This past Saturday, October 30, 2011, my sister and I, along with my husband Dave and Betsy’s friend Jerry, laid Bobby’s ashes to rest. And so here I am, a few days later, writing my last post on Bobby. On his birthday.

I didn’t plan it that way. In fact, we had planned to scatter Bob’s ashes two years ago, but things just didn’t work out. I wondered if they would this time.

The four of us (Betsy, Dave, Jerry, and I) had gone to Roanoke, Virginia, to mingle Bob’s ashes with those of our brother Billy’s. His had been scattered on a high place overlooking the city where he could finally be a star. But when we got to Roanoke, the mountains were socked in and icy roads made travel to the higher elevations hazardous.

It was Jerry who suggested we consider another site, one where Bob used to play and was his happiest as a kid. So on a cold, gray, rainy morning we drove out to the old neighborhood and parked our cars along Mudlick Creek. The last of autumn’s colors shimmied in the still pools of the once-gurgling creek that winds its way to the Roanoke River.

We unpacked all that physically remained of our youngest brother–a bag of sand-like, whitish ashes that could easily fit into a woman’s size 7 shoe box.

No sooner had we carried what was once our living, breathing brother over to the creek than the sky parted directly over our heads. An intense blue hole opened right above us and the sun shone through, down onto the creek, into the grotto where echoes of Bob’s laughter could once be heard.

And was heard again, in all its deep, rich joyfulness at the absurdities of life.

The sun lit up a young, golden-leafed maple where Betsy and Dave used some sticks to rake a scattering of ashes into some loose dirt around its base. I took the plastic bag, still brimming with its contents, and swooped it out over a still pool of water. Betsy did the same.

“You’re part of the elements now, Bob,” I said. Of course, he always was. More than any of us, he was the one closest to nature.

We watched as his ashes spread out in the water like a milky galaxy across the night sky.

Dave meanwhile had gone to stand on the little bridge that crossed the creek so he could take some photos.

“Look!” he said. All of a sudden, the creek started running again, into the pool where Bob’s ashes were mingling with the water.

The water was continuing its journey. It had seeped from hillside springs, washed down from the mountains, filtered through the glens, and wound its way through the meadows, and now it was on its way to becoming one with the Chesapeake Bay, Atlantic Ocean, and air around us.

You’re free, Bob.

We’ll miss you.

Just as I started to press the “send” option, a low rumbling sound came rolling in from somewhere. My first thought–earthquake!!! I had been in a minor “shake” in Raleigh, North Carolina, back in the late 1960s, and I’ll never forget the sounds and feelings that went with it–the low rumbling that slowly but steadily built into a roar, the shaking and swaying of everything, and the noise from rattling glass, furniture, and buildings.

Surely NOT! Not in West-by-God-Virginia! No, it must be a C-5 in descent over our house for landing in Martinsburg.

Then the house shook. The house swayed. Looking through the windows to see what was up, I saw the deck posts shimmy. I stood, but there was no center of equilibrium. This never happened with a C-5, even when it was smack dab over our house, I thought, as visions of being trapped in the lower level of our house sprang to mind. That was when I ran outside. Dave was on the deck rockin’ and rollin’ to a bumpy, erratic beat.

Earthquake! we both shouted.

And then there was silence. I sent the last chapter. And things subsided back to “normal.”

I knew my momentous occasion was no earth-shaking event in the big scheme of things. But I couldn’t help wondering what might happen if and when the book is ever published.

This can be especially frustrating when I’m dealing with secret organizations. The Underground Railroad, for instance. Or the Knights of the Golden Circle. Or the “Snake Hunters” who helped Union troops capture the Moccasin Rangers in West Virginia in 1861. Or the “Patriots” who participated in the Canadian Rebellion of 1837 and 1838.

Getting a tight fix on people and events that used subterfuge to cover their trails is a bit like lassoing moving targets in the dark–there are always going to be loopholes big enough to trip up even the surest-footed Sherlock Holmes.

Which brings me to my point for today, if there is one besides “blenting”–that is, using my blog to vent. One thing I’ve relearned on this journey is that every piece of history ever recorded, in whatever format, is incredibly limiting and freeing. We can never recapture all that happened in even a fraction of a second, but every tidbit corralled has the potential to open up whole new ways of seeing and appreciating this awesome thing we call life.

In August/September, Dave and I traveled to Minnesota for a Borchard family reunion. In October we took a little time out to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary in Maine. Since then I’ve been devoting most of my time and energy to helping my daughter and her family during her recovery from hernia repair. She has been prohibited from lifting anything more than eight pounds for two months from the date of her surgery. That includes five-year-old Ethan, three-year-old Delaney, and Camden, the 18-month-old, that cute “little” snug-a-lug who weighs in at a “mere” 36 pounds!

