the birthday - 6 March
i’d received an auspice of him even before we ever met --
It was 1972 ...
i was at work robotically running a project through the copy machine
where i caught bits of a conversation between a girl i didn’t know
and another whom i knew only casually …
the one i didn’t know and i had been hired together a few weeks earlier …
she got the cushy job (ass't to the VP)
i got the grunt (customer service)
it was she who was going on about some guy she’d gone to some party with -
ho-hum to say the least, i thought as i mindlessly collated page copies …
it was when she said his name that something happened –
years later i realized that at that moment i’d ‘shifted’
but at the time all i knew was that i could ‘see’ him,
that something deep inside recognized him,
and further that we’d ‘be’ together …
really? i asked myself stapling together another inane salemen's booklet …
then just as instantly wrote it all off to being pathetically suffocated,
and already bored by this job …
(a shaman doesn’t do well in a nine to five)
then one day soon after, Spirit intervened
with one of those seemingly inconsequential but in hindsight life-altering bumps in the road …
getting off work that day i discovered my VW bug needed a jump ..
it was late, most people had left already -
i lived on a remote Cape Cod inlet island which made getting help a strategic call
so i sat inside my car in a near empty parking lot,
considering my next step when i was startled by a rap at the window…
“everything ok?”
it was the girl i’d been hired with
“battery's dead” i told her
“ouch! bummer way to start a weekend"
“yeah, no kidding”
“listen, if you want, i live only a few miles away –
my boyfriend could help you – but i don't want to leave you here -
come home with me and we’ll bring him back…”
(i realized years later it was an offer she probably came to deeply regret)
as she pulled into her driveway she laughed at the sight
of a bunch of cars parked around her little cottage -
“i see we have company” she said in a tone suggesting company was the norm …
sure enough a number of folks crammed the small space inside –
watching t.v., cooking, visiting, reading,
a couple folded diapers i assumed belonged to the toddler running about …
and then, as they say, our eyes met –
through the crowd (there’s always a crowd) we saw each other across the room –
he stood by the wood stove warming his thin tall frame -
it was then our eyes locked, and it felt like his were peering into my soul
at this point in my defense i still didn’t know who he was –
my heart pounded so loudly, the noise impeded my brain to think clearly,
but i was pummeled by this ignorance (which lasted but only an eternal mili-second)
when the trance was broken by my co-worker. “there he is, c’mon, let me introduce you two”
i recognized instantly the irony that she did not know how unnecessary introductions were …
less than two years later he would walk on …
all the visions that i'd had came true, including the one
in which i saw his small aircraft fly into the Atlantic Ocean,
which happened only eight days after my 21st birthday -
"...and there were no survivors"
three weeks before that he had just turned 26,
and we'd celebrated fiercely because on his military stint,
he'd been told by an asian tea leaf reader that he'd "be dead before his 25th birthday" ...
a weight lifted from his shoulders on that last birthday ...
i’d begged him not to take that job
but his excitement was fanned by exactly what i feared –
the flight itself -
i even took my fears to the edge of a majour blow-out between us,
and while in hindsight i’m glad i backed off,
(a fight is such a nasty last memory)
it was a monumental event of personal ineffectiveness -
most kids spend their 21st year partying,
i spent mine in mourning
(perhaps i am still in mourning)
today would’ve been his 70th birthday …
... everything is happening exactly as it should ...
...or so i'm told
NHT
©2016, 2017, 2018
related reading:
--cracks in the universe
--stranger on a greyhound
--faces