Hat Day!
The Mountain of Love is returned to BTW South and the grand tradition of Hat Day is resumed. My counterpart wore his U of M Orchestra ballcap, an odd possession given that he is a vocalist and I have been told that within the U of M School of Music, Theatre, & Dance (until relatively recently the U of M School of Music) there is some enmity between the majority instrumentalists and the minority vocalists. I wore the Lebanon Raceway ballcap I inherited from Grandpa Little, may he rest in peace.

We visited him in the hospital while he was dying and I burst into uncontrollable tears as soon as I saw the withered husk of his body. I was stricken with terror all the way down to the marrow. My mother, usually an angel of mercy, asked me what in the world was wrong. Dear Bog, woman, have you not eyes? Later, she explained that my reaction had caught her off guard as Grandpa's appearance has improved from the last time she'd seen him several weeks earlier. A chill ran up my spine; I'd seen photographs of healthier seeming corpses and could not summon the will to imagine how deathlike Grandpa must have appeared earlier for that day's horrific visage to have evidenced marked recovery. To this day, I have never been so frightened (not startled as by a horror movie or haunted house, but truly, genuinely frightened) as when I first saw my sweet grandfather's desiccated form.

His remains remain the only corpse I have seen with my own two eyes. Both Grandpa Wilson (died ten months earlier) and Grandma Wilson (died three years later) were cremated before the family, such as it is, could gather in loathsome Austin, Texas; seven years after Grandpa's demise and three years after Grandma's, both their deaths retain a certain, slight quality of unreality. But at Grandpa Little's visitation, I could scarcely take my eyes off him. It is a cliche, I know, but true all the same: in death, his appearance was exactly the same and entirely different as in life. Again and again, I would stand next to the casket, my eyes clouded by tears, and look at him. He looked more like himself than he had on that terrifiying morning at the hospital, only hollow. The English language has many shortcomings, but in "remains" our linguistic forefathers hit the nail squarely; one glance at the corpse told me Grandpa had gone, and all that remained was incalculably diminished, an awful mockery of life, fit only be be turned into corruption to await the restoration of the flesh at the Ending of the World.

I only escorted my grandpa to Lebanon Raceway, in Lebanon, Ohio, once, but he was a devotee of harness racing his whole adult life. He was known by the denizens of the place by his first name. He had friends there. His, now my Lebanon Raceway cap reminds me that the desiccated husk in the hospital and the impossibly still remains in the casket weren't my grandpa, my grandpa was the smiling, shuffling man who liked to bet the ponies.

Sometimes a hat is just a hat. Sometimes not. Hat Day is every Thursday at dinnertime, my friends. At BTW South, we try to coincide dinner with the evening's new episode of The Office. I love Hat Day!