‟In case someone needs to get in touch with you.” That’s all Harvey said, but my eyes moistened as I connected with events of February first of the same year. This one sentence brought up a remembrance, although not uppermost in my mind.
In February we had vacationed with friends in Florida. Desperate to reach us and frustrated with our answering machine, our youngest son phoned his sister and asked, ‟Where’s Mom and Dad?” Securing the phone number from her, he called us early that Sunday morning. The wife of our middle son had died during the night. We had little time for it to sink in, for we needed to change our flight schedule, return home to Indiana, and then drive to Lexington, Kentucky, where my husband would conduct the funeral service for our daughter-in-law, dead at age thirty-four, cause unknown.
‟You never know,” Harvey concluded our brief lesson on keeping the ship-to-shore radio tuned up to high volume. My thoughts snapped back to the present. We were again on vacation for a few days and again enjoying the generosity of friends.
Harvey, manager of the floating grocery at the Patoka Lake Marina, didn’t have to emphasize the importance of availability. This time we had given our location and phone contacts to all four children, just in case.
Ann Coker 