We can start with my Grandpa, whose clear water voice flooded each room with his pure Irish tenor. His gifts may have skipped a generation, but the memory of each drop of a note never dried up.
   

Then there's my mom who is empathy, who speaks empathy, who lives empathy. Whose rhythmic heart reaches out to the poor, sad, and humble and even created a career for herself out of what seemed to be only human nature.
   

Next is my dad, whose boyish stupidity set the freshman biology class's frogs loose in the school but still had to be the head of the house at the end of each day. Whose stubborn mind worked three jobs and triple majored and still managed to make something for himself out of what seemed like a predetermined future of always settling for less, all the while grabbing his clever limericks out of thin air.
   

It's my dad's grandpa whose wrinkled, freedom fighting arms have seen all of Ireland. These wrinkled arms grasped so many of his life changing stories and silently took them with him, right to the grave.
   

Right to the grave, where the ashen earth contrasts the vibrant colors coming from the soil around me- the dirt that supports the fresh plants, promising new beginnings each year. I breathe in deep the scent of these natural and cultivated occurrences alike, feeling encapsulated by what came before me along with what I've made for myself. I stretch my fingers into the cold earth, stretch my tired but young hands into the earth that started it all, the earth that stretched only two people into billions. My bare feet covered in dirt, I feel this stretch of the earth as I dig out the story that came before me, along with the story that will be my own. Unlike the plants of last fall, maybe these stories don't go right to the grave, but rather are stretched out through the blooming generations of spring. I want my story to stretch on long after the dead of winter, and be remembered as it all began, with the change of seasons, under the timid shade of the tree.