For months now, I kept the seed in my head, head full of a sorts of life's shits and other detritus. Today is his birthday. I will bring it to the light.
It was back in June of this year. I made the trip to Christiansburg, Virginia, his birthplace. We had spent the day there Valentines Weekend 2008 with my step son and his then girlfriend and I had seen all those places from his early life. The building that had been the hospital where he was born, the wall he walked on with his grandfather holding his had, the place where "the shack" had been where he and his mother stayed warm by a coal burning stove. Those places come back to me each time I visit. I acknowledge each of them as I pass, recall the ones too far away I may never see again. This is where Richard Wilson was, where he walked, where for a time, he lived.
The purpose of the trip was Dewey, the English Mastiff child of the step son and his now wife. Dewey was 7, and he was dying. A cancer that was spreading over his body, robbing him of his energy, yet he still remained happy and glad to see people come to visit him.
Turning at the former Baptist Church that is now an event center, the one that would not allow Rich to attend Vacation Bible School because he was born out of wedlock, up Hickok Street, just past the house where his baby sitter had lived, to Dewey's house. If the road had continued it would have come out where his grandparents lay buried. It was a nice summer day and the poor boy used up his energy jumping up on the fence to get closer. He licked me on the face when presented with a rawhide bone.
There we spent the afternoon in idle conversation. Taking pictures and videos, saying good by to the gentle giant. The one who would run to see people he had never seen before and scare them to death. Giving thanks for all things, remembering and committing new ones.
The time came to go, and I was was already beginning to feel sick with what, two days later, would turn out to be Lyme Disease. Headed back down route 8, past the faded folk art mural on the old garage of the rapture, I recalled how amazed he was 10 years earlier it was still visible. Past the the off ramp of I-81 that his grandmother had mistook for an on ramp, leading to disaster. Saying good bye and letting go one more time, and then suddenly there on the right it was.
A field, bathed in the late afternoon sun. A field full of sheep. My head turned and eyes beheld them as long as I could.
No reins, not, not ever.
