“Let’s go to the cemetery,” says Mark.  He likes to visit his ancestors every long once in awhile.

I set off with Mark and our young son, Joseph, to St. John’s Catholic Cemetery, on the border of Stamford, with a Darien address.  We visit Mark’s grandparents’ graves, and then I tell him that I want to look for Daddy’s grave.  The three of us walk around an area near a huge, old, oak tree.  I follow my sister, Maria’s, general directions, and search, under a sunny, blue sky.

In the past few years, my sisters have been to Daddy’s grave.  Barb planted daffodils here.  I can’t really explain the reason why I haven’t visited.  I find his grave close to the oak tree, which is a stone’s throw from a building that held Harisonic Labs years ago.  Mom worked on an assembly line there when I was a kid.  I can’t help but feel the stressful pressure of low-income living on Mom’s low-income salary, as I stand in the indigent section of the cemetery, where Daddy’s buried.

“Here he is!”  I barely get the words out as I come across his grave.

The three of us stare at the bronze plaque that is overgrown with grass and small, daffodil flower shoots that march around the edges.  The plaque reads:

Joseph T. Bankowski

PFC U. S. Army

Korean

1927- 1979

I look up at Mark, teary-eyed, with a burning in my throat.

“I never knew he served in Korea!” I push the blue, sad, heavy load of words up hard and talk as loud as I can muster.

“I always thought it was Uncle Pippi giving you signs, Jean, but it was your father all of the time,” said Mark, referring to my passion of learning all I can about Uncle Pippi, the Korean War, and what I consider tell-tale signs that keep forcing me in that direction.

We clear the grass around the plaque and Joseph surprisingly finds a small, American flag on the ground nearby and pushes its’ post into the dirt near the daffodil shoots.  He cleans the plaque, works meticulously, swipes dirt away with his hands.

“He’s a good worker, just like me, and, perhaps, just like Daddy,” I think, and imagine Daddy, with his sky-blue eyes and great, side-tracked potential to succeed in life, dead at fifty-two years-old.  I think about how I turn fifty-two in two weeks and how much living I still have to do.

Joseph tells me that he wants to come back here on Easter, next week, to bring flowers.  Somehow, the thought of Dear, Sweet, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead comforts me in this moment.  Somehow, naming my son after my father was the right decision.

When we get home, Joseph lines up different-colored army men toys on the kitchen counter.

“Which one do you think your Dad will like, Mom?” he asks.

My head is dizzy over the day and this conversation, as though Daddy’s a part of our everyday life, as though we just shared a lasagna dinner with him, or enjoyed a visit doing daddy-like and grandpa-like things.

I tell Joseph that I think he’d like the blue guy.

“That’s the one I’ll bring on Easter, Mom,” he said, as he put the army man into a little box.

And, then, my heart fell into Joseph’s grandpa-like, warm, sky-blue eyes.