A Post.....

Memories come flooding back and my eyes are damp....once again. Someone posted this on Facebook and it brought back scenes from my grade school years:

Growing up in Park Ridge, Illinois, my friends-on-the-block, Jeanie and Lois, and I spent so much time outside all over the neighborhood. Or my bike would take me a mile or so to best friend Sally's house. We built tree forts, played kick-the-can, climbed on the grade school playground equipment, explored nearby construction sites for more new houses.

But the best memories come from the time spent at Gramma and Grampa's small house in Antioch on Voltz Lake. A small lake, no motor boats allowed, it was kid heaven. Farmer's fields on one side (hiding in the tall corn stalks), undeveloped  acres on the other (a beaver dam in a pond) and forested acres down the lane (we found an animal skull one day!). The high points of each of our Sundays together was the lake itself. Ice skating in the winter, skipping stones in spring and fall and using the row boat middle-of-the-lake swim raft all summer. 

Each summer Claudia and I would go for a week together at "Camp".... that meant about five days of fun and sleep-overs together. We picked apple and cherries for gramma's pies. We ran, screaming, from grass snakes. We helped gramma do laundry down in the basement and grab clothespins to hang clean clothes on the outside clotheslines. At night we shared a sofa-bed....talking and giggling way past "bedtime". Gramma's solution was to roll up a big blanket and tie it in a "log" with some string. She called this "Mrs. Barney" and put it right in the middle of the bed....dividing the mattress in half. Mrs. Barney sort of separated us and eventually we would fall asleep until waking to a good breakfast and another adventure day.

The Facebook post brought Claudia's face directly to mind....my cousin, two years younger than me. After my mom died she was the person-on-earth who'd known me the longest...shared the good memories, understood some of my sadnesses, fell into easy lock step whenever we'd be able to get together as adults.

Cancer took Claudia in the summer of 2016....almost seven years ago. My heart was broken then and after reading this post my sadness is back. Not the first full-blown grief you experience when someone you love dies but still.....the memories are streaming in my mind and the tears are right in the corner of my eyes.

Miss you still best cousin....miss you still.