I need to post the title above on my refrigerator. I am getting up early tomorrow morning and heading down to Turkey Run where I will be meeting with my cousins on the Grismore side of my family. It’s going to be a quick trip and I may even try to manage a backpack trek – you know, a change of clothes and one or two possible necessities, such as a spork.

It will be a bittersweet gathering. My cousin Robert lost his son, Patrick, a year ago this past August to a long fight against cancer. I still remember over 33 years ago when I moved to Palatine, Illinois and while scouting the area, pulled into his driveway in another Chicago suburb. His wife, Donna, opened the door, and before I could introduce myself after a decade of not seeing her, she beamed, literally beamed a trademark smile, and said, “You’re Jody.”

Years later when Robert and Donna came to Mother’s visitation (2009), we all went out to dinner. Patrick had been ill earlier, but was recovered and confided in his mother he was “so glad it wasn’t cancer.”  A lot of people were at the table that night, and Donna wasn’t even talking to me when she said it. I overheard her remark and for some reason it burned itself into my memory.

It was the first thing I thought of when word came in April of 2012 that Patrick had a tumor in  his liver ducts. He was to be married the following fall. He did get married – in August – and one year later in that same month his wife was a widow.

I have written many times about Robert being named after my father, his uncle. We always called his Robert Allen because I believe Daddy was self-conscious about  having someone named after him. That is also why we called my son Robert, Robert William for a long time.

I have also written about the close relationship my father had with Robert Allen when he was a little boy. So many years ago.  A lot happens in life – and it is all so real, even if it was yesterday or decades ago. Surroundings change but the remembered moments are always the same, complete with an embedded recall of scents and textures and background voices.

And then in a century or so, it is no one’s actually memory; but still it exists. It happened. The relationship of people and the love that will always be.

So, I’ll see Donna again tomorrow and we will be sitting at a dinner table and I will overhear her say things, and as they say, life goes on. But, so does the truth of love; it is forever.