Speed of Life

by Gregg Chadwick My father in law Ralph Heilemann is in hospice care at home with my sister in law in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As Dad Heilemann gets ready to move on to another form, space, or place — I wanted to post this highly fictionalized tale of his US Navy days that I wrote for his 90th Birthday. Fair winds and following seas, shipmate. We have the watch. MarySue Heilemann with her dad Ralph Heilemann — August 2021 Mission Classified. Possibly originating from the harbor of Yokosuka, near Yokohama just outside of Tokyo, in post World War II Japan on Christmas Eve. Official Mission Logs Redacted by order of Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) General MacArthur, Acting Headquarters, Dai Ichi Life Insurance Building, Tokyo. The United States occupation was in full swing and Ralph Heilemann was there. As an electrician onboard a United States Navy cruiser on a hush-hush mission to map the entirety of the Japanese coastline, Seaman Heilemann was deep into the electronic guts...

Kent Chadwick in a Saffron Hug Bob Chadwick in Uniform Ralph Heilemann in DC9 Hat The Furrow -WS Merwin Did I think it would abide as it was forever all that time ago the turned earth in the old garden where I stood in spring remembering spring in another place that had ceased to exist and the dug roots kept giving up their black tokens their coins and bone buttons and shoe nails made by hands and bits of plates as the thin clouds of that season slipped past gray branches on which the early white petals were catching their light and I thought I knew something of age then my own age which had conveyed me to there and the ages of the trees and the walls and houses from before my coming and the age of the new seeds as I set each one in the ground to begin to remember what to become and the order in which to return and even the other age into which I was passing all the time while I was thinking...