Just a Thought...

Why is it that whenever I’m relaxed and content with nothing to worry about, my mind decides that it’s the perfect time to play highlight reels of embarrassing moments in my life?

Threads of Yesterday

My parents took me to the doctor for an emergency examination while I was in kindergarten. They had a sense of urgency which, at five years old, I had never seen before. Our family physician wrote a prescription and sent us home. I remember thinking nothing of it until I was spoon fed this foul mixture, and I gagged before swallowing it. Also, my folks woke me in the middle of the night to give me this same elixir once more.

Youth and the fog of memory cloud one’s perspective and make the image in the rear-view mirror of the mind fuzzy. I needed the medicine, yet I wasn’t sick. Back in 1968, things were a lot different from what they are today. I didn’t even have a pediatrician. But the fact remains that something gave my parents and the doctor a scare.

A young girl in my class had died of viral meningitis.

She passed away at five years old, and it still troubles me. I do not remember her name or even her face. Perhaps as I write this, there’s mother and a father who pause each day to recall her laugh, gaze at her photo, and shed a tear forty years later. By now they are elderly, perhaps they are grandparents; yet, how could they forget her?

My life and that of the little girl crossed at one point. Though the thread was thin which had connected us, there was indeed a portion of the fabric of space-time where we had shared a common patch of Earth and moved along a collective path toward maturation. Though, sadly, she did not make it any further.

To a greater degree, her parents towed the same line, and they stood at the edge of that plane of existence, which I had shared with their daughter. Is a tiny ripple of one youthful life so great as to cause a wave of emotion powerful enough to continue to intrigue a grown man?

Four decades have passed, and I still think about my late classmate. She has the effect of keeping me focused, as my life is supposed to have significance. I will explain.

My cynicism has caused me to question my life’s purpose. I’ve derailed the concepts of destiny and fate, having any sort of influence over me. Looking back, I see how past events have led me to where I am today, and it feels like fate.

The players who’ve accompanied me on my journey thus far, including, family, friends, teachers, co-workers, and some victims I’ve encountered during my years in law enforcement, have all contributed bits and snippets of truth and awareness which only occurs to me when I cast off the cloak of skepticism and become open to the charms of serendipity.

I want to recollect this fated young girl back in elementary school. I can still see where she sat in class and the back of her head. With her brown hair clasped together to form pig tails, she sat upright in those first days of school and listened Mrs. Sisti teach us the ABCs. Is it fair that I made it this far in life and not her? What does it mean when a child dies? How do I validate my additional fifty-six years of breathing for being lucky enough to not get sick?

My conscience cannot handle transience, the algebra of survival, and cosmic disproportion. For this reason, I am compelled to assess my endurance, to make good on an unearthed vow evoked by my introspection and unadulterated scrutiny of what I deem to be providence. Why do I live? How am I so fortunate? And what is the toll for continuing along this thoroughfare, this life?

For the sake of so many before me, and including this girl of whom I write, I will endeavor to be a good person. My goal shall be to contribute something to the rest of us. Each day, I give a bit more, I think, as I follow a new string I’ve discovered with my eyes wide open and my mind cleared of wretched disbelief.

My children have passed the young girl in age; and, hopefully, I will never mourn, God forbid, as her parents do to this day. This girl, this fleeting life, still teaches; though her responsibility was never to die, but to grow.

There is a photograph buried in an archive of snapshots and Polaroids at my dad’s house. Captured on paper in one of these collections is an image of me in kindergarten. I remember when the class portrait was taken. Her mom and dad no longer took her to school by then; and, she never hanged her finger paintings in the hallway with the rest of us for open school night.

I intend to dig that picture out of the drawer where I store memorabilia. The will is there, but not the effort. Perhaps I will find it one day when I sit back and consider my life and how I got here. Sometimes, whenever I recall everybody that I knew over the years, a little girl nudges me and reminds me she had once lived and that she had mattered in this world. Her parents should know that a new filament has been cast across the dimensions between life and death, and their child continues to weave herself into the cloth of someone else’s being. I shall secure this lifeline offered to me by my classmate and keep myself grounded with the concept that I will justify my existence and fulfill my obligations.

Decades ago, a mom and dad lost their daughter. This man, once boy in her kindergarten class, will never forget her.

Kindergarten physician viral meningitis parents space-time classmate life journey serendipity

The Language of the Dead

It is my belief that the soul in a human body disperses after death. That does not happen immediately, I envision; but, we become a part of the greater cosmos and step into another state of being.

I cling to this belief in the hopes that there is a larger force than us; a being or community of beings which dispense righteousness in the afterlife. Perhaps the only cure for each person's pain and suffering is to learn the consequences of one's actions while they were living.

In death, observing events which make up our existence is edification for the newly departed. As we rise figuratively or literally from our bodies, we see the world as a distant entity, and we then detach from the bonds which keep us within this dimension. Our lives are displayed from creation to the end and then beyond. We view the past, present, and the future through an extraterrestrial portal in time, yet we are unable to speak. There is no verbal expression, no spoken words in the afterlife. We just are. Whatever guides us, teaches or censures us does so with its presence.

We sense them, and court is held before we finally trespass into oblivion. We are human, and shall always be in any form. The world descends from view, and we are captivated by its disappearance, seeking out those we knew and loved for one last time. The path is clear, and we step ahead to the next scene in the Kinetoscope panorama and leave behind a single message which we implore, as only the departed are able to, that it is seen and interpreted.

Clues from those who pass on can be found in a garden long since left uncultivated with a single rose for a widowed bride. A music box playing suddenly on a mantle on a little boy’s birthday after his daddy is gone, or snow on Christmas morning for the daughter who wanted to make snow angels while wearing new, winter coat that Santa never had the chance to bring for her. We are still here, and we decide which signs are for us, and which are mere coincidence, and we deny, deny, deny, until our own inevitable trial comes. The dead are so powerful.

death departed cosmos clues trial Kinetoscope life rose snow