Re: May 18, Revised

Wayne's birthday coming up. Sunday. Usually I go out to the cemetery, but not this time. We'll have our family dinner here to celebrate and just be together.

I always liked the day. Always, because it is my brother Sterling's birthday, and I always loved him. But I liked the day better after meeting Wayne.

It's my brother-in-law Eric's birthday, too. (I probably mention Sterling and Eric here every year. Oh well.) It's a happy day. But now, of course, it's touched with that deep sadness and the sense that something is not quite right, someone is missing. And, of course, that's true. The important person is missing.

It's true, what Sarah Westergard told me not long after Wayne died. I didn't know her, though I know her now. Her husband had died a few years earlier, maybe six years. So when we were introduced it was not simply, "Meet my friend Carol Schiess." The big fact of my husband's recent death came along with my name, so that she may not have heard my name to remember it.

Anyway, that's when Sarah said, "You never get over it." Not happy to meet you; not sorry; not anything but "You never get over it."

So we may shed a tear or two Sunday because no one has gotten over it in these 11 years and four months. But we'll also have a happy time together. We'll eat. And we'll talk about him and laugh because, you may know, he was funny.