07 July 2005
Dad
This Tuesday, July 5, I happened to be in Fort Lauderdale on business. I stayed overnight at Mike’s house. He got ill from lunch so in the evening I left him alone to rest and I wandered along the Fr. Lauderdale public beach. Even though we had visited Mike several times since he moved down Florida, I had not walked along the public beach since I traveled down there with Carrie on her 12th birthday. I had a client that I visited a couple of times per year and for her birthday I took her on one of these business trips. Walking along the beach on Tuesday, I recognized the places she and I visited. I even think I recognized the palm tree she tried to climb.
We stayed at the Holiday Inn along the beach. It was a cheap hotel but had a pool and was very close to the beach. Carrie and I had a very good time hanging out at the pool She befriended a brother and sister who were living at the hotel, virtually unsupervised, with their mother. Carrie was quite amused that the little boy went upstairs on a dare from his sister and proceeded to throw his clothes out of the 8th story window into the pool far below, included to Carrie’s fascination, his underwear.
I couldn’t leave Carrie alone while I was at my business meeting, so I paid Dottie, the head of housekeeping to watch Carrie during her shift. Carrie and she went from room to room, cleaning and making beds. Carrie reported she learned, among other things, how to make beds very quickly. She and Dottie struck up quite a friendship and Carrie heard about life in Appalachia that was so different from her own. I checked to see if Dottie still worked there; I wondered if she remembered her day with Carrie. She apparently no longer works there.
Although I frequently spent time together with my whole family, I have not typically spent much time alone with any of my kids until recently. I think Carrie got the least of that kind of time, so I cherish those times we did spend together.
I was listening to a tape on management a few months ago. At the end of the tape, the narrator asked – “where does a wave go when it reaches the beach?” The answer is that it goes nowhere. A wave is just a configuration of the water and when it arrives at the beach, the water takes a new configuration. Another question - where is a sculpture in a raw block of marble? It is in the mind of the sculptor. Human beings could simply be a configuration of various materials – water, carbon, minerals, etc. that expresses some idea of our creator. We are just ideas, and when we die, the configuration of materials that comprise our bodies simply relaxes and disappears as a wave disappears when it reaches the shore.
Molly and Kieran came over last night and we played board games at Nora’s suggestion; Carrie had planned on playing board games on Sunday, but she died on Saturday night. They had been at Carrie’s gravesite with several of Carrie’s closest friends from Regina. I like to think that “Carrie as spirit” continues to live on at times like that; when her friends get together whether for Relay for Life or at her grave.