Never Gone: Part Four - Memories

It’s an overcast day the and still Gray is sweating profusely from the hoeing he was doing around the garden. With sweat running down his arms and onto the hoe handle, his garden gloves are soaked. The heat and humidity of the summer, along with the spring rains mold and the blight affected most of his crops this year. A far cry from the days when he worked in his father’s backyard garden at their suburban home outside Savannah. But Gray’s Dad, a child of the Great Depression like most of their neighbors still kept “victory gardens” just as they did when they were kids. Gray laughed at himself just a little, wiping the sweat from his brow. Thinking about how many times he cursed under his breath when working the old man’s garden. Peggy called from the front porch for Grayson to come inside before it got too hot and to take his medicine. Without an argument Gray climbed the porch steps, put aside his hoe took off his shoes and stepped inside.

Inside his office he carefully lays out each pill he has to take. . Like a morning ritual each pill lined up according to size and shape. After he takes his pills, he turns on his computer and lights a scented candle and begins writing. A far cry from laborer, contractor, correctional officer, and systems analyst he once was. Gray now pursues his first passion writing. A pursuit that began by watching his Grandpa Higgins spending most of his free time in his own office reading and writing. As a moderately successful independent blogger, poet, and storyteller. Gray has never considered himself anything more than a hack. But the books he has self-published and the stories he has told bring pleasure to those who have taken the time to read them. Along with his own disabilities, Gray is a caregiver to his wife Peg, who suffered a earlier illness that caused physical and cognitive damage. While the burden of dealing with his own health issues is bad enough. There is a silver lining to it all, his disability allows him more time to care for Peggy and pursue his passions.  

Staring at that blinking curser is often an intimidating thing. Some days it’s a total struggle while on other’s the words flow like sift river current. Today is one of those struggling days, with his mind racing through moments of the past. Thinking about things like his parents and the family he lost so long ago. Other than parents and grandparents, Gray’s seen the deaths of aunts, uncles, and even cousins over the years. After a while of staring at the dark screen, Gray decides to take a break and rest his back. Stretched out on the bed Grey takes a moment to check his emails and messages on his phone. After deleting most of the emails, he checks his social media pages where he promotes his stories and interacts with his fans. No social media Gray also follows a number of likeminded “struggling artist” on various platforms to help with his relative isolation.

One of the newer artisans he follows is a young woman named Suzanne who lives in the Carolinas. Besides being cute as a button, she spins tales of folk magic and growing up with a grandmother that practiced old natural folk magic and made potions. The attraction to her was nearly instantaneous as Grey started following her account, he began to notice a familiarity about her story. Rather it was her old wives tales similar to the ones he heard all his life. Or just the fact that she was a young married woman struggling with a young family just as he and Peg did. There was something about her story clicked inside Grey’s  taking him back to the tales of his own family in those sandy foothills of South Central Georgia.