#800 – Dick Bernard: Visiting home.

(click to enlarge)

Early this morning I made a solitary drive out to the farm where my mother was born in 1909.
I’d been up and down this driveway hundreds of times over the years, but this trip was different.
The sky in the east was pink and I knew sunrise was close, but as I drove the lane to the farmstead, when I reached the top of that small hill, I was greeted by an intense rising sun. I immediately stopped the car, got out, and took the single photo you see above.
It was 7:30 a.m., and the thermometer showed 11 degrees.
Just a few hours before, and ten miles away, I’d been dealing with the stress of admitting Mom’s brother to the local nursing home. It was the reason for this trip.
He’s near 89, and finally reached the point where he could no longer independently cope, even, with assisted living. So down the hall he and I and an attendant went, to a new room a couple of doors down from where his 93 year old sister has lived for the past year.
It was not easy. I’ve participated in this ritual before, with others, as have many people I know. For the elderly, nursing home beds are not preferred destinations. It was Veterans Day (Armistice Day) when Uncle was admitted. While his room is pleasant, and private, it may as well have been the Hanoi Hilton. He knows what it means. But he needs to be there.
He and his sister lived for 81 and 87 years perhaps 50 feet to the left of where I took my photo of the sunrise.
In 1904 his Dad, my Grandpa, purchased the quarter section of never-plowed ground, and stood where I was; a few months later, Grandpa and his new bride, Grandma, took the train the 600 or so miles from rural Wisconsin to the bustling new farm country to build a life.
The building you see to the left in the photo was a grain bin, the first building constructed on the property. The next was the farm house, built just to my left, and the first ground tilled was to my right. It had to be an exhausting but fulfilling year, even though they were young, 25 and 21, respectively.
At right in the photo is the long vacant barn. The roof blew off that barn in 1949, and Uncle, Grandpa and my Dad did lots of the building of the trusses for the roof. The local pastor, an expert carpenter, looked at their work and said, “it’ll never last”. That was 63 years ago. Uncle was 24 and Dad was 41 and Grandpa 69. I think in that kind of context quite often these days.
When Grandma and Grandpa died, my Uncle took over operation of the farm. He was always a small farmer, but a good one. He was the kind of person who built the midwest and fed the country. This lasted until 2006 when health issues made farming impossible for him, and they moved to town, ten miles away. Even then, driving out to this driveway, tending flowers, and the garden and such, were frequent occurrences.
We talk now in the past tense.
Sunday, two days earlier, he and I had driven the countryside and were on the road that goes past the Berning place, and just a quarter miles or so west, Uncle noticed something hanging from a telephone pole. We stopped there, and took a look.
It appeared to be a hawk who by some circumstance found itself entangled in some way, and had died there, fluttering in the wind. I took several photos, and came back the next day and took some more, including turning 180 degrees and taking one final photo of the family farm.
For all of us, “there is a season”, as that oft-quoted text from Ecclesiastes says.
We do the best we can.
For sure my Uncle and Aunt did just that, and however long they both have, they earned our respect.