Mom brings home a wooden yardstick from a headstone memorial company.  She went there with Aunt LaLa to choose a headstone for Nanny’s grave.  The yardstick is stamped Geno J. Lupinacci Memorials.  She keeps the yardstick in her closet and takes it with her when she moves from Noroton Avenue.

I don’t see the yardstick again until I come across it years later, when cleaning out her condominium as I move her to an assisted living facility.  I bring the yardstick home.  I remember Nanny’s death.  Mom measured time and now it’s my turn.

When I purchase Mom’s gravesite at Spring Grove Cemetery in Darien, the cemetery guy recommends that I go to Lupinacci’s for a headstone.  I don’t connect the name to the yardstick right away.  Of course, I don’t think about Geno.  I don’t meet him.  I meet his son, who is about my age.  Geno is dead.  He’s of Mom’s generation.

I meet a dead-end when it comes to designing Mom’s headstone.  I don’t want to do this.  I hate doing this.  I have to do this.  It is hard to measure time.  God is making me do this.  He is far from finished with me.