A Memory....

Sometimes I get these flashes of memory that come out of nowhere. I have no idea why or what brings them on they just come. Tonight I was sitting on the couch with John watching a commercial when suddenly I had this memory of something that happened a long time ago, well, not a LONG time ago, but long enough to not be something fresh in my mind. Let me give you some background:

I remember when I was really young, I was standing in my bedroom with my older sister Teri, who was pregnant with her first child. She made an "oh" sound and I asked her what it was, I was, maybe 10 years old. She said that her baby had moved and asked me if I wanted to feel it, yes I did, so I put my hand on her tummy and felt a baby move inside her, for the first time ever and I will never forget where I was standing when I felt it.

Skip ahead to 3 or 4 years later...we were getting ready to go to a Halloween party and that baby I had felt move was now a little boy by the name of Emery. He had blonde hair and a wonderful sweet personality with a really husky voice. He wanted to go to the church to a party but wasn't eating dinner, he was so excited, my great Aunt Marty (I mean that by descent, not that she was great) was making him eat his spaghetti, he tried but threw up, she determined he could not go to the party...I will never forget the devastation I felt for this little boy that night.

Okay, now, ahead again a long time...not that there aren't a million memories of him logged into my heart since he spent a portion of his childhood living in the same house as me, but because it is how my mind is working at the moment. We are having this big family get together and he, because he was a cook in the Coast Guard, offered to make lasagna for all of us...it was so good that every single time we got together we begged him to make us lasagna. THere is nothing like Ems lasagna! One other time, we were at my sister Pennys house for a celebration, I'm sorry but I don't remember if it was a wedding or graduation, and Emery was feeling his booze, Connie and I and her daughters Jodie and Holly were sitting in the family room when he stumbled in, sat down on the ottoman and, looking at me, said, "I'm thinkin......VANILLA MILKSHAKE!" um, okay...WHAT???? it was hilarious and we laughed and laughed at him for it, never ever figuring out what in the heck he meant and he wouldn't explain....it became a family joke.

Now, here is the memory. Please forgive the mental image but it was my memory I had tonight. I was thinking about an older man from our church that passed away this week and was wondering how his wife was doing and then my mind wandered to what kind of service she would have for him, when suddenly, I was sitting in a chapel, John is on one side of me and Matt and Kaylee on the other. I am looking straight ahead and up, in the front of the church is a casket, I can see a face, but I don't want to look. I am crying, we are all crying, and all I can think of is..."I'm thinkin Vanilla Milkshake" I can see him and all I want is for him to not be in that casket. Our dear sweet Em, gone, at 26...from a heart condition he inherited from his father. I have a picture of that little boy on my refrigerator and each and every time I look at it, I feel this huge pull on my heart. He is standing in the front yard in Kimberly Idaho, with his little brother David, he is maybe 5, and he has his eye screwed shut, as though he is looking at the camera and saying, "what?" in that little husky voice he had. I have reached out and touched that picture many times and spoken to him. Even now I can hear him talking to us, laughing and kidding around, shopping with Jodie and Holly for lasagna ingredients, playing basketball in the driveway with Matthew and RJ.

I don't talk about Em too much. Mostly because it still makes me cry that he is gone but also because I know how much it hurts my sister Penny, who wasn't his mom, but who ended up helping to raise him into adulthood. Ems birthday is this month, I honestly don't know how old he would be, in his 30's I suppose, but I know he would have been a wonderful man who only wanted to serve his country, cook good food and hang out with his buddies, he was special, he was wonderful and he was my nephew.

Emery Reeves Payton, you are missed. You are loved....