The important stuff

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Renee posted this to FB yesterday. Also yesterday I was handed Charles' last column for the newspaper. These two are linked in via my amazing ability to find a common thread in just about everything.

The final deadline.

Charles died this week. I did not know, but he'd penned this column over a year ago. He asked I run it after he was gone. Going to. Next week's paper.

The photo story Renee linked to shows children from around the world with their most prized possessions. The narrative in the story is gripping and echoes the observations I've made while living and traveling in the United States.

This immediately made me think, what are my most prized possessions?

That, for me anyway, is easy. I found that out Jan. 30 of this year. As the local police, sheriff and GBI crawled all over my yard and poked around in two rooms of the house to gather evidence in the shooting, I sent my family to stay with my mother in another community. I told them to take anything they could not live without.

Just to add a different perspective

Then, I applied the same to myself. What were my most prized possessions. As children do not count as a possession and they were already safe, I looked over the rest.

I grabbed my father's recurve bow which he called Bear and the American Flag which flew over the US Army Headquarters in Afghanistan in my honor. It is a gift from my distant cousin David Bass. It still affects me greatly when I think of war, our military,  David, the flag and everything the combination means to me.

Dad's bow is one of the very few things he left me in this life. His other possessions - no, not going there. I do add some of his tools, some of my grandfather's tools and a fishing lure and wood from the house my great-grandfather built were put together to make a chess set for my brother's wedding gift. That's the one thing Shag will take.

So back to Jan. 30, 2013. Everything else, as I left the house that night, I expected to never see again. Thousands of books, some first editions, important papers, an enormous hat collection, some trophies on the wall, pictures and plenty of other items were left without a backward glance. Some of this stuff couldn't be replaced. Some could.

So why the bow and flag? If you don't understand now, then nothing I can add is going to explain it.