Preparations

This is Monday of the week before he died on December 8th. We are planning on going to our little place in the country. Our daughters will be there with us. My parents will be there with us. I will probably cook gumbo. We will visit the cemetery. We will plant a "rain tree" in his memory. There will be tears, sweet memories and stories.

When I think of planting a tree in his memory I remember how someone from our church sent us a tree to plant when my brother died in December of 1994. It was a Bradford pear. We had it all planted in the center of the yard, just back from the two big oak trees.

My son would have been seven years old. He had been riding a bike for three or four years by then. On the day I am thinking of, he came rolling into the driveway and said "Look, Mom!" He jumped off the bike without stopping it and thrust his hands into the air while the bike curved around and made a direct hit on my Bradford pear tree, breaking the slender truck off three inches from the ground. What are the odds that the bike would run into the newest most meaningful tree in my yard? I have no idea but my dear son managed to make it happen. He beat the odds on that day.