Straight From The Hart

Lois and I posted a memorial picture and poem about Kay in today's LDR in case you get a chance to see it. I had to tweak it a little bit and shortened it a lot to make it fill the newspaper spot, but here is the poem in its entirety: It seems like only yesterday, That day you went away. But 50 years have passed since then And we’ve missed you every day. Your pretty smile with the bluest eyes We never will forget, We know God had a plan and so We trust His wisdom, yet The memories come and linger on, Like a slide show in my mind. Though you were with us only 16 years. The video frames unwind…. The games we played on Wood Street Hitting hedge apples with a stick, Lighting firecrackers under a tin can And running away so quick. Practicing our songs around the old piano Sibling harmony so sweet, So we would have a “special” to share each Sunday In the church on Taylor Street.. The night your boyfriend smashed an egg Between his palms, but then It broke although he said it

T.S. Eliot, writing in The Waste Land, penned the words, “April is the cruelest month.”  In the years since then, there have been many paraphrases and most of them have identified  November as “the cruelest month”.  In a way I agree, but not completely. I have found over the years that November, more than any other month, is a mixture of laughter and tears, joy and sadness, bleakness and sunshine, and yes even new growth mixed in with the decay. The first time I realized the specialness of the eleventh month of the year was in 1963 when Milan and I chose the 16th day for our wedding. But it was only one year and one week later, in November 1964, that I realized how cruel and cold November could be when my youngest sister, Kay Rowden, died in a car crash out on East Highway 32, a road long known for its own brand of cruelty, with the curves and washboard hills taking their toll on many a car over the years.  Kay was 16, and a junior at LHS.  Her best friend, Beverly Cole, surv