When the Night Comes

Every so often there is a Stand By Me kind of summer. You know what mean, I think. Beautiful weather, great times, your best friends, awesome sound track and just a whiff of mortality in the wind. Things will never ever be like they are right now. 

No one tells you growing up that getting older is just repeating pivotal pubescent moments over and over again. Your body goes through strange cycles of change. Your friendships grow and fade, people die. Every couple decades your body becomes a whole new thing. You yourself,inside become a whole new thing. Then there you are naked in front of the mirror making the same face Gordie did when he found the leach in his tighty whities.

People come and go. Some just fade away into other groups of other friends and some really die. This summer has seen a lot of changes for my group of friends. Young people, grandparents, friends have passed and left something both light and dark in their wake. We come to terms and learn to sleep peacefully again but the nightlight has turned out. That bit of safety in the dark of knowing your loved ones are still breathing.

Although I have been spared in this round of reaping and thus far my loved ones are safe and for the most part sound, I have been touched by the pain of those not spared. Social networking has opened up windows to grief that weren't there ten years ago. We know of each passing in real time. We can watch the chain of sadness link the people left behind to each other and to the rest of us. Even if you never met the person who has died, you are no longer separated or insulated from their death. It takes a stronger person than I to not be affected.

I feel the train coming on the bridge, Ace and his hoods stomping through the trees, "Chopper sick balls" and the voice in my head is starting to sound like Dustin Hoffman. I am old enough now to have seen lives played out. There is a whole section of a bar waiting for me on the other side.

I know my greatest wish when I die is that I be mourned quickly and remembered forever. I hope everyone at my funeral has an amazing memory of me, with a great song and a filthy joke. I hope my friends are able live well and go forward without regret and be kind to themselves and each other. 

As I look at the expressions of mourning on my Facebook feed I hope the same things now for my friends. Live as your departed friend would have wanted you to.