Everyone may have a particular stretch of time on the calendar each year that they dread. It could be the holidays, maybe the coming of the sweltering months of summer depending on where one lives, or possibly even Labor Day as it signifies an official end to the so-called Summer-and-fun season.
Though I tend to dread both the late July to late September stretch of Midwestern heat and the January to early March stretch because of Winter cold & overcast gloom, it's the last days of June for me.
My reasons are both a bit frivolous and, frankly, tragic.
Frivolity first.
For whatever personal reasons, I see the "freshness" of the Spring and Summer seasons as ending somewhere around July 4th, or so. Therefore, the end of June signifies a bottom of the 9th inning of sorts for Summer.
These personal reasons I refer to are that the newness of warm weather and the early chunks of vacation & no-school seasons, are gone. Summer is firmly ensconced in the brain, the weather gets even hotter, rain vanishes until October, and there's nothing to look forward to other than baseball's All-Star Game (well, that's debatable sometimes too actually). Just like any other time of year Summer becomes another day-to-day grind.
With April, May and 97% of June it's all just gotten here! Baseball begins, the color of green and its many-hued friends arrive, and no longer do you need to throw on the heavy coat while stuffing yourself into the car to traverse and tromp around in the slush, 30's-and-below temperatures and gray skies.
The planning of vacations happens. The planning of going to ball games happens. The prospect of planning a weekend get-away or a three-day weekend happens. Like a new year, Summer brings hope for fun and of events not yet even known about.
By the time the min-span of late June to July 5th has come and gone, all those plans are in place to be done, or have already been experienced. With the scent of blown-up fireworks lingering, the knowledge that this particular Summer's universal bottom of the 9th inning will soon happen in the form of "Back to School" sales and adverts kicks in. It's consistently in the 90's, clouds have flown north for the Summer, the sound of the Labor Day weekend's clock can already be heard.
Nothing's new anymore. Now it's just Summer. The next excitement involves color of the landscape; that'll be the leaves turning with Fall.
Frivolous I know. That's the POV from here.
But it gets serious now, too serious.
End of June also brings two tragedies to mind for me.
The first I'll mention is fairly well-known. The date isn't, but the act and what it implicated is.
On June 28th, 1914, Gavrilo Princip changed the world. At least he shoved the change over the cliff.
Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Serbia that day along with his wife Sophie as they sat together in their car. They were on their way to the hospital to visit victims from the bombing earlier in the day on their motorcade. Within a month World War I had begun, its first shots linked directly back to this assassination. The cascading dominoes that caused this supposed "war to end all wars" left a shell-shocked Europe in twisted metal, barren landscapes and nothing truly solved.
An embittered Germany and an ego-centric, paranoid, anti-Semitic, racist hate-monger grew out of this rotten "defeat garden" to brew the thousands-year-old recipe for yet another go-round at world war.
6/28/1914 is also a day of infamy to me.
Lastly, there is 6/29. Twenty years ago today in the very early morning hours, a good acquaintance of mine, Kevin Knox, was killed in a one-car crash while on the way home from a friend's house. What was related to me was this: after a night of some partying he'd flopped out at his buddy's place before foolishly deciding to drive home around 4am, probably still feeling the effects from the previous night's indulging, and more so, little sleep to speak of.
Apparently falling asleep while driving in west county St. Louis, he gave up control and crashed, dying in the process.
A mere boy experiencing his first Summer fresh out of college, his death devastated a family, many friends, and fraternity brothers like me.
Kevin was not a close friend, but I experienced a lot with him: lots of softball games, Strato-matic baseball, many roller hockey games, and yes, some parties too. He was a hotshot kid who was cocky when I first met him. His social skills were impressive with the "in-types" in the fraternity and girls. I didn't like him much until near the end of his college tenure at Mizzou. I witnessed a guy who was way too brash and verbose, become very respectful and just flat out nice to me and others who he wasn't previously.
When I got the call that Saturday morning about 10am from a good friend of mine I was naturally in disbelief. After hanging up I cried.
The wake and funeral were tough. I'd say a good 80% of the fraternity, in the throes of Summer no less, were in attendance. All these slick, tough, athletic ladies guys were reduced to nothing by Kevin's death. To say this was a real eye-opener for nearly every one of us is an understatement. How do you say good-bye to someone when you didn't get a chance to say good-bye? Good-bye wasn't even on the list for someone so young.
From what I was told that were close to Kevin, his family lay depressed. Exceptionally close to his father, reports were that his dad didn't seem to know what to do with his life anymore. Kevin's mom kept his room untouched for months. His fellow siblings tried to move on. Through God's grace and time they eventually did.
For years I visited Kevin's grave every 6/29 and left a single red rose each time. At about ten years I decided to call it off. It seemed to be getting too much an exercise in depression instead of tribute. I will go back one of these years Lord willing. We're getting close to how long it's been since we lost him to how old he was at the time he passed. If there's a better spur-of-the-moment example of how fleeting life is I'd like to hear it.
My apologies for ending on a downer note. Maybe it's clear now why I get a little melancholy this time each year. I can't let it get me down to the point of no return. Yet I say it's healthy to contemplate these sad, even morbid events for a little while. Out of it comes a little more maturity, hopefully a little more valuing of self & those around us, and a stronger magnetism towards our wondrous God.
Peace, please,
Tim
6/29/11
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