Memorials

 Memorials are found in Washington D.C;

They are also found on sections of our Interstate Highway system. 

Or in front of libraries. 

On benches. 

Or scrawled in spray paint on the wall of a neighborhood store. 

People die every day. Lots of them. But not all of them get a memorial, save for the moment of silence afforded some at the beginning of a sporting event. 

My mother in law likes to share her feelings about such rituals when the topic comes up, suggesting that all those monuments and kind words are often wasted on those to whom they would matter the most. 

I want to believe now that I spent a good deal of my time with my parents sharing how much they mattered to me while they were alive. I believe it was our practice to end all of our conversations with "I love you," as a way to ward off the inevitable. The fact that this has been passed along to the interactions my wife and I have with our son is not lost on me. I hope to limit the chances of feeling like the last time we talked didn't include that reminder. 

The idea that people in our lives might drift away without an appreciation for all that they have done and meant to us infuriates me. I'm big into completion. And summing up. And tying up loose ends. 

And building memorials. 

My father has a rock next to the creek that runs behind the high school that we all attended. That creek is near the bottom of a watershed that begins high up in the hills above Boulder where the trickle of a stream where I sprinkled the ashes of my father so many years ago. There is a blue spruce tree that still stands in the back yard of my childhood home. It was brought down the mountainside by my mother and I, much to the bemusement of the rest of our family as a tiny sapling. These markers remind us of where we came from, and give us a place to rest our memories. 

Which reminds me of a song by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that my older brother likes to quote: "Gravestones cheer the living, dear, they're no use to the dead."

I suppose I truly hope that I am the monument to my parents. Along with my brothers and our families, we continue to point in the direction on which we were set by them.