November 12, 1918. My father was born that day; his middle name was Pershing, after the general – the John J. one of the American Expeditionary Force. My grandmother had the Spanish Flu before my father was born; he was her fifth child and first son. A couple of days ago I opened an old trunk and found letters my grandmother had written to him during the war – and one from his oldest sister Geraldine. And I found one of those little tiny calendars that kids pasted on construction paper for a school Christmas gift project in grade school. The year was 1957; I guess I made it in December of 1956. He saved it. And then I closed the trunk . . . for now.

Sydney and I went up to Mother’s Tuesday afternoon, sort of on the spur of the moment. When I stopped poking through stuff and when the light began to fail outside, Sydney and I plopped down in the “cat chair” (don’t ask) and sat there with ghosts in the twilight. Grandma, Grandpa, Great-great Aunt Sara, L.D., Auntie, Stanley, Freddie and Orval; Mother, Daddy, Socrates, Miss Alice . . . not to mention the ages of me that are now gone.

But there is a “me” that is still here and I am pretty certain I am going to push that cat chair right across the room, through the kitchen doorway, out the back door, across the porch, across the deck, down onto the yard and out to the burn pile. And I am going to pour fuel on it and light a match . . .We’ll consider it a Viking cat chair funeral pyre.

Sigh, sometimes, we just have to move on.