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Writing award brings pride

Janesville's Ruby Walton won a third place for humorous poetry, and I won a second place in the "Article" category in last weekend's Jade Ring contest sponsored by the Wisconsin Regional Writers' Association (www.wrwa.net). I've received many newspaper awards, including a handful of first-place honors, through my 30-plus years in journalism. But none made me prouder than this second-place honor from the WRWA.

Why?

Because in my four years with the WRWA, I've come to hold this collection of talented writers in such high regard. I was honored to speak Saturday at the WRWA's fall convention in Eau Claire about the process of writing "Death Beyond the Willows" and then getting my nonfiction book published and marketing it. I was equally honored Sunday to accept the award for an unpublished story I wrote about visiting my Uncle Homer in a McFarland nursing home. I called it "Taking Time."

Homer was suffering from dementia, and I knew he would not know who I was. But I drove up last April to visit him for what I assumed would be the last time. The conversation was a struggle as Homer so often answered my questions with "yep." It was much different from a visit later that day with my Marshall High School (Dane County) journalism instructor, Jim Winters, who now lives in rural Cottage Grove. The two hours I spent with Jim passed too quickly as our conversation flowed like fine wine.

When I got home, I sat down to write about the struggle to converse with Homer, the contrast in the chat with Jim, and just why I had gone to visit Homer in the first place. In part, I explained, it came out of guilt from my younger years, when I stopped visiting Homer's mom, my maternal grandmother, in her last year or two of life because she, too, suffered from dementia and had no idea who I was. So visiting Homer was a sort of penance.

"As I grew older and wiser," I wrote, "I knew I had been wrong, self-centered, selfish. Just because that person, that relative, doesn’t know me anymore, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take the time, make the time, to brighten a long and lonely day, if only for 30 minutes."

Homer died June 12, and I was honored to be a pallbearer at his funeral.

Greg Peck