I like to spend July 4 in Contoocook, New Hampshire, the home of Brother Rick and his family.

The tiny town is also home to a nice, all-inclusive kids’ holiday parade and a comfortingly traditional regular parade, complete with a local band, fire engines, a few antique cars and the throwing of candy to onlookers in lawn chairs along the route.

It’s a pleasant, comfortable routine I have been in for about the last decade, ever since I started spending summers in Connecticut, where daughter Jennifer and company live.  New Hampshire’s just a couple hours away. 

The parade was cancelled in 2020 because of Covid, and I ended up staying in Florida anyway, so I didn’t miss much.

I went to Contoocook for the Fourth this year, but it was very different. 

There was no parade, a victim once again of the uncertainties of Covid, but there was something even more significant missing.

There was no brother Rick. He left us earlier this year.

He was not there, sitting in his chair by the window looking out at the trees and the fields and the pond he so enjoyed.  He was no longer there to explain to us what happens to those trees, fields and pond in the harsher months, when we’re not there to witness it.

He was not there to chat with about the many things we have talked about over the years. I couldn’t watch him as he patiently explained various kinds of berries to my grandchildren.  I could no longer watch him interacting with his own children and his granddaughter. 

And I couldn’t watch him meet his newborn grandson.

But it’s not that simple. He was absent but he wasn’t.  He wasn’t NOT there this year.  He was just sort of somewhere else. 

He was still very present in the home that he and his partner, Ginni, built and he was present most definitely in the family they created, and for that I am grateful. 

But I just wish I could call him up and ask him how he’s doing and what things are like where he is.  Maybe he will leave a comment below….

Here are some photos from this year’s Fourth.  It wouldn’t be a Fourth in Contoocook without some stringed instruments, would it?

And some photos from other years are here, here, here and here.