One Month Later

It was one month to the day that we lost Jon. Many of you have been on this journey with me, following what I write and sharing your thoughts and feelings. You have been my ear many times, and often my good counselors as well. Thank you all for being here, listening and understanding.

While it's been a terrible month, it's also been a month for remembering and rejoicing in Jon's well-lived life. A huge hole has been rent in the fabric of our family; it cannot be repaired but perhaps we can embroider it with memories of shared good times so that it becomes a thing of beauty rather than a scar on our family's history. I am hopeful that this is something we can do; I prefer to hold my son in my heart, surrounded by the light of joy. He was not a perfect man; none of us are. But he was a loving man who cared deeply for his family and friends, made mistakes but made amends as best he could, and looked ahead with hope and excitement. That is how we will remember him.

I will be posting some photos of Jon now and then. I am not posting them in grief and tears, but rather in joy of my beautiful son, and will include the stories that go with the photos--for there is always a story to accompany a photo, isn't there? Here are two of my favorites:


This was taken the day Jon brought his first daughter home from the hospital in July 1989, when he was 19 years old. I was a young granny, wasn't I? He was so excited--at the time, he was stationed in Kansas and his wife had stayed at home with her mother until Jordan was born. Jon drove like a wild man when Jeanie called to say she was in labor because he was determined to get to Ripley in time for Jordan's birth. He arrived just an hour before the delivery.


This was Jon's first attempt to grow a mustache. I never told him how funny I thought it looked because he was so proud of it! He had taken me to a mall to have my hair permed (I was experimenting with spiral perms back then) this day and he was so proud that he was able to do this for me. He thought I worked too hard and seldom got "girlie" things; he wanted to give me this for Christmas. It came out very well, and I kept perms in my hair for a few years after that. At this time, I was still in college and I don't think we had finished installing electricity in our house yet, so going to the mall and beauty parlor was a real luxury for me. I remember that Kansas wind that never quit too, and understood who most women in the area had short hair!


The photo was taken at his home in Wakefield, Kansas. He was stationed at Fort Riley, KS as a radio operator, and had bought a tiny, 1920's era house in the small town of Wakefield. The entire town had been relocated by the Corps of Engineers when the Republican River was dammed to create a large lake on the former site of the town. His house was very much original in its wood trim and other decor, and he only paid $16,000 for it, which was not a bad deal. Wakefield had no stop signs, only yield signs throughout the town. Jon was just 20 years old at this time.

I only visited there once since it was a 14-hour drive and Jon was deployed to Korea that spring (1990). Jean's mother rode with me on the trip and I will never forget driving through St. Louis with her. I handed her the map so she could tell me what exits to take and found that she'd never learned to read a map! This trip was the furthest from home she'd ever been, and she had never had need of a map. I managed to get off the road long enough to figure out where I needed to go.

Jon had a neighbor named Bessie who was in her 80's. She doted on his family, and he laughed because Bessie often went to the nursing home to visit friends she called the "old people" there. She never saw herself as elderly and kept a garden and her house spic and span. When there were tornado warnings, they would all go down into Bessie's storm cellar to ride it out. When I visited there, Jon took me to a nearby town called Clay Center--even though it was 20 miles away I could see the town clearly, a strange thing for an Easterner like me. A month or two after I'd been there, almost the entire town of Clay Center was destroyed in a tornado while Jon, Jeanie and Jordan sheltered in Bessie's cellar.

A picture may say a thousand words, but there is always the rest of the story that a photo doesn't tell, isn't there? Those are the stories I'll be telling as I post photos of my son Jonathan.