This has been a good season for black berries, I managed to collect half a gallon from the tree line in the 'new nature preserve'.
For as long as I can remember I have been collecting the delicacies. It became a sort of ritual or rite of passage for me, I would spend those few days before the 1st of July crawling through the poison ivy and brush, swatting mosquitoes, and saturating my old shirts with sweat in the steamy bush of central Indiana to collect the dark berries. I would bring them home in an old milk jug and give them to my mother who in turn would bake a pie of them for my birthday present.
I always enjoyed consuming the majority of the pie with most of a gallon of ice cream.
The summer that my father suffered with brain cancer was very difficult. The disease caused considerable confusion and dementia within my father who had always been so clear of mind and thought. This was an understood condition, all of my siblings had suffered the same, but knowing that fact did little to satiate the pain I felt dealing with his state and time of dying.
I managed to complete my ritual that summer, I brought home the fruit and my mother managed to bake the pie. My mother, my father, and I sat at the small table under the light in the kitchen on Lone Oak Road. My fathers condition left us mostly silent as my mother served us all a piece of pie. The room was quiet except for the occasional 'tink' of the flat ware on the saucers. We all suffered in that silence as my father tried to feed himself. The dark juice from the berries trickled down his hands and onto his palms, he noticed this before we did and in his lost state believed and exclaimed with a great amount of panic that he had cut himself.
Quite a bit of time and consoling brought him back to a state of calm. He would have these episodes often, the troubling part for me was seeing the panic in his eyes during the fits, and what seemed to be shame and regret in those same dark eyes once the episode had passed. It appeared as if he, in a glimmer of sanity, realized the state of his mental condition and health and knowingly could do nothing.
My fathers body was placed in the ground that winter. Many years passed before I collected berries again. I have had black berry pies since then, and I will make pies with this seasons harvest, but the pies don't (and I don't think they will ever) taste as sweet as they did before that dark summer.
For as long as I can remember I have been collecting the delicacies. It became a sort of ritual or rite of passage for me, I would spend those few days before the 1st of July crawling through the poison ivy and brush, swatting mosquitoes, and saturating my old shirts with sweat in the steamy bush of central Indiana to collect the dark berries. I would bring them home in an old milk jug and give them to my mother who in turn would bake a pie of them for my birthday present.
I always enjoyed consuming the majority of the pie with most of a gallon of ice cream.
The summer that my father suffered with brain cancer was very difficult. The disease caused considerable confusion and dementia within my father who had always been so clear of mind and thought. This was an understood condition, all of my siblings had suffered the same, but knowing that fact did little to satiate the pain I felt dealing with his state and time of dying.
I managed to complete my ritual that summer, I brought home the fruit and my mother managed to bake the pie. My mother, my father, and I sat at the small table under the light in the kitchen on Lone Oak Road. My fathers condition left us mostly silent as my mother served us all a piece of pie. The room was quiet except for the occasional 'tink' of the flat ware on the saucers. We all suffered in that silence as my father tried to feed himself. The dark juice from the berries trickled down his hands and onto his palms, he noticed this before we did and in his lost state believed and exclaimed with a great amount of panic that he had cut himself.
Quite a bit of time and consoling brought him back to a state of calm. He would have these episodes often, the troubling part for me was seeing the panic in his eyes during the fits, and what seemed to be shame and regret in those same dark eyes once the episode had passed. It appeared as if he, in a glimmer of sanity, realized the state of his mental condition and health and knowingly could do nothing.
My fathers body was placed in the ground that winter. Many years passed before I collected berries again. I have had black berry pies since then, and I will make pies with this seasons harvest, but the pies don't (and I don't think they will ever) taste as sweet as they did before that dark summer.
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