Our hotel was nicely appointed and I was sorely tempted to take up the offer from the nice young lady at the front desk that she wouldn’t be quite as quick to close the pool and hot tub exactly on time as we’d arrived for check-in relatively late but I was honestly ready for a nice hot shower and then taking full advantage of that comfy looking bed.
It must have worked a trick because the next thing I know, the alarm’s going off telling me to get on with it and get downstairs for a quick bite to eat before we left our hotel in Marion for a scenic run to Hutsonville where the reunion would be happening a few hours later.
We did a quick top-up of the petrol and then made a quick run down the main street to Maplewood Cemetery where we’d find the eternal resting places of eight close members of Dad’s side of the family.
The first time I can remember being there was in 1998 when we laid Grandma Williams to rest and I’d return in 2010 when it was Aunt Nadine’s turn to join her sister and their lifelong companions in sharing a headstone between the four plots next to my great grandmother and grandfather McClerren’s grave that is shared with Uncle Carl and Aunt Ruth.
I never knew my great grandfather but Grandma McClerren was someone I remembered quite well and very fondly. She always had a ready smile and a razor sharp wit and sense of humour!
But the thing that always struck me was just how kind and loving a person she was. I’m sure she had her moments that she might have felt a bit cross and out of sorts as the rest of us do from time to time but I honestly never saw it and every picture I’ve ever seen of her has her smiling as if all was right in the world. Knowing her, it likely was!
What I didn’t know was that she also could recite very long and complex poems entirely from memory which she would do at family gatherings. It would be interesting to see if any audio tapes of one of her performances ever surfaces because it would be truly something wondrous to hear her in action and preserve it for the generations to come.
It’s the larger McClerren tombstone that I always use as a navigation aid to find Grandma and Grandpa as well as Aunt Nadine and Uncle George next door to them.
And just like a three years ago when I stopped by to visit after going walkabout on the Trail of Cousins and surprising Ted in his office, I completely biffed which row I should drive down. One of these days I’m going to remember it’s one row closer to the main street in Marion than the main gate in a section marked “J”.
There were a couple of interesting surprises…one of which being Uncle George’s secondary marker for his military service which I never remembered seeing in any of the previous trips. The grass had obscured it enough that I almost missed it this time as well.
But the other surprise was seeing another example of 23 December showing up. Certainly, that day of the year has some bittersweet connotations between Dad leaving us nearly nine years ago but also the day of the year a pregnancy test landed on my desk heralding the arrival of my daughter about eight months later.
Seeing Uncle George who I loved dearly was born on that date definitely tips the scales in a more positive direction. Uncle George was quite the character when he put his mind to it with a sense of humour that could occasionally catch you by surprise when you weren’t expecting it. But the one thing you could definitely count on was how much he and Grandpa truly loved each other that transcended the fact they’d married two of the McClerren sisters.
He very rarely spoke of his time in the military and even less about his service in WW II. If you’ve ever wanted a sure-fire way of telling who has been in combat and who hasn’t…the ones that have truly seen things those of us who haven’t experienced it first hand can’t imagine in our worst nightmares are the ones that are very quiet. That didn’t mean he didn’t talk at all…I can tell you that he very quietly opened up to me a few times in the Florida room attached to his house when there was no one else round. I honestly don’t know why but I was grateful beyond words that he trusted me with his story. Perhaps he figured I was uniquely qualified to appreciate military service and that I’d either learned enough from my father’s MOS about the perils of loose lips or Grandpa had assured him that I’d appreciate learning his story and not go blabbing it all over the place. 🙂
In his later years when he was afflicted with Alzheimer’s, it wasn’t unusual for Aunt Nadine to ring us up and let us know that Uncle George had managed to give her the slip and was out and about on his tricycle. Dad and I would head out into the neighbourhood in his huge Plymouth Trailduster and it usually didn’t take long to find Uncle George pedaling along. We always kept a stash of candy which never failed to get Uncle George to climb into the truck as we’d stow his tricycle in the back.
We’d always try to assure him that we wouldn’t rat out his escaping the house to Aunt Nadine. That was essential…he didn’t want her to know he’d been in a house with another woman as he couldn’t live with being in an affair and being unfaithful to Aunt Nadine not knowing that was who was in his own house from which he’d made his successful escape! So one or the other of us would chat up Aunt Nadine to try to distract her as the other was quietly stowing the tricycle in the garage and getting Uncle George in the house by another entrance.
That’s the thing about Aunt Nadine…she knew where every mote of dust was in that house and she’d already told us about him flying the coop. But she made a big show of seemingly being distracted and not noticing that Uncle George had suddenly made an appearance. All it took was a big hug and that she must have missed where he was in the house until the next time Uncle George would make his escape. She never let on that she knew he’d scarpered and Uncle George’s illusory “side action” was our little secret and that was that.
