During the last few days of August, I often find myself thinking about my parents. My father's birthday was August 21.  Their anniversary is August 24.  My mother's birthday was August 30.  They were married for sixty-eight years with their wedding occurring three days after my father's twentieth birthday (so our mother wouldn't be robbing the cradle and marrying a teenager) and six days before our mother's twenty-second birthday turned her into what our father liked to call an "older woman."

Theirs was a true love match and a genuine partnership.  With them as parents, there was never a hope of playing both ends against the middle.  As far as we kids were concerned, theirs was an unimpeachable united front.  Whatever one of them said went--no arguing; no  exceptions.

They loved to travel.  My father drove.  My mother functioned as map-reading co-pilot.  She even had an "official" backseat driver's license.  Their one most notorious "short-cut" came on a trip through New Mexico when the detour my mother put together in order to out-maneuver an Interstate-enforced long U-turn resulted in our driving on miles of dirt road and at one time passing between a ranch house and its accompanying barn.  But we made it.

One of the last long driving trips they took together was on the occasion of the death of my mother's younger brother, Glenn.  After investigating the cost of plane fare to Minneapolis and having to rent a car there, they decided that the only sensible thing to do was to drive.  And so they did, from Bisbee, Arizona to Milbank, South Dakota.  I was out of the country at the time this happened, and in the old pre-Internet days, didn't hear about what had happened until after Bill and I returned to the States.  When I tried calling the folks and they weren't home, I finally called my sister.  "Oh," she said.  "Uncle Glenn died.  They're in Milbank."

I knew full well that when my parents went to Milbank, they stayed in the Mill Stone Inn.  So I called there and asked for Norman and Evie Busk only to be told that they had checked out earlier that morning.

My parents were relentless travelers who believed in covering ground.  When we kids were growing up, we routinely made the trip from Bisbee to northeastern South Dakota in two VERY TOUGH days.  The folks were well into their eighties then.  Based on that, I allowed them an extra travel day for getting home before I started calling to check on them, but they didn't answer--not on day one or day two or day three or day four or even on day five or day six.  Finally when day seven was drawing to a close, my mother finally answered the phone.  "Where in the world have you been?" I demanded.

"Oh," she said, "as we were leaving Milbank, I said to Norman.  'You know, there's one national park we've never visited."  So they drove from South Dakota to Arizona by way of YOSEMITE!!! and still made it home in seven days!  She told me later, though, as they crossed the Colorado at Yuma and saw all those jagged mountains, she couldn't help crying.  "I knew then it was the last long trip we'd be taking."  And it was.

A friend from the reservation came to visit their home in Bisbee once and stayed for lunch.  We did what we always did at mealtimes--we sat around laughing during the meal and after it.  "Is that what you always do?" my friend wanted to know.  "What do you mean?" I asked.  "You just sit around like that and laugh?"

That would be a yes.  There was always laughter at mealtimes in their house and there was always singing later while we cleared the table and did the dishes.

I miss my parents.  Norman and Evie Busk were good people.  They raised good kids.  We were all very lucky.

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