gravestones

WordPress Discover: Hands

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For April 2020, WordPress has brought back its Discover prompts.  Each day a new blogging theme is outlined for bloggers taking an interest.

Today I saw the prompts have been taken over by Michelle Weber. Today she proposed considering hands.

About being a helping hand, I lend assistance to a family business, Maple Lawn.  My dad and I direct the operation of Maple Lawn Cemetery, a small cemetery in our town whose operations we manage weekly.  You can find us on Facebook here:  https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited

This year we are managing cutting down a tree.  The cemetery is surrounded by trees, and when the winds pick up, naturally, tree branches come down from the air.  We usually burn the fallen branches.

This year sparkles from the blaze flew into the tree beside the fire. The tree caught fire from the inside, strangely enough.

We had to bring down the tree and destroy it, as a good deal of the care we provide, for the cemetery, is for the sake of visitors, making the cemetery looking peaceful and cared-for.

I have a photo of how the ground looked around where the tree crashed when we sawed it down.  It was very disorderly.

Cemetery after treefall

My responsibility at the cemetery is chiefly to be a helping hand to my father, Peter.  I also handle the Facebook page for the cemetery, a portal through which we are available.

I took both snapshots and video of the ramifications of lighting that tree in flame and bringing it down.  When Michelle today was asking interested bloggers to reflect on the idea of hands, I thought to point out again that I’m a helping hand to my father, who is in his seventies and getting eccentric but still dedicated to operating the cemetery.

I hope you like the photo, and that you are staying safe during COVID-19.

Why Looking Backward at 2019 is Worse than a Bad Valentine

I wrote this three months ago, the beginning of the winter that changed lives around the world. I realize that despite my intention to offer kind wishes, nobody got what they wanted when the last month became unprecedented in history.

I didn’t factor into the equation how long we would be at the same task. Speaking in terms of temperature forecasts, some days were more tolerable than others.

Today the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario ordered all non-essential businesses closed. They had already begun reacting to the new restrictions. When I raised the point with my dad the last couple of times we spoke together, he said that a cemetery is considered an essential service.

Photographer:
Elliott Chau

My dad has a business and we have an agreement that I will do some work for the cemetery which the business operates. The agreement is becoming strained, of course, because of the recession.

My mom asked me quietly why I seem disinterested. I wasn’t sure how to emphasize sympathy was the issue, given that the present events around the world are tragic and discouraging.

I decided to update this because that was kind of one winter I might be happy to put behind me. Seeing a copy of TROS was nice, though.

A week or so after a lovely Christmas rest and a pleasant New Year’s Day, we finished last year rather indignantly when a brushfire spread to one of our trees, a fire which we had to extinguish.

    My mother turned seventy years old in December.  She has been enormous for me, obviously, beyond what I can succinctly talk. She said she was pleased when she saw for herself this post.

    I remember when Mom was asking me as Christmas approached what Christmas TV programming I might get to see, and she reminded me that a lot of the network TV shows are having their mid-season hiatus.  It’s sort of in their absence, especially, that the network shows feel relevant and add heaps of joy to the calendar year.

   I don’t have the foggiest idea whether you have a sentiment for January, or if nothing else be alongside associates with who you can explore the winter month of January.  I know from the weight of popular interest in romance, and relationships, that there is something intrinsically human and good about the romance of winter.

Seeing the tree that had been alight

    While I’m a Canadian, I live in the southern ranges, where lake impact temperatures are generally sensible, while keeping you inside a greater amount of the time than you may somehow prefer to spend. Some people have that flair to form a unit that stops a problem, and sometimes, even if it is as routine as waiting for the cast of, for example, The Bachelor, to reconvene.

    I risk appearing to be dismal if I reflect what getting in some Bachelor may accomplish for me.

    It could prove, by the fact that I help at a cemetery, that being morose lives for me in a heart of darkness, but tempering that with an appetite for uplifting and curious experiences, you have in me, not a pack animal nor a reptile, but, I feel, an effusive human being, making a sound perceptible in its absence.

No Perceptible Difference By Its Presence or Absence – Aristotle

You don’t have a clue what you have until it’s gone, maybe, but I don’t know now that our certainties for the future have been upset what to expect entirely, nor, I take it, does anybody. Remember that prayer often provides relief.