walking, strolling
Involved with Thanksgiving Weekend, I can't walk Friday, but yesterday we resumed almost our regular walk. Down 2nd Street toward the Bay
and I snapped some colors and our dock that we think was there before us and, but for HMichael,
would have outlived us, and we would have been glad of it. The crane in the background is at Panama City Marina, IDK, maybe still picking up boats from the Bay bottom?
One thing we've notice here is that there are zero pleasure boats out on the Bay anymore, even during the summer and fall and even Saturdays and Sundays when the surface traffic used to fill the Bay with human life. People who lost their boats in HMichael either weren't covered by insurance, or used the insurance money for work on their house, or found out the truth of the saying "the second happiest day in my life was the day I got my boat; the happiest was the day I got rid of it" and are doing other things anymore, eh?
After yesterday morning's early walk in the Cove, we had breakfast at Cahall's. Same good menu, I usually have a rare roast beef sandwich on wheat toast, but the place itself is a gem with the restoration after HMichael, looks really great. It might be my favorite breakfast place, although we do finish well before Golden Corral opens for breakfast at eight o'clock. There at GC for breakfast I like a couple of fried chicken drumsticks, and their milk is colder than ice cold.
Life goes on, you know, at least for some of us, eventually some of you, finally some of them, but now and then early a Monday or Friday morning I take a right off Lisenby Avenue and through Greenwood to say hello to friends (not) there,
and neither you nor I know where they are or are not. But it's as close as I can get
and pretty good for calling memories to mind and even sharing them while there. At this point in life,
as I keep finding out, I know more people there than I do here. On a still day without pressing business, it's peaceful to stroll around and speak to friends and people I've known and friends of my parents. I could add an exclamation point to lighten up, because this is an observation, not a mourning, but no. Strolling and browsing cemeteries, it quickly becomes obvious whose loved ones have moved on and generations after them have their own life and love to live and enjoy.
One thing I've noticed too, is that the ravages of a hurricane instantly render a cemetery foreign. Some years ago, was it Ivan?, devastated Pensacola and demolished St John's Cemetery where my grandparents and aunts and uncles now live. The Weller plot is just inside the front gate and near the east fence, and I've been there so many times over the decades that no problem getting there; the Gentry plot on the other hand, the hurricane blew away landmark trees and shrubs and flowering plant so that I can't just go there, and seeing as i can't recall the row number, I have to get out the online map and type in the name. St John's also was once a lovely and peaceful place to wander, but the charm is gone.
This I will add, that I've realized, since scattering my parents' ashes ("cremains" is a vulgar marketing term of the death industry) on the surface of seas here and there as soon as family could assemble on that bitter cold rainy morning months after my mother's death, that scattered ashes leaves us no place to go say hello and I still love you years afterward. But again, strolling a cemetery shows that such strolling and visiting only lasts a generation and then, per Psalm 90,
As soon as thou scatterest them they are even as a sleep,
and fade away suddenly like the grass.
In the morning it is green, and groweth up;
but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered.
we are gone from living memory, the way of all flesh.
Not a bemoaning, an observation.
RSF&PTL
T
and I snapped some colors and our dock that we think was there before us and, but for HMichael,
would have outlived us, and we would have been glad of it. The crane in the background is at Panama City Marina, IDK, maybe still picking up boats from the Bay bottom?
One thing we've notice here is that there are zero pleasure boats out on the Bay anymore, even during the summer and fall and even Saturdays and Sundays when the surface traffic used to fill the Bay with human life. People who lost their boats in HMichael either weren't covered by insurance, or used the insurance money for work on their house, or found out the truth of the saying "the second happiest day in my life was the day I got my boat; the happiest was the day I got rid of it" and are doing other things anymore, eh?
After yesterday morning's early walk in the Cove, we had breakfast at Cahall's. Same good menu, I usually have a rare roast beef sandwich on wheat toast, but the place itself is a gem with the restoration after HMichael, looks really great. It might be my favorite breakfast place, although we do finish well before Golden Corral opens for breakfast at eight o'clock. There at GC for breakfast I like a couple of fried chicken drumsticks, and their milk is colder than ice cold.
Life goes on, you know, at least for some of us, eventually some of you, finally some of them, but now and then early a Monday or Friday morning I take a right off Lisenby Avenue and through Greenwood to say hello to friends (not) there,
and neither you nor I know where they are or are not. But it's as close as I can get
and pretty good for calling memories to mind and even sharing them while there. At this point in life,
as I keep finding out, I know more people there than I do here. On a still day without pressing business, it's peaceful to stroll around and speak to friends and people I've known and friends of my parents. I could add an exclamation point to lighten up, because this is an observation, not a mourning, but no. Strolling and browsing cemeteries, it quickly becomes obvious whose loved ones have moved on and generations after them have their own life and love to live and enjoy.
One thing I've noticed too, is that the ravages of a hurricane instantly render a cemetery foreign. Some years ago, was it Ivan?, devastated Pensacola and demolished St John's Cemetery where my grandparents and aunts and uncles now live. The Weller plot is just inside the front gate and near the east fence, and I've been there so many times over the decades that no problem getting there; the Gentry plot on the other hand, the hurricane blew away landmark trees and shrubs and flowering plant so that I can't just go there, and seeing as i can't recall the row number, I have to get out the online map and type in the name. St John's also was once a lovely and peaceful place to wander, but the charm is gone.
This I will add, that I've realized, since scattering my parents' ashes ("cremains" is a vulgar marketing term of the death industry) on the surface of seas here and there as soon as family could assemble on that bitter cold rainy morning months after my mother's death, that scattered ashes leaves us no place to go say hello and I still love you years afterward. But again, strolling a cemetery shows that such strolling and visiting only lasts a generation and then, per Psalm 90,
As soon as thou scatterest them they are even as a sleep,
and fade away suddenly like the grass.
In the morning it is green, and groweth up;
but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered.
we are gone from living memory, the way of all flesh.
Not a bemoaning, an observation.
RSF&PTL
T