Me and Religion

Leaving behind resentments and coming full circle

My mother and I

For my entire childhood, Labor Day weekend meant camping at Fort Wilkins State Park with my extended family. I have a million memories of biking around all day with cousins, lifting rocks to catch crayfish in the shallows of the lake, getting ice cream from the tiny camp store, and sitting around fires way past our bedtime with teeth coated in marshmallow sugar and melted chocolate on our faces. 

This year, I went back for the first time in well over a decade. 

On a late Saturday afternoon, I found myself sitting in a camper chair around a fire-less pit of charred logs from the previous night with Uncles Corey, Jeff, Jimmy, and Jamey.

I had recently learned that my Uncle Jamey and Aunt Liddy had stayed with our family in the camper during Labor Day weekend in 2002. It was only two months after my father had passed. I asked Uncle Jamey about it, and he said it was to help my mother, and she had wanted us kids to still get the experience of camping that weekend and playing with cousins. 

He said it was incredibly difficult, and my mother cried every night. 

He looked up at me from across the fire pit and said (paraphrasing), “And yeah, you know, what can you do in that situation?” I nodded and knew exactly what he meant, but I didn’t continue the conversation in that direction because I would have gotten emotional. 

I knew the feeling all too well because that camper was the perfect metaphor for our life at that time. 

Hearing a sobbing mother behind a closed door was our life. 

Thinking about what the hell you could possibly do to soothe that pain was our life for a very long time.