Deep in the Heart

Penn State Graduation

Dan was a history buff. I can remember him climbing on canons in Yorktown, Virginia, reading signs in Fort McHenry, and debating politics at dinner. As he got older, his interests branched out to non-American history as well. I lost count of how many times he read The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. For Dan, a “light read” was about 2 inches thick. He eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Penn State.  His room is still filled with his beloved tomes of history. 

I think of Dan when I am near historic sites, even when these sites are not ones that I visited with him. Dan was at the forefront of my thoughts when I toured the Alamo in March.  As I waited in line to enter the shrine, I realized that I was surrounded by Dallas Cowboy fans. Oh how I wished to call Dan so that he could laugh with me about the absurdity of this! While Dan and I were boycotting the Eagles at the time of his death, he never would have supported the Cowboys, and would not have been able to resist a chance to say something sassy if he were there, too.

The Alamo and a bunch of Cowboys fans.

  

Inside the Alamo, I looked at the artifacts and imagined what Dan would say about them. I am sure the commentary would have been both colorful and insightful. His thoughts about battles and American history were thought-provoking although we were not always in agreement. Eventually, I made my way to a room at the front of the building.  The room was a shrine to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things.  While the buildings are maintained as a shrine to those who died at the Battle of the Alamo, the little room is the only area that still retains part of the Catholic mission character within the Alamo complex. I spent a little bit of time near the shrine, avoiding the crowd and reflecting upon the events of the winter.

St. Anthony of the River

I usually do not say that I "lost" my brother. He did not wander away, or leave us voluntarily. But I could not stop thinking of Dan while I was in that spot. So I asked St. Anthony to help us find something else- a CURE for cancer. Dan believed that a cure would eventually be found, and he always supported efforts for research, so I asked St. Anthony to provide some insight to the research scientists.  I also asked him to help me find some peace. At the time of this trip, it had been 6 weeks since Dan had died, and the winter weather had still not let up in Philadelphia. I still felt very raw inside. Every snow or ice storm brought back bad memories.

After I left the Alamo, I wandered around the River Walk for a few hours. I ate an enchilada (Dan's usual choice when out for Mexican), sipped a margarita, and thought about visits to Tortilla’s.  I remembered that I left a construction site in Quakertown early one day so that I could make a detour through Willow Grove on my way home to buy Dan his favorite tres enchiladas and black bean soup so it would be his first meal after his car accident.  I took some photos of some NCAA fans that were in town for the tournament, and I remembered Dan sitting in front of the TV with a snack, a blanket, and the sports page from the Philadelphia Inquirer.  I saw young Air Force cadets with their families, and remembered Dan’s elation at getting into the Penn State Army ROTC program.  (He sent me IMs at work for that one!) The Alamo was featured in the movie Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and I remembered the Pee Wee Herman PJ’s that Dan received as a birthday gift one year (and how he was terrified that they were actually street clothes and that Mom would send him to Kindergarten in them!)

I kept expecting these memories to be followed by the usual flood of tears, but to my surprise, the tears did not come. Like the baby ducks on the river, I was calm at the surface although I was working hard beneath the surface. I saw the flowers blooming on the side of the river bank, and saw that spring would eventually arrive in Philadelphia as well.  I know that as the seasons change and time goes by, acceptance will come with it.  I still have very bad days, where I struggle with sadness and anger.  I am never going to like the situation, and it is going to take some time for us to get used to this enormous change in our lives. But I do not think Dan would want us to be stuck in the sadness and cold that last winter brought.  I see him everywhere, and he is still with all of us who loved him.

So St. Anthony helped to bring some inner peace that day… I hope that he is working on inspiring those research breakthroughs, too.