Bobby

One of my brothers called me this morning to let me know someone from my past died on Halloween. This is someone I met just as I began high school at the age of fourteen. He had just transferred from another middle school as a sophomore. We were both new students in what felt at that moment like a huge high school. (My high school had twenty five hundred students.) Anyway, our lockers were close to one another and on one of the first days of school he asked me for directions. I had no idea where anything was myself. I was just as new! But we talked briefly and I happened to notice how blue his eyes were, how his long blonde hair hung past his shoulders. He was tall and tan wearing overalls and a tee shirt. Yes, I am going back to the early seventies here!

My mother loved him, in fact, he took a photograph of her which sits in my dining room to this day. He was artistic yet wreckless. We dated briefly but after a short while I broke things off. He was way too fast for me. Several years later we tried again but too much had changed. Our lives had gone in very different directions and after a while we lost touch. Sometimes my mom would run into him and he would always ask about me but too much water had passed under our bridge and there are some wounds that time cannot heal.

He is the second "boyfriend" of mine that has passed away in four months at such a young age. Suddenly, time is divided into decades and death has a funny way of bringing someone back to the present. Back in memories and photographs. God bless him. I know he is now in a better place, no longer suffering.