Response to an Email on Easter, 2020

Response to an Email on Easter, 2020

Well put, dad.

Thinking back over the years, I can think of a lot of quality time in quiet repose. Our car trips were full of talk and laughter, but I do believe there were long moments of silence, reflection, observing the passing countryside or bodies of water, and simply just drinking in the scenes without any words. DC had the temple, a place of many reverent hushed moments, and the capital region with its hundreds of memorials and monuments begging silence and introspection. Living in Virginia the last decade or so, I have taken advantage of visiting many Civil War sites and a few Revolutionary War memorials, where the dead and their silence is poignant and peaceful. I have also been to the Veterans Cemetery in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where Aunt Marjorie and Uncle Harry are buried, dying 25 years apart, now silently waiting for the rest of us to join them.

Watching the massive seas pass by on the side of a boat, or in the front, middle, or the back of a Pontiac station wagon, rowing on a lake at Griffey or Monroe, walking a beach, traipsing through a woods or a mountain pass, sometimes on horseback.

I recall months of working with you and Steve, and after many hours of doing our quiet (no talking work) sometimes driving to the next house or apartment complex or back home, simply enjoying the quiet hum of the van.

Sometimes on my paper route I took my Walkman and listened to the Beatles or Simon and Garfunkel and Rush, through the headphones, but mostly I just hoofed it with my own voice in my head and the sounds of Manor Road, Ballantine, Hawthorne, Sheridan, and Southdowns.

Being in the Army Guard since 2007 I have enjoyed sustained periods of silence: driving for hours in a noisy Humvee provides its own type of break from outside distractions, or lack of other outside noises. Long runs are mostly just you and the path, one mile down, one mile to go, you and the wordless world.

Yes, a chapel is not the same as a temple, especially during busy hours. Although, I have been in these chapels from East Coast to West Coast, or in a tent in Mazar-I-Sharif, throughout my life when I was the last one locking it up after a few hours of basketball or another meeting, just me and the court, the empty halls and darkened classes and offices and lonely silent pews of worship.

One Saturday morning in Ashburn, Virginia, when I knelt behind the sacrament table and uttered prayers of hope and concern, for my newborn son in the local ICU and my wife still in the hospital... Tears were shed; I came out of that silent solitary place in a better place of peace, with two young girls at home being watched by their grandma. Things would be all right and they were.

Jeannette will be given solace and we will celebrate the quiet and the noisier times. In nature or wherever her life leads.

May we all find those precious moments!

Thanks again for sharing, Dad,

We love you in the busy and not so busy times, the lonely or the full of people moments, the short and long term, whether loud or quiet, we are united in all those times across the span of our lives.

Eddie