Chapter 10 - Remembering
Spring arrived late in Chicago that year.
By early May, the green shoots of tulips were pushing their way up through the dark soil in our front yard on Elm Street, and the warm sunlight filled every corner of our home.
Brenda had enrolled in a local community college to finish the nursing degree she had abandoned twenty years earlier when she married my father. Chloe had been accepted into Northwestern University’s forensic psychology program, set to begin her freshman year in the fall.
And I was preparing to start my degree in digital forensic auditing at the University of Chicago.
On a warm Saturday afternoon, the three of us drove out to Pinegrove Cemetery, located on a quiet, tree-lined hill overlooking the suburbs.
The grass was fresh, dark green, and dusted with soft white dandelion seeds blowing in the spring breeze.
We walked up the gentle slope to a polished black granite headstone set beneath a grand oak tree.
The headstone read:
DAVID MORGAN
1972 – 2024
Beloved Husband and Father
“Records don't lie.”
Brenda knelt down, placing a small bouquet of fresh yellow daffodils against the stone. She rested her fingers gently against his carved name, her face at peace.
Chloe and I stood side by side behind her, holding hands.
I pulled my phone from my pocket—not the old cracked smartphone from the floorboard, but a new, simple phone. I opened an audio recording app, recorded a three-second clip of the spring wind rustling through the oak leaves above us, and saved the file under a folder named Home.
Chloe looked at me, a soft, knowing smile on her face. “What are you doing, Faye?”
I looked down at our father’s grave, then up at the bright, clear blue sky above us.
May you like
“Remembering,” I said.
And for the first time in my life, I smiled.
