55 Easters Ago

Today I heard Harold make some phone calls to some of his family members he hadn't talked to in awhile. For some reason, the day before Easter every year always makes him feel like talking to someone that would remember what he is remembering that other day before Easter so long ago. You see, he was orphaned at age four (his sister was three) when his parents drowned the day before Easter, 1957, at the ages of 23 and 22. His grandparents took turns rearing them. Maternal grandparents during the school year; paternal grandparents in the summers. And now even the grandparents are all gone as well.

It was 55 years ago this Easter that their young lives were cut short by that watery grave. No one knows exactly what happened. But the little four-year-old boy still remembers sitting in a church packed with flowers and strangers who came to gawk at the spectacle of such a "tragedy," and he remembers those two coffins in the front of the church and holding his little sister's hand. The little sister who doesn't remember any of it. He's glad at least he was old enough to have some kind of memories, even if a lot of them are sad and bewildered ones. His sister has none. Except for some yellowed photos, and what bits and pieces her big brother can remember and share with her over and over every time they talk, she has no memories of them.

And Easter always brings it back, no matter how many years have gone by...

Before they went on that trip, their Momma had fixed up a couple of Easter baskets and hidden them in the top of the closet at the grandparents' house where they left the two little ones for the weekend. Then they drove from Kansas City to the Lake of the Ozarks for the weekend, promising to be back by Easter Sunday. In the grief and chaos that followed, those baskets sat there, in the top of the closet, for about a year and a half before someone noticed them. Harold says the candy in them was still as fresh as the day his Momma bought it for them.

Now, every time he calls to talk to his little sister, each conversation always gets back to "Do you remember the time..."

"No, I don't remember that. Tell me what happened..."

And so the young parents come alive again. And remain forever young in the minds of their two babies.