Nicole feels

The kids and I were chit-chatting yesterday about MLK Day and why our country celebrates it. I shared with them (for K and N it was a re-telling, but for P, he'd not heard it) how Mom-Mom (my grandmother) sent my Mom to school the first day of desegregation, even though all but one other mother was picketing outside of that Bawlmer school. My mother, one other white girl, and two black girls were the only ones in her class that day. I am proud to have that kind of heritage, that my grandparents saw past color back when so many didn't.

Nathan then asked when Pop died. "Was I a baby?"

I looked at the date and it popped out at me as familiar in that isn't-there-something-I-should-remember-about-today way.

This morning I went back to the 1997 calendar, and indeed, if memory serves, Pop passed nine years ago yesterday. I think it was a Friday, and the 17th fell on a Friday. I remember flying from MO to MD on Saturday, and I remember that we made the plans quickly for Kay and me to be out there for the funeral.

I guess the exact date doesn't really matter. It's a rainy, gray, windy winter day, and such days tend to lend themselves to old memories.

The most vivid moment of that time was at the funeral when my mom stood up to go forward for one last goodbye and we heard her sob. It was a moan, almost a wail. As if on cue, the rest of our little foursome huddled together in the row behind began to weep.

I also remember how at the viewing Kay wanted to touch his face. She had no fear of him. I am sure she didn't remember him; it had been 1.5 years since we'd last seen him, he no longer had his beard that was so "Pop", and she wasn't even five yet. But she reached out and stroked his cheek and proclaimed it soft.

His is still the face I see when I try to imagine what God looks like.