A rare moment in my life – I slept for 30 minutes while my alarm clock was doing its horrible sound. You know the sound, the one that makes you leap over the bed and lunge at the clock to turn it off before you go mad. So I was running a little later than I preferred, but I did get the cooler, the flowers, the bag of AmeliaJake necessities and myself in the car and headed out of the driveway. It was at this point I called the house to tell Robert to bring up the trash cans and position them at the driver’s rear side of the diesel so no one would back into it . . . before it makes another trip to Middlebury to see what is wrong with the power steering.

I listened to FOUR songs on my ipod on the way down. One song over and over and then another over and over . . . and so on. I’m a little funny that way; I like to get a song that fits my mood and just let it play. On the way back, I think I listened to THREE songs. Nobody to talk to me, ask questions – just me and my songs. (Odd thing about it is I can never really memorize the lyrics this way.) I used earphones, though, so that I wouldn’t disturb the geraniums. It was a pretty large pot and it might have overpowered me if the song was annoying to flowers.

On the way down, at the very beginning of the trip, I started to feel sad and decided the best thing was to wait until I got to the cemetery to cry. Well, I got there; I put the geraniums out; I took some pictures; I looked at the stone. I sort of felt numb and after a short while said, “Daddy, it’s hot out here.” No thoughts came to my mind; no choking sobs . . . so I got in the car and pulled away, but I circled back, got out and kissed the stone and said, “I love you, Daddy.”

Then I found my  way over to Glenda’s and we talked for a couple of hours and I started home. That’s when I got the idea to go through Covington and just go a wee bit down River Road for the heck of it. It is a narrow road that borders the flood plain, all woodsy and no real place to turn around. So I just went on, all the way to 32 and then followed that road/trail’s twists and turns back to Highway 41.

The diagonal trip across Indiana on secondary roads revealed a spectrum of green and rolling hills and I, guess, the heartland of my home. When I pulled off into Peru to get gas, I got turned around and spent about 10 miles on the road with no name; however, the direction of the shadows led me back to my main route.

Just before I got home, just as I turned onto Diamond Street, I felt an overwhelming of tears. So the sad at the cemetery plan was a bust. I sucked it up and got home as dusk turned to night.