(The plates went into the Bay right here, off the breakwater. Photo Socotra)

I am dazed. The clock radio was playing classical music, as it normally does with the alarm, and I was inhaling the first Dazbog-brand coffee of the morning before I actually looked at the clock and discovered it was a little after two AM.

Crap. Two hours early for the wake-up, and the residual of the 5-Hour energy drink must still have had my system  I have not had much of a chance to think about things, or better said, have been thinking about all the things all the time and not processing it very well.

This was a week of miracles. Whether it is a secular or Holy miracle I don’t claim to know, but I will tell you that there are the wings of angels in some things, and this week passed with a smoothness that suggests to me that we were borne along on someone else’s wings.

We got a lot done: the details with the funeral home, cleaning out the Bluffs, cleaning out the densely-packed apartment, arranging the memorial service, placing the obit, clearing space back at the house for Betty’s books and photos, and taking the rest of the new stuff without family association to the Goodwill.

The next step will be paperwork, of course, but we have decided when to have the funerals, and there is plenty of time to figure that out now that we have got the dates straight for people to travel.

The last night we were there in The Little Village By the Bay, Mike and I went down to the breakwater in the Harbor with two dinner plates from Potemkin Village the night before a very early departure to enable him to make a flight out of Detroit.

It was a dreamlike transit out of the darkness of the north, hurtling in the Mercedes rental that I will shortly have to return to the nice people at Hertz, once I unload the stuff out of it. I could not make more than a token effort when I pulled into the lot at Big Pink.

I realized it was only 0900 on a marvelous sunny January Day, and, if I played my cards right, I could be at Willow for happy hour.

I was. Best time ever, clocking in the 800 miles in 11:45:01 elapsed, which translates, with two fuel stops, to an average speed of advance of 68.04 mph.

The light was golden under deep blue skies. I had the window down a lot as the miles slid by. I thought and then stopped, letting the road feel flow up through the leather-wrapped wheel, listening to a variety of excellent channels on the SiriusXM radio in the dash. Spike and I listened to CNN and sports analysis of the New Hampshire primary, and the dissection of the alleged BCS championship game, and once I was alone in he car, and able to have the window down and the radio up full blast, I settled on The Loft for alt rock, and wound up listening to international radio later on.

I thought about Spike on the breakwater, and of us hurling the plates like inverted frisbees out into the unsettled waters of the bay to take the Greek rite, and say a goodbye in the last light high light of early January.

Making the Big Left Turn out of Michigan to cross Ohio, I noted the time on the clock on the illuminated display as I updated the nav plot. A week ago to the minute, I thought, leaving Toledo in the rear view, I called the Doc’s Nurse to see what was up with Dad.

Near Elyria was when the Doc himself called me back and told me Dad was shutting down and would not last long enough for me to get there. Approaching Cleveland was when the nursing home called to notify me he was gone.

Cruising across the central highlands of Pennsylvania and Bedford was the minute that Jackie called me say that Mom had gone, too.

I still can’t quite get my mental arms around that one, and the very strangest thing happened at the Memorial service at Potemkin Village. Mom’s friend Lee pointed out a man in a yellow fuzzy jacket.

(Ernie Mainland, owner of Windemere Cottage at Walloon.)

“That is Ernest Hemingway’s nephew,” she said. “He is the son of “Sunny” Mainland who was Ernie’s favorite sister. He owns the Windemere Cottage where the Hemingways summered at Walloon Lake.”

“Holy Cow,” I said, watching my language. “Mom was looking for him for the last two years. That was part of the whole narrative she had, of us helping to organize the the big Hemingway festival here in town this coming summer. I explained to her that it was planned for her birthday, and she was happy with that. She liked the plan. Now, that is the weekend we will have the funerals.”

“You ought to meet him,” said Lee, and I marched over and gave him my card. I explained the whole thing, and he said he was planning on being out of town when the literary celebrants came to town. Apparently being a tourist attraction can pale after several decades, but Mom and her encyclopedic knowledge of all things Hemingway in town had endeared her to him, and she did with everything she did.

A day or two later and down the road, I felt myself unstuck in time. The events swirled- the places all jumbled up. There was the apartment , the dump, the recycling center, the Goodwill, the consignment place. The car floated with minimal interference along the concrete with the cruise control on, traffic light, the miles melting away. Bedford, Somerset, Breezewood, Hagerstown, Frederick, Rockville and suddenly I was flying over the American Legion Bridge and into Virginia again.

It was still daylight when I walked into Willow and sat down on the stool next to John-with-an-H. Old Jim scowled in welcome.

I felt a little strange, I assumed from the coffee I had been drinking all day and the energy drink I consumed passing north of Pittsburgh, having a remarkable feeling of lightness, one with the ethereal skies.

No more Pennsylvania Turnpike for a while. There is nothing in the North that will summon me with the urgent command to hurtle north. All the paperwork can be done by remote control from here in Arlington. It was a magical drive, though. Pavement clean and dry, skies sunny, temperature brisk and not unpleasant with the window down in my red parka.

I managed to get the Mercedes back to Big Pink and got the high-value crap and the perishable groceries up to the unit. I assume everything else is still down there. I will have to go and check shortly, if I am to get the car back before the one-week anniversary of the minute I passed out of the garage at Reagan National Airport and into the strangest week of my life.

(Trusty Mercedes GLK-350 in the last light of the last sunset in our time in the Little Village By the Bay.)

I had an armful of mail and my computer bag and Chris the concierge said I had two boxes, too. They were square, and heavy for their modest size. They had my unit number written on the side and an official looking USPS address form on the top. I sighed, It was magical, the whole thing. The proximity of their passing, the miles under our wheels, the accommodating weather, the kindness of the people, the brilliance of the sunset.

The boxes contained the ashes of my folks.

No surprise. Bill and Betty had beat me home.

It was a week of miracles indeed.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vocsocotra.com