Without Warning

I learned yesterday morning after getting some less than happy news at my cardiologist and returning home to read the newspaper, drink a cup of coffee, and feel sorry for myself (and not necessarily in that order) that a neighbor had passed away Tuesday evening. 

He wasn't a down the street neighbor but we had first met a little more than twenty years ago when we were volunteers on the Norwich Schools Building andTechnology Committee along with other like-minded moms and dads administering a twenty-two million dollar bond approved by Norwich voters to put additions on two schools and wire all of the classrooms to leverage technology to enhance education as we were approaching the turn of the century. 

I'm not sure any of us volunteers knew just how much shit we'd eat from power-hungry, envious assholes on the two elected bodies in the city who waged war on one another for most of the Nineties and beyond and who cared not a whit when almost all of us on the committee ended up as collateral damage in their tug of war. We did get the additions built and did drag the school system into the Information Age, so there was that, I guess. 

I read his obituary twice, the first time refusing to believe he was gone as we'd watched the Memorial Day Parade