Early Spring '07
AND SO IT BEGINS.
My folks were snowbirds. For 27 years they closed up their
Northern Wisconsin home, Ramiroto, the first week in November
and headed the aging but cherry Chrysler southward. They
stopped briefly for an early Thanksgiving day dinner at
my home in Milwaukee with my family and my brother's, then
proceeded on to Panama City Beach, Florida always stopping
for one night at a Days Inn just over the line in Tennessee.
Once ensconced in their usual leased condo, carefully nestled
amongst 200 others exactly like it behind the safety of
a guard gate manned by a gentleman older than Methuselah,
they immersed themselves in the warmth of a Florida winter
decidedly unlike the ice and snow of Ramiroto Point.
They enjoyed walks on the beach, shuffle board, "early
bird specials" and much sunshine until the first week
in May, when they would make the annual trek homeward bound.
I would often visit them in Florida around New Years for
a few days but preferred to visit with them at their lake
home in Northern Wisconsin where I could admire the majesty
of the eagle in the oak tree a few yards from the kitchen
window, sit with the humming birds as they hovered inches
from my face or merely listen to my Mom recant every day
of last winter's sabbatical on that distant southern beach.
Her detailed descriptions always included their friends
who also had slipped the bonds of gray and snowy days to
acquire that healthy looking tanned complexion ubiquitous
to the far south. They and their fellow snowbirds had migrated
from all across the northern tier of our country and even
included several couples from Canada. Dinners, walks, card
games and bingo were the mainstay activities, but it was
obvious to me the ranking was clear… warm sunshine
first, good friends second, and finally, shared activities
a distant third. My Pa would stoically sit next to me while
Mom recounted who and where and why in a day by day oral
diary of the previous winter's stay.
How she kept the twenty-odd couples in perfect focus amazed
me. Periodically I would ask about a name I remembered from
the previous year's trip and both of my folks would simultaneously
quietly reply that the individual in question had died that
past summer. I stopped asking about names and merely listened
dutifully to Mom as she happily relived the warm and sunny
southern winter.
The year before my Father died, they announced that they
would not make the trip south but instead stay the winter
on Ramiroto Point. It worried me a bit because they were
both in their eighties by this time and I was concerned
about the potentially disastrous combination of ice, snow
and unsteady legs. When I questioned Pa more seriously about
this decision, his answer tugged at my heart.
"We've gone south for more years than I can count,"
he said, "but I can count the friends who have died.
And this year, your mother and I would have been the only
ones left of that original group. Neither of us wants to
go down there and get depressed thinking about those no
longer with us. We will stay home this year, feed the deer
and the winter birds and do a little ice fishing. I've forgotten
how beautiful a winter moon can shine and make Ramiroto
Point and the frozen lake glow under the Northern Lights.
We've decided we want to experience a winter at home one
more time."
Pa died the following June and I should have sensed the
urgency in his October pronouncement, but like most self
centered sons, I merely thought he and Mom would return
South the next year. But as all too often occurs, next year
never arrived.
This morning, I received an email accompanied by the local
newspaper obituary of an old friend and former long time
employee. For over twenty five years Jon Stoll and I had
shared ups and downs of our professional lives and suddenly
last week he died in his sleep.
And so it begins.
