Love Gathers Here

Sitting at the kitchen table with my sons, I smiled that happy but sorrowful kind of smile where joy meets pain.  That very kitchen table, where my boys and I gathered was the same table I, as a teenager, sat with my Pap. 

Years ago, we, my Pap and I, pulled up chairs, rested arms, and talked while candied sweet potatoes and stuffing baked in the oven, and potatoes for mashing rolled in boiling water on the stove top.  He'd tell me all sorts of silly stories, some real, some far fetched, but always there was laughter.  He was a talker. I'm more of a writer than a talker.

How I missed his conversations when I lived thousands of miles away one summer.  We wrote weekly.  Letters delivered lines of love and laughter.  Postcards dropped in the mail box shared the sights.  Little did I know as we corresponded by snail mail, that was to be his last summer.

Every Thanksgiving Day was the same.  I went over to Pap's side of the house and helped him with the same three dishes: sweet potatoes, stuffing, and mashed potatoes.  Sometimes, Momma assigned us the rolls, too, but not always.  My sister stayed on our side of the farmhouse, helping Momma.  I'm not sure why I always went to Pap's side and my sister remained with my Mom.  {Perhaps I was worse at kitchen helping.}  

Looking back on those holiday preparations, I can still envision Pap, sitting at the table, button shirt askew with his zipper like scar and rectangular burn mark peeking through.  Never once did we talk about it, his cancer.  Not when the breathing was so difficult, and Momma taught me how to pound his back like the medical staff had showed her.  No, cancer was never mentioned.

His table overlooked the fields my brother, sister, and I had hid and played hide-n-seek.  Three large coffin windows peered over that field.  The kitchen table sat in front of one.  It always seemed like an odd name for a window.  Each time I asked Momma she'd explain the name, and I'd still think it odd. 

Death and life, through the window pane.

The day his heart stopped beating Momma and Daddy pounded his chest, breathed in the breath of life, and called 911.  That day, I was away, living at college.  They drove the hours, arrived at my dorm to tell me he was gone.  Days later, I'd travel home for his funeral, see him lying there, cold.  There was no crooked smile or laughter to share.

A few days later, his ashes would be spread on the field.  The hide-n-seek field of our childhood became his body's resting place.  Sitting at his kitchen table, looking through the coffin window, onto his grave site.

Death and life, through the window pane.
 
That kitchen table has moved to every home my husband and I have ever shared.  Six homes in three different states graced by Pap's kitchen table.  

Today, sipping coffee, elbows resting on its smooth surface, I think back and remember the years gone by. 

My two sons enter the kitchen pushing on each other and laughing.  They tumble into chairs.  I fix some breakfast while their sisters sleep on upstairs. 

We gather about the table, my boys and I.  The oldest on the cusp of teenage years, laughs and I am startled by it.  The past and present collide.  Memories of the white haired man chuckling, with merriment twinkling in his eyes, and a boy becoming a man, laughing a full belly jiggling kind, share a brief moment.  And, I smile that joy-pain smile, thinking how Pap would have laughed at the joke, too.  They share a love for laughter and a name. 

And, I wonder at it, the two named 'gifts from God.'
~ Dorie