Here, There, and Everywhere!: The Call of the Loon

The call of the loon, long and mournful, is a sound I will forever connect to the Minnesosiates community at Hand Lake. I have been coming here since before I can remember and yet this may be one of the last times I come back here. This place that was such an integral part of my childhood has been changed forever.

My Grandpa Smith passed away in January and so the family gathered at the lake this past weekend to celebrate the life of Grandpa Joe and his beloved wife, my Grandma Win, who died a few years ago. This morning we gathered on the shore of the lake and sang and read a poem that ended with the words, “Love doesn’t die, people do. So, when all that’s left of me is love, give me away.” Family and friends then stepped forwards to pick up wrapped boxes of intermingled ashes that we took to spread around this place that they called home for so many years. They were friends for seventy-eight years and partners for sixty-seven years. Truly an amazing feat.

As we all gathered around the table, and many of us fought back tears, stories and reflections were shared; one of which I would like to repeat here because of it’s incredible nature. My Grandma and Grandpa were held at a Japanese concentration camp in the Philippines during World War II. My Uncle Fred (my dad’s older brother) was born there and they were thankfully released in 1945. At one point during their imprisonment they were moved on the night of December 26th from one site to the next along a road that the Allied Forces often bombed because a large Japanese base was nearby. Years later, my Grandpa was talking to a soldier that was in the American Air Force and stationed miles from this site. When they mentioned that they had moved from one location to another, the soldier asked during which night this had occurred. When he answered, “the night of December 26th,” the soldier looked at him in awe and said, “that was the only night that we did not bomb that road because the fighter planes had run out of fuel and could not get off the ground.” To imagine that my grandparents, and therefore, my own life was rhetorically saved by an empty tank of gas is truly amazing.

Stories like that just blow me out of the water. The unpredictability of life and the importance of treasuring our time together seem to be a common theme for me right now but at least I know that with this mindset I can live without regrets and follow in my grandparents’ footsteps: living each day to the fullest but always remembering to stop and appreciate the little things, like the call of the loon.