To a pair of Veterans

Surviving World War II was merely the beginning for Phyllis and James Moquist.

By Andrew Pridgen

I wasn’t invited to sit in on the very end of life stuff for my grandfather on my mother’s side. But over a Thanksgiving weekend in 2000 I saw the end of the man I’d known. By then, I was in my mid-20s and had retreated to their home via train for a long weekend because I had just been broken up with, lost my job and currently didn’t have a mailing address. I disguised this not-having-a-whole-lot-to-do station not-so-cleverly from the rest of my family under the pretense that I wanted to spend more time with them. But, since they were my family, they knew this not to be true. They knew something was up.

My grandmother especially. Today, all 92 years of her has spent a lifetime collecting the detritus of her family’s…