To all those alone tonight on Christmas Eve.....

[countryjake]

133. I had a similar flag find earlier this year...

My daddy had an old US flag (only 48 stars) that he would always hang off of our front porch when I was a kid, for Flag Day and all the other flaggy holidays each year. Years later, once the war in Vietnam rose to a boil, he continued hanging out his precious flag, only he displayed it upside down in protest, and many a time some angry grouser would drive all the way up our lane just to holler about that flag. Folk around our county soon learned not to tangle with my father, a proud WWII vet who was angry and tired of all the bombing, death and dying boys.

He's been dead for eleven years.

My old mother kept up his tradition of flying that distressed flag as long as she was able, but she, too, passed away this summer. As I was preparing to return to my own home, finally in November, I was sifting thru an old wicker clothes hamper that had stood by their back door for more than sixty years, a catch-all, stuffed with warm hats and fuzzy gloves, work gloves, caps, worn out curtains, tattered hot pads and dish towels, mismatched socks, and diapers...the lifetime collection of a couple who always thought that anything, no matter how ragged, might just come in handy someday.

I found their flag in the very bottom of that hamper, neatly tucked away in its own box, wrapped carefully inside with tissue paper. A precious thing.

Your story about your dear husband's Grinch flag reminded me of my own sad discovery. All of my sympathy to you and yours this holiday season...it is never easy.