Labor Day Labor

   Our family Labor Day tradition is to labor. On a family member's house project. Usually roofing. Usually for Britten and Luke, who have put new shingles on every house they have bought. Thanks to a recent hail storm, their 3 - 5 year timeline for replacing their roof became a before winter project. Specifically, this holiday weekend was dedicated to removing the old shingles. This task turned out to be more labor intensive than expected because most of the shingles were stuck directly to the wood instead of the usual underlayment. The labor pool included Britten and Luke, of course, (even Brie got to help by pulling nails) Will and Reed. Em watched the girls most of the time and I took a turn as well. Painfully absent, was Tracy. He helped with almost all of the family projects. Even when Tracy's life was a mess in other ways, he was there to help when work needed doing. Work is what bonded our adult children together. 

    I know Trace is better off in heaven than on a roof or at our dinner table, but we are not. The family, including Tracy's girlfriend, Amanda, and her daughter, gathered at our house for dinner when the Labor Day labor ended. We ate, visited and enjoyed the antics of the granddaughters, who hardly spent any time in the swimming pool but were naked most the the time anyway. We gave each of the children and granddaughters money from the tithe of Tracy's life insurance. Amanda, as well. I put the checks in envelopes with pictures of each of them with Tracy. It broke my heart to make them and theirs to get them, but I wanted them to know the money was from Tracy, not us. I may write Trace another letter, to tell him what he missed. And what we missed. It was a comfort to continue our family labor on Labor Day tradition, but the comfort was as incomplete as our family. There are some holes that only God can patch.