Today Lori and I finally published the final version of Cpl. David Moss (A Memorial). It’s been a long process of getting it to a point where it could be offered at a reasonable price and yet still be somewhere near how we envisioned it.

I feel like I should be writing something about you, Jay. That’s what I do. I write to express emotion, I write to stay sane and, among other things, I write to grieve.

It had been two weeks ago when the familiar feelings had slipped silently into his subconscious and then slowly into his more conscience thoughts. He had dealt with most of the tragedy in his life but there was still just a smidgen that would hide most of the time, back in the recesses and then wander itself out about twice a year. He could count on such a visit sometime during the holiday season which made perfect sense but usually in the hottest part of the summer he’d get a visit too.

Denise Cooper Hughes was not your normal mother. She had taken her husband leaving almost in stride because she had two boys to take care of but the death of Foster, her oldest son, had taken a lot of the spark out of her.

Thanksgiving time in North Central Florida was a mixed bag, one day could have you in shorts begging for shade and then an hour or so later a cold front could pass through with a little rain and clouds dropping the temperature to near freezing. This was not the Florida that most people thought about when they dreamed of the Sunshine State. These were not the sandy beaches or the sunburned tourists laying by the water.

Emmitt brushed the red ants off of his right hand and arm, he hated these little bastards. Now he would be itching and scratching for days with the little white blisters each and every bite left. He knew from past experience that unless he could pour ammonia over his arm almost immediately after getting bitten, there wasn’t much to be done, and there wasn’t any place to find ammonia out here in the hammock. They were going to itch until they didn’t and that’s all there was to it.

So much time has passed that details elude me. I try to remember because I know how much it would mean to me to remember. But I’ve forgotten so much.
Prospect, New York, a town of three hundred and fifty people or so, even now, was an excellent place to grow up in the 1960s. It taught me lessons about community and knowing your neighbors, about reaching out and helping where I could. It was the kind of place where a little boy could sell yesterday’s newspapers to the neighbors for a nickel with a cookie thrown in as a tip for delivering them right to their front door. It was the kind of place where a neighbor would stop by every day to have a little boy tag along with him up the hill to the post office and impart on him more wisdom and direction than he could ever know.