I’m worried –
You could say –
About little things, like the past playing tricks on me,
don’t you worry about such things? I mean, we could say we remember things this
way, only to find out they went the other way.
“No,
I’m sure I went right in my life.”
“Nah,
bro, you’re wrong, you went left, way back there.”
“Huh?”
I look back at the many roads of my life, the odd paths it took to put me here
to write this letter to you. And I’m no longer sure –
If
it happened the way I remember it,
But
does it matter?
Isn’t
all that matters is … it happened?
I like to think so, my friend. I
like to believe all that matter is it happened, even when I wish it didn’t
happen the way everyone else says it did.
I still
miss you.
I still
think about you.
The
last night I remember we were still friends was when you came over to stay the
night on the weekend –
I don’t
know how old we were -
I don’t
know when it was –
But I
do know why you came over because I didn’t want to go over to your place.
We went down to Cody’s house late
at night after my mom and dad went to bed, no one knew, and you hated the idea
of us going to Cody’s. We were friends, and I in my foolishness saw the new
friendship with Cody as the shiny new toy which needed to be played with –
Forgetting about
all the other, more loved toys.
We were going to play a game of
capture the flag –
We
didn’t play the game –
You
never came back.
Now, as
an adult, I understand why you never came back, Dain. What I don’t understand
is why you did what you did.
No – I
do understand, which makes it all the worse to write about. If I could sit down
with you one last time before you took your own life, I would talk to you about
your mother, not about the future, not about the reason for life, just simply
about your mother. I would tell you about the first time I heard Pink Floyd,
which was in the car with you guys.
With a
big smile on my face, I would shake my head at the bar setting up the scene for
the story. It’s what all good storytellers do. They set up the scenario before
digging deep into the meat of the tale. You need to know –
The
where
The why
The how
The
when
Before
we can start laughing over the silliness of it all.
You
know, your mother is the reason I love odd people. She is the reason I feel
uncomfortable around the normal folk of the world. I mean, who makes a living
at picking up puppies, driving around town to find a spot beside the road to
sell so-said puppies. We spend hours with puppies in the trunk of her car
looking for a place to set up shop and hours running into stores while you’re
mother sold puppies to get cash for dinner.
It
never failed –
I mean,
never –
A few
hours later, your mother would come rushing into the store to find us,
gathering us up so we can dash away from the police eyeing the oddity which was
your mother. I love it. I love the whole adventure of riding around with this
unique woman with a more unique life.
Now –
with the beer in hand
And
your stool empty next to me –
I can
see how difficult the uniqueness of her life was for you, for your sister, your
brother, and everyone orbiting her.
But
sitting here, it still makes me smile. Is that wrong? I hope not.
And the
day I remember the most –
Which I
must say are flooding back to me in waves right now –
Was a
hot summer day. We were either heading to Toys R Us or Carowinds or coming back
from a puppy gathering quest, but the windows were down. The wind only cool
when the old white car was moving, stoplights were a killer, and your mother
chatting away to us both. I always get her mixed up in my memory with the lady who
played Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, don’t ask me why. It is how I see your
mother after all this time in my life.
I can’t
tell you what she was talking about on this drive. I have no idea, but the
radio had been turned to the Classical Rock station, and Pink Floyd started to
wind up. The song Another Brick in the Wall Part 2, started blaring from the
speakers:
We don’t need no education,
We don’t need no thought control.
I liked
the song. It was different from what my mother listened in the car. She never
listened to Classical Rock on the rides home from school, but knew the song Joy to the World by heart. My mother
would sing it more often than not. She didn’t know any nursery rhymes, so Jeremiah
being a bullfrog was the song that sent me off into the dream world at night as
a kid. Jeremiah was a bullfrog, a very
good friend of mine…
Back
then it wasn’t odd –
Now, it is just cool.
And
here was new music, I had never heard before, but was dancing with my ears. I
liked Pink Floyd, but I didn’t understand it, and your mother explained it to me.
“Back
then,” she said with a matter of fact tone, “school was more about making you
into a little robot. They didn’t want you to think for yourself.” She looked
over at me with a wink in her eye, “they still don’t.”
Wise
words for odd women? I like to believe so. The world is a duller place with her
gone, but Heaven has a few more puppies to be sold now. I can see you and her
riding around gathering all the lost puppies – after all –
All
dogs go to Heaven –
And you
two find a spot near the gates to sell the puppies to all the newcomers to the
holy place until the angels start to roam around eyeing the two of you. Your
mother seeing trouble coming before it came would gather you and the dogs up bolting
to a new place to get some cash for dinner. All the while humming –
We don’t need no education,
We don’t need no thought control.
No comments:
Post a Comment