Sometime in the fall of the year, I stopped before entered the porch door and put the unopened can of diet cola I was carrying down and off to the side.  The thought in the back of my mind was that it was getting chilly at nights and it might be a treat to open the door one morning and see a crispy cold drink.

I forgot about it; I guess it blended into the other stuff I had put there – or was hidden behind a snow shovel which I had also placed in easy reach. But on a quite recent evening, I remembered because there was a wake-up call: creaking, groaning, twisty-metal sounds.  I started, tensed, thought real fast, “TheBackisFencedinandShneIsNotOut!!!!” Then I suspected and then I was KABOOMED and I knew.

So I went out to the back vestibule, grabbed a bottle of sparkling grape juice and toasted the first Kaboom of 2013.

Darn it! Minds are suck treacherous things. I just remembered 13 years ago, the January my father got sick. This would have been the time he started to feel bad, and then better, and then bad, again, then a better day, then a not good at all day which ended in a trip to the emergency room and a cold woman  – young – doctor said, “Well, it could be liver cancer.” I thought the Hippocratic Oath said something about Above all, do no harm, but I guess she didn’t think mental anguish qualified in that category.

It was a cold winter and a week later at Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne, the temperature plunged in the parking lot. I had left my first laptop there – an Apple PowerBook 100 and remembered too late. It froze, but not the kaboom kind – a whimper, not a bang.

A couple of weeks later, Daddy died – no whimper, no bang – just no more. My heart didn’t freeze then . . . it melted.

Well, sniff, let’s get on with today – with living. I don’t need to prolong the memory or feeling – it comes often. That is actually good since it happens because he loved me so.