MIRAGES OF GRIEF, THE PRODIGAL, VOLUME 1, CHRONICLE 31, STORIES FROM THE STEPS: Maya Angelou wrote, “I answer the heroic question ‘Death where is thy sting?’, with it is here in my heart & mind & memories.” I seem to have an inordinate number of friends & relatives grieving over recently lost loved ones & some gone a little longer or some other poor hand life has dealt across the felt of its card table. I wasn’t planning on being among them but here I sit. Grief can come in a cardinal at a bird feeder, a sunrise, the smell of a football helmet or an old ball glove, a random Tuesday or as you’ll read, in the sound of streaming music. Regardless of time & distance, grief my friends, is a prodigal & it’s going to return home, returning in mirages as the bent & reflected light of memory, in laughter & tears, in smiles & misty eyes, generally unannounced as there are no rules to grief’s game & no idea when another return is scheduled. My brother in law David, passed away in March 2008. Today would have been his 68th birthday. Last night, his mirage appeared on my horizon as I tended to a cast iron skillet of chicken & its two pan cooktop posse, not with a tune from the band Alabama, a group he worked & played softball for & collected gold records with, but a musician he introduced me to, the brilliant blues guitarist, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, the song “Blue on Black” & its haunting lyric, “…whisper on a scream, never change a thing, doesn’t bring you back, it’s blue on black…”. I went back in bending & reflection to 1997 & each of us with a child breaking an arm within days of each other. Pleasing to him only because he didn’t want mine stealing all the grandparents attention, & back to him helping me with home repairs because his sister’s husband was good with a chef’s knife, better with nouns & verbs & the best tool in his toolbox being the checkbook, to dining in a fine French restaurant listening to the proprietor give the menu & David butting in after the first entree was named, duck breast with leeks, with “I’ll take the other one, I’m not eating anything with holes in it” & then me, my father-in-law Tom, & David trying not to laugh & incur the wrath of my mother-in-law in such a nice establishment, or heading to Augusta National & betting him lunch that he wouldn’t, as he normally would, run into someone he knew & being on the grounds less than five minutes & having the sanctuary silence & my wallet about to pony up for pimento cheese & egg salad sandwiches by hearing his nickname “Hemp” shouted through the Georgia pines & the return trip as Tom repeatedly reminded & sang the Georgia Tech fight song & David repeatedly rolled his eyes as the exit for Atlanta’s Varsity rolled closer. Today, I drove by a golf course where David once clubbed a wayward drive off the first tee. I was bent over tying my shoe, heard club meet ball, a scream of “no!”, & then saw a driver hit the ground, bounce up & club head meet my head right between the eyes. As he walked over to pick up the club & I gathered my senses, David asked, “how’s the head”? I replied I was okay & he said “not you, the club”. It was funny then, funnier now. These & other tales still make me laugh & cry, both because they happened & they’ll never happen again. I’d love to hear him say bye like he did, emphasizing the see in “SEE ya!”, but I won’t. I can tell him though there’s no evidence he can hear me but I’ll see him again & for now, he’s over there & I’m over here, & until I’m over there, the prodigal grief will return as that’s how he operates,..’til the next mirage, SEE ya, Hemp!