So, thanks to the “weights” I’ve been lifting and yoga, my upper body strength has increased significantly. But I haven’t had much time, energy, or inclination for writing. In fact, I had actually started skidding into a writing slump before my daughter’s surgery, after I printed out and started reading a rough draft of the historical novel I had been working on. The deep freeze seemed the perfect resting place for it.

Yet, if the past four months have brought anything home to me, it’s not only the importance of family, but the joy of being blessed with kids, grandkids, relatives, and a husband I dearly love. And that, I realize, is what the letters and stories of my ancestors are really about.

Even so, I have found it hard to plow through the frozen meadows in my writing, and so I have been hoping for a few small breaks or signs that a thawing is on the way. Three things have happened in the past week that, for me, just may indicate that the “green fuse” is rising.

The first is a funny little coincidence that most people would probably find insignificant. When Dave and I went to vote on Saturday, December 5th, the two people who had signed in just before us had the last name of “Byers.” Since that is one of the family names associated with the letters, I wondered: was something nudging me to get back to them?

On Sunday, December 6th, I completed a little project I had been asked to do by my grandson Ethan for his kindergarten class at Parr’s Ridge Elementary School in Mt. Airy, Maryland. What were the Christmas traditions in Shepherdstown, his class wanted to know. In doing a bit of research for this project, I discovered that Shepherdstown is known as a “storybook” town, so I decided to use the “storybook” approach for the project–with hopes that it would inspire the kindergarteners, now learning to read, to do their own storybooks. I had a lot of fun doing it, and it reminded me of how much I enjoyed writing and doing artistic things.

On Monday, December 7th, Dave and I were shopping in our local bookstore, Four Seasons, when the January 2010 issue of “The Writer Magazine” caught my eye. One of the stories featured on the cover was “Simple Strategies to Get Out of A Creative Rut.” I bought it.

Tuesday night, before going to sleep, I opened the magazine to that article. Was I ever surprised and delighted to find that it was an archival article by Peggy Simson Curry, Wyoming’s first poet laureate. Peggy died in 1987, but I was fortunate to be in the last creative writing course she taught at Casper College and, later, in a small writing group she started. If I had to pick one person who inspired and helped me in my writing career, it would be Peggy, not just because of her accomplishments, but because of who she was. Whomever she was with, whatever she was doing–she did with all her heart, mind, soul, and strength.

In writing about her own winter as a writer, she recalls the time she saw some men with pitchforks digging hay out of a snow-covered meadow. “Deep in those haystacks, covered with snow,” she writes, “was the green and fragrant heart of summer. No matter how cold the day, a man could dig down and find the green. He could smell again the timothy and the clover.”

Is it just coincidence that that article by that particular person landed in my hands at this time? I tend to think not, but regardless of the significance of such a “coincidence,” for me it has a clear meaning. As Peggy writes, “winter meadows [are] an inevitable part of every life, but in such meadows there [are] always the humps of snow-drifted green, the gathered and fragrant harvest of living.”

Thanks, Peggy.

In a crack-crazed frenzy one night Bobby shoved Mother to the floor and stomped on her, breaking her hip. She eventually recovered and seemed to have forgiven him. Maybe she also felt contrite. For years we had all been emotionally ravaged at various times from her explosive, abusive temper. Had she said some things that night that provoked Bobby, who was already beyond rationality or restraint in a drug-induced fury?

My sister and I had seen Bobby’s glassy-eyed, animalistic behavior ourselves when he was under the influence of crack-cocaine, and I can still remember how we barricaded ourselves in the bedroom when we feared for our own safety.

But Bobby and Mother made up, and life went on. For awhile, at least.

A few years later Mother was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. It was during those long months when she lay dying that Bobby gave her and us all a great gift. He was the one of her four children who stayed with her and looked after her on a daily basis.

My brother Billy and his wife Linda, a registered nurse, lived nearby and also kept a check on her. My sister Betsy and I were a thousand miles away with full-time jobs and family responsibilities. The last time she and I saw Mother was when she came to the memorial service for my sister’s husband John, killed in a C130 airplane crash on October 5th, 1992. Bobby drove her up to Virginia from Florida, oxygen tank and tubes included.

One month later Betsy and I were on a plane to Florida for a memorial service for Mother. Our two brothers were there to greet us.

They are both gone now. Little did I know that the next time we would see Bobby would be at the memorial service for Billy. Nor did I realize at the time how Bobby, whose freedom was his driving passion, had freed me not once, but twice.

I like to travel light, he said, freeing me from my misplaced sense of responsibility for his personal choices. I was glad I could be there, he said, of the time he spent with Mother during her final days. So was I.

No, it wasn’t Bobby. But it could have been.

That was actually the first great gift that Bobby gave me. But there was another gift that happened a few years later that enabled me to see the first one through a more generous lens.

Bobby was sitting at our kitchen table trying to read the newspaper when he asked me if I had a magnifying glass. I brought him two–a small one for slipping in a pocket and a larger one with a handle. “Here,” I said, “take either or both.”

“If you’re sure you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ll take the small one. I like to travel light.”

That was when I asked him if he had any regrets about the lifestyle he had chosen, living on the streets on a hand-to-mouth basis.

“No,” he said. “I don’t like to be tied down, and I don’t need much. But I have lots of friends and lots of freedom, and that’s what I love.”

I had no doubts about his sincerity. There was no defiance or insistence in his answer–just a simple statement of who he was, relaxed, at ease, and happy with the choices he had made.

A heavy burden lifted off my shoulders then. For years I had been wondering if there was something (God knows what) that I should have been doing to “save” Bobby. Now I knew. We were both free to follow our own paths.

The show’s theme, “Play Time,” plays off Shepherdstown’s Contemporary American Theater Festival as well as just having fun with watercolor.  No serious “WORKS of Art” allowed. But artists and guests are welcome!

The show runs through the month of July and features several new paintings, including the one at left entitled, “Opening Night.” Purchase price for this original watercolor, framed and matted, with an image area of 11″ by 15″, is $375.

The gallery and visitor’s center is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. The visitor’s center is located behind The Lost Dog Cafe. To see and purchase more paintings by Pat, be sure to visit The Yellow Brick Bank Restaurant and The Bridge Gallery in Shepherdstown. Or visit her website at www.patriciadonohoe.com.

It was my daughter Lora who picked Bob up at the airport when he finally arrived on a much later flight than originally scheduled. When I saw him, I knew that he had gone to some trouble to look as nice as he could. His hair was trimmed, he was clean, and he had on clean, sharply pressed clothes.

“From the Salvation Army,” he later told me. Yet the ten years of his rough and tumble style of living had taken its toll, and I doubt that I would have recognized him if I had passed him on the street. But he was still my brother. 

I’ll always wonder if his concern about looking nice was more about his feelings of inadequacy or his sensitivity to the feelings of embarrassment I might have at being seen with him. I have to confess that such feelings had crossed my mind.

As it turned out, I was just glad and thankful to be with him. We had a wonderful visit, and I was sad to see him leave, especially since I had a sense that I would probably never see him again.

Not until sometime after his visit did the heart of what Bobby had said about wanting to look as nice as he could really hit home. Although he may have dressed his words in images of appearance, what he was really doing, I believe, was baring his soul–expressing his naked desire to be re-united with his family.

It was while were we sitting around talking one evening that he said something that turned out to be the greatest gift he could ever have given me.

Meanwhile, our sister Betsy had found out what had happened and was waiting at the other end–a bit nervously. Would she recognize him? Neither of us had seen him for several years–not since our mother had died ten years ago.

We were used to Bobby’s rough appearance–after all, he lived on the street. But what had ten years on the street done to him?

I wondered if he was addressing our philistine concerns or his own sense of inadequacy when I talked with him on the phone and he said, “And, Patty, I’ll look as nice as I can.”

I didn’t know what to say. My heart was breaking. So, in typical Donohoe fashion, I resorted to humor.

“Well, Bob,” I said, “that would be good since it’s important to look as nice as you can in order to get on an airplane these days.”

Then I waited to see how he would take my comment. I didn’t have to wait long. He burst out laughing and said, “Thank God for Donohoe humor. God, it’s good to talk with you!”

But I was still in for several surprises when we saw him.

A sobbing voice on the other end cracked and asked me if it were true.

It was my brother Bob. He had just found out about the death of our brother Billy from reading the obituary notice in the newspaper.

At that time, Billy’s widow and son were, in fact, on their way up to Virginia, where we were having a memorial service for Billy.

“Do you think it would be appropriate,” Bobby said when his sobbing eased, “would it be okay for me to come to the service?”

I had not expected such a question, and it took me a minute to answer.

“Of course,” I said. “But Bob, that’s not the question. The question is do you WANT to come to the service.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

My sister Betsy and I made plans for Bobby to fly up here and stay with us.

“Just two things, Bob,” I said, as I was going over the arrangements with him. Knowing that he had no car, I asked him if he could find transportation to the Orlando airport, about an hour or so away from Merritt Island.

“Yes,” he said.

“Okay, second question–do you have a valid ID. You can’t get on a plane these days without one.” It was September of 2002 and airport security had tightened dramatically in the past year.

“Yes,” he said, “I have a Florida state ID card.”

It sounded like we were all set. At the appointed time, Betsy drove the 90 minutes to BWI and went to the gate to meet him. No Bobby.

That was the beginning of a weekend I’ll never forget.