was my mother really like that when upset?†“What did my younger brother ever say about this?†“Where was my oldest sister when that happened?†“Why did my second-oldest brother take so long?†“Where did my grandmother stay when she came to visit us?†“Who is this person?†“Who is that person?†“Who were those two gentlemen from Chicago who always took my younger brother and me to the soda fountain at the drugstore—and which local drugstore was it?†“How many times did my oldest brother fall off scaffolding when he was working on construction in high school and college?†“Who was this woman?†“Why did the parents choose to ‘mainstream’ me, rather than specially-educating me?†“Why did the family have only female, and never male, pet dogs?†“How much did my oldest sister earn as the receptionist at the doctor’s office?†“Why was this brother, a notorious peacenik, in ROTC in college?†“Why were physicians so hesitant to treat my younger brother’s condition?â€
Those sorts of questions, whose answers I myself do not know because of they were people and things that happened before my own time, or because of my extreme youth, and more generally, simply because of deafness.
Accompanied of course by photographs and letters.
Fortunately, I am skilled with the talents of a KGB interrogator, vigorously relentless in asking questions.
I’ve been really obsessed with this; I’ve seen a great many things in life, but without understanding them.
