We (Skip and I) are on the road, on the trail, on the tour,
seeing the world and dropping some ash.
We are on a 10 day trip to remember and enjoy my bride as we sprinkle a
little of Marty in all of the places she and I have lived and loved, with a bit
Utah magic in the middle.
Thursday night, we were in a dodgy little motel in Paris
TX. I’m sure it had once been nice, but
not so much anymore. We already been to
Hillsboro, dropped Sharon off in Mansfield and driven to Paris.
In Hillsboro we scattered ashes at our church there, First
Presbyterian. This was the first church
where we fully participated and reaped the rewards of that participation. It’s the first church where I really came to
understand grace, it was the first place I began to feel God’s grace. It was the first church where we worshiped as a family every week.
The pastor, the Rev Bob ‘by-golly’ Moon, was an
exceptionally good man and a remarkable pastor who exhibited all the grace and
love you expect from a minister.
Sermons? Not so much, but we
never cared, the man always exhibited love.
Marty was involved with Christian education at the
church. She was a member of the choir
and she loved, loved, loved the pipe organ and loved the organist. We saw Easter egg hunts, went on trips to Mo
Ranch (a church conference center in the Hill Country), cleaned windows, put on
plays, made butterfly wings and brought food for potluck lunches after the
service. We made friends, life long,
loved and loving friends. That church
was a touchstone for us.
I went to the front of the church told Skip about the church
and how it had impacted our life and how Marty had felt at home at this
church. This is where Marty became a
Presbyterian this is where she said, “I like being a Presbyterian, it’s
Christianity lite, all the religion and a 1/3 less guilt.?” Yep, exact quote.
As I walked away it felt good and I walked up to a single
flower, a weed, a long plant in a patch of dirt. It stood out against the dark brown of the
earth and reached to the sky. Marty was
present.
We did the Hillsboro tour.
We drove by our old house, went to the park, went downtown, past the
cemetery and back on the road to Mansfield to leave Sharon with my
parents. After a quick lunch Skip and I
hit the road again headed to Paris.
We got to Paris in the late afternoon and checked into the
dodgy motel. We then set off for goal
one, to find the cemetery and the monument to the Babcock family, a sculpture
of Jesus wearing cowboy boots. Marty
loved that little bitty somewhat insignificant part of Paris. We took all our friends that made their way
to Paris there.
After a little searching we found it and I sprinkled some
ashes there thinking of Marty, her laugh, her sense of humor and her love of
the off-kilter parts of life.
I had to use Waze to find our old house. Remarkably the road to the house was
completely unfamiliar, I didn’t recognize a thing. As we got closer I saw the house and knew it,
the window to our bedroom, the still visible crack in the outside wall of the
garage, the huge oak in the front that was not that huge when we lived there in
1978. We stopped, left some ashes and hoped
we didn’t get a visit from the Paris gendarmes.
We drove around, some things familiar, a whole lot not. The movie theatre where we say Star Wars was
closed and our old church looked particularly huge and eastern in its
architecture. We eventually wandered our
way around and back to the motel. It had
been a really, really good day, no tears, a lot of laughter, that’s good.
Next destination…Muenster then Lubbock.
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