In memory of my father, Chester A. Williams, Jr., InklessTales.com will be creating a series of Children-for-Children charities. InklessTales.com donated the first $100, in the name of the Oak Ridge Boys on September 17, 2011, in honor of their massive – and for the most part, unreported – work with children’s charities.
Just before their 9/17/2011 concert in NV, we presented Mr. Joe Bonsall and the rest of
Left: Elizabeth Williams Bushey; Right: Mr. Joe Bonsall of the Oak Ridge Boys, one of my father's all-time favorite groups. The Oak Ridge Boys' new CD, "It's Only Natural," debuts on the Cracker Barrel label this month - get it here: http://www.crackerbarrel.com/music/artists-and-albums/oak-ridge-boys/
the Oak Ridge Boys the Inaugural Chester A. Williams Jr. Award of Recognition, which is now an annual award from InklessTales.com given to those who perform charitable works for children – especially to those who don’t make a big deal about it.
The funds will be collected via the Sacramento Community Foundation, and for more information of the Chester A. Williams Annual Award, or how to apply, you can visit my contact page here for now. More information will be available soon.
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(InklessTales.com, the web site for kids, presents the Inaugural Chester A Williams, Jr. Award of Recognition to The Oak Ridge Boys, for their unfaltering charity work on behalf of children across America.)
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(I wrote the following poems in a quick series after I returned from Milledgeville, Georgia, for the internment of the ashes of my father.)
Sweetheart
In a small box, wrapped in red velvet,
The ashes of my father sat on a podium
Washed in the deep southern sunlight of the chapel
At the Veteran’s Cemetery in Milledgeville, Georgia.
Quiet and still, they sat,
Like the mourners themselves,
Frozen in rows of red velvet chairs.
How a man so tall and strong
Ends up in a box so small
Must be one of the Sorrowful Mysteries
My sister contemplates on her rosary.
That box is not my father.
The very first night away at college,
I lost all my money, and called my mother for help.
She turned me down.
Later that night,
My father filled my doorway.
He handed me forty dollars.
He said very little.
He embraced me. He called me sweetheart.
He told me to take care of myself.
Then my doorway was empty.
That was my father.
Washed in the deep southern sunlight
In Milledgeville, Georgia,
There is a simple gray headstone
For a simple Marine Corps veteran.
It says he served in the Korean War.
It should say he called his daughters “sweetheart.”
It should say he was tall and strong.
He could dead lift a refrigerator.
It should say he had bright blue eyes.
They filled with tears on my graduation day.
It should say he was funny, and sad.
It should say you could never fit all that he was onto a headstone, or into a poem,
The same way you could never fit all that he was into a box,
Even if you wrap it in red velvet,
And wash it in the Georgia sun.
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Texas Hold ’Em
My father cheated death so many times
It wasn’t the heart attack that got him in the end.
It was the astonishment.
I think Death must have had a royal flush.
My father finally folded his cards
In bony, paper-thin hands,
Grinned at the Reaper
He’d evaded so long,
And slipped off
To the undiscovered country.
He left the Reaper
As astonished as the rest of us.
Scythe in one hand,
Cards fanned out in the other,
Mouth agape.
Me, I think I’ll try blackjack.
I’m good with numbers.
“He wouldn’t want you
To take such crazy chances,”
The Reaper will tell me.
“Take care of yourself, sweetheart,
Is what he would say.”
“You know kids,”
I’ll tell him,
Motioning carelessly for another card
Over my one-eyed jack.
“They don’t listen to what you say.
“They watch what you do.”
The Reaper had better watch me.
I have a card or two
Up my own sleeve.
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The Days are Full
The days are full of
keystrokes and coffee cups;
papers, and paperweights
to secure them to the desk;
phone calls and frantic tasks;
cigarettes and small silences;
tickling my children;
walking and watering in the afternoon;
bicycles and board games;
little voices calling me to play.
The evenings are full of
dinner, dishes and spoons;
stories and sing-song;
tidying and not talking;
pillows and pajamas;
milk and make-believe;
a big voice calling me to bed.
The night is full of
the memory of the flattened earth
on my father’s newly-dug grave,
the light from the house next door
in my bedroom window,
and the knowing that the biggest voice I ever knew
has no voice anymore
— Elizabeth Williams Bushey
All Poems © 2005 Elizabeth Williams Bushey; all rights reserved.
