A week ago today, I named it “Julius Day” after my late
father-in-law, Julius Cole. It was a simple thing, remembering a simple man.
He was a farmer, see, although he didn’t want to be.
Returning from service with the 79th Infantry during the war and
with the First Division afterwards, he had sent practically every penny of his
pay home for over two years. Like most surviving veterans, he had dreams.
He wanted to buy a service station, sell gas, fix cars, and
talk to the customers. He had finished, he thought, with farming, having been
at it, before the Army called, since he was nine years old. A nice, regular,
simple job beckoned.
Arriving home by train, he walked five miles to the family’s
homeplace to learn that his family had used the money he had sent home to buy
farmland.
So, he farmed. To make life more interesting, he began,
somewhere along the line, to raise cattle as well. He had also dreamed, as a child, of
becoming a cowboy. It was as close as he would ever get. A wife came into his life.
Then a daughter. Then, ultimately, Alzheimer’s disease. Finally, nothing but
memories of this kind and gentle man, who would talk of times when “… you just
wanted to live one more second. You would say to yourself, ‘Just let me live
one more second.”
He never liked the winter. He would never cut a pine or cedar
tree because he loved spots of green during the dismal season. But he was an optimist.
As the first pangs of bitter cold hit, he would, invariably, say, “It’ll
be spring before you know it.”
On a chilly and windy day last week, we were at the farm,
and I walked to the mailbox. There, among the last-minute Christmas ads, was
the first annual plant and seed catalog. I looked at it and my eyes
filled with tears as I looked over a landscape where Julius and I had spent so
many hours on so many projects.
“It’ll be spring before you know it,” I said to a long row
of pine trees.
