While driving home from my quick trip to Baltimore, I did manage to coordinate a detour through Uniontown, where I could pay my respects to my "surrogate" grandmother JoAnn. JoAnn, who was preceded in death by her daughter, used to always visit the grave every fall to put down a grave blanket -- not so much because of the "physics" of it all to actually keep the final resting place warmer in the winter, but as a gesture to show that even when loved ones pass, if those who are left behind pause to remember them on occasion, they more vividly live on in the hearts and memories of those who miss them.
Just like I have a tradition for DJ (who also passed in October, now 12 years ago) where I "share" a Swisher Sweet cigar, leaving half behind for him at his gravesite each time to memorialize the late night conversations we used to have on the balcony of our Greentree apartment fraternity house at the end of many days in the mid-90's, so do I now have a tradition for when I visit the final resting place of JoAnn -- I leave behind one rose picked up from the local Giant Eagle (the grocery store where she used to stock up on Mystics and Chicken Noodle Soup for my visits with her through the years -- just a small part of all that she did for me for almost two decades).
Joann (and DJ too) -- not just when the calendar rolls around to the cold dismal month of late October each year, but throughout it as well -- you (both) are truly missed.
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