A Place Where People Live Forever (part 2)

(photo credit~MLC 1956-2015)

I’m back again. It’s always in the fall that I think about her and others from our tight little circle. I suppose my memories are prompted in part by the rows of notebooks, pens and Elmer’s Glue in the Back to School sections of the local discount store. Just a whiff of crayola crayons can send me back. This time of year was our best time. Filled with the stories of summer, new classes, pep rallies and library antics. Partners in the petty crimes of adolescence we were. And though fate took us all on different paths, there has remained after all these years a familiar cord linking us through our memories past and chance encounters in the present.

When I grow nostalgic for my old friends, I spend time with their profile pages and photos on Facebook. I always spend a little more time on ML’s profile, those familiar updates and photographs now frozen in time. Her last entry penned just a few short months before her passing. She is the first of us to have crossed over.

Each time I can’t help smiling at that silly yard ornament staring at a budding spring sprout. Each time I swallow hard when reality sinks in and I regret not making it back to Chicago to see her. When we are young time is of little value to us, but as we get older time’s significance and fleeting nature hits painfully hard.

I “Friended” her this visit. I know…I know, it won’t amount to much. There is in fact nobody home to respond to my request. But sometimes…those times when i need to feel like I still have a modicum of control in and over my life, I just need to do something radical.

ML would understand. I know she would. She’d smile and call me crazy. Perhaps I am, just a touch. But for one brief moment I felt less vulnerable to the randomness of life and death. Maybe if I’m lucky we can chat about it, we two, in my dreams.

kat ~ september 2015

Read Part 1 HERE.