Legacy

Last night we went to dinner with Clint's Uncle John and Aunt Judy. John turned 79 today, and he and Judy are real pistols. I fretted over choosing a restaurant they'd like--they're "older," I thought, so nothing too spicy, nothing too boozy, etc. We settled on a great old bar-restaurant called Crane Alley. The minute we walked in, Judy said "I want a beer!" and John followed suit by ordering a smoked chipotle beer for himself, and told us how much he loved big, loud places. He can't hear well in them, he said, but he loooooooves watching people have fun.

They told us about their wedding in Las Vegas (not the first for either of them), in which they met "the cousins"--an annual gathering of 8. They intended to sneak off after lunch one day, and then return at dinner time and announce they'd gotten married. It was one disaster after another: their intended witness took off before they could whisper their secret plans; Judy's name was misspelled on the license application, then they argued whether she should put that she was divorced or widowed (she was both—divorced once, then widowed from her 2nd husband), and the license had to be redone 3 times, to the chagrin of a grouchy clerk. The courthouse couldn't then dig up a legal witness, so they gave up and ran into a cheesy chapel. They finally got the job done and were then forced to sit through a sales pitch to purchase a video of their wedding. When the movie was put into the VCR player, nothing played: the staff had forgotten to turn on the camera.

John told us also of a story about going to a one-room schoolhouse when he was a young boy, and knocking the two front teeth out of a classmate, when he threw a block at him. He lived, he said, with the guilt of knocking that kid's teeth out, but upon seeing him again when they were adults, the guy had teeth! All of his teeth, and they didn't appear to be dentures! He said he wanted to ask how it could be, but on the other hand, didn't want to bring it up.

I noted, "Maybe you knocked out his baby teeth, that he was going to lose anyway." Uncle John gave me a blank stare, and finally said, "You know. I never thought of that." I'm not sure why we all found that so funny, but we ended up howling, laughing. John could finally let go of knocking someone's front teeth out, after 75 years. What a relief.

***

This was just one evening that we shared with family, in the last 10 days or so. Clint's father, Alan Weidert, passed away in his sleep on May 23. He'd been declining from Parkinson's disease for some time.

We have been busy and stressed, and grieving for him and for each other, but what has been at the forefront of the last 10 days or so is the close circle of friends and family that gathered to hold one another up, and celebrate Alan's life. While we have cried, we have also laughed and laughed and laughed, and that is his legacy.

I want to tell all of the stories I heard, in the last 10 days, and all that we did with the time spent with family and friends that gathered. As I said, we laughed, we cried. We ate, we drank. We went to a few garage sales, and even to an acupuncture clinic together. I may circle back and show the photos and tell the stories, or life, as it is wont to do, may move forward faster than I can write about it.

Time will tell, I guess. I know that if I don't get around to it, I still have another angel keeping track, and laughing along.