the Baton Twirler

Today is Memorial Day, and I thought a lot about some of the soldiers I have known in my life who gave their all for this country, and I am grateful for their sacrifices.
But for me, Memorial Day has another , more personal meaning. Seven years ago, I lost my sister Carmen to cancer, on Memorial Day, May 31, 2004.
The images in my head when I think of her are from our childhood. Our parents, for the brief time we had a family unit, used to take us to wholesome family activities like the Ice Capades, and especially exciting was a competition of drum and bugle groups at Dietz Stadium, where we saw a group of young people who played the instruments and twirled batons like magical whirligigs. I was impressed with the beat of the drums and the rhythms, but Carmen loved the twirlers and wanted to learn how to do that. In Kerhonkson, New York, where we lived, there is a drum and bugle corps, and they could always be heard practicing in the evenings all the way up on the mountain where we lived. Carmen joined the corps and got her very own baton. I remember her twirling all day long, and in the rare times she would put it down, I’d try it, but I didn’t know the secret password or something because I’d end up flipping it in the air or dropping it. Anyway, it was an image that burned in my brain, and is always the first one I have when her name is mentioned.
So she grew up, got married, had kids, grandkids, and cancer. She only got to live 42 years of a life that should have lasted twice that or more. That, as they say, sucks.
But Im not writing this just to elicit sympathy from anyone. I write it just to tell the story of my sister the baton twirler of my memory. We all have lost people we love. We can not dwell on that loss, though. Life, our life, goes on, and we do owe it to them, and to ourselves, to live every day to its fullest, and to enjoy every moment. Wallowing in mourning is not a healthy thing, and I aint gonna do it.
I miss my sister. Her kids miss her, her grandkids miss her, her/our mother can not let go of her own grief still, seven years on, and that is a sadder fact than Carmen’s actual death, because in effect being unable to let it go turns onto another type of death, and when I visit my mom and her shrine to Carmen, it’s like she is just waiting around for her own end. I hope not, but that is how it seems.
So this is my Memorial Day, in a way, as I am out on the road, walking west through Kansas. It was a ghost town here in Independence this evening as I walked into town for dinner.
I honor the soldiers, and their memories. I honor the memory of my sister, Carmen, dead seven years now, but who will always be a nine year old girl twirling a baton through my memories.
Happy Memorial Day. Now get out there and enjoy life, people.
Tomorrow, I’m going to write about turtles.