Potterville

Have you ever seen the movie "It's a Wonderful Life"? In this 1946 Frank Capra movie, a character named George Bailey gets a look at how life on Earth would play out if he had died in childhood. With the help of an angel named Clarence, George sees how the lives of the people in his town and the loved ones in his life would be without him. George gets a tour of "Potterville." I'm home touring my version of Potterville.

One thing that is hard for me to accept is change. There's just something that twists inside my gut to know that "time waits for no man" or woman, and that life and death go on.

On our drive "home" to a small town in western NY state to visit my parents, I saw how much time had changed not just the people, but the landscape.

We no longer stopped for gas at the old Mobile station along one of the now defunct at-grade intersections. A "new" thruway in Horseheads allowed us to bypass the town at 65mph.

Our locally owned grocery store, Big "M" (once owned by the Milburn family) was replaced by a non-descript Save-a-lot.

The town bank is closed.

The local pizza place that once had an eat-in dining room now only allows you to step three feet in the door to a counter to pick up your pie.

A drunken twenty-something woman drove her car into a historic barn off of Clover street and walked away with her life, but the barn burned down around the car, melting it into a lump of metal resembling a four door sedan.

The coffee shop changed hands.

The car dealership closed.

And even as the farm land disappears and the developments take their place, the worst losses to feel are the absences created when the people you love die and they just aren't there anymore.

I'm sitting at the computer at my parents house, writing to you, wearing my pajamas, and my grandfather's old sweater and his Rush Henrietta coaching jacket. It still smells like him. If you smell real close. Mom is washing some of our clothes we are packing to take with us on our flight tomorrow.

This weekend we had just planned to come up for a family picnic. It's turned into an extended mission. Tomorrow morning, Mom and I are flying to Milwaukee, via Baltimore, MD to visit with my Aunt Judy who had an aneurysm last Saturday.

We lost my grandfather almost 10 years ago. My friend Nina died in December, and my Mom's best friend died in July and now her sister is very sick. I never really felt loss until people started dying.

We drove by a cemetery on our way home from the picnic today and saw people clustered around a grave site saying their goodbyes to someone they loved. It was raining, and the whole day wept with them.

The older I get the more I understand loss and the more I look forward to heaven. That's when I'll finally be home, and time will be my friend in the embodiment of eternity. It will be my "always" without death or disease or loss. I will only feel love, joy, peace and happiness and other good things.

I was talking to my mom in the car and I told her sometimes it's hard to believe there's anything after this life. I told her I just wished we saw more supernatural things so that I KNEW there was something tangible to believe in. She told me that somebody once said that if we could glimpse heavenly things that people would be throwing themselves in front of cars and jumping off rooftops to get there. I suppose she's right and I'm just a "doubting Thomas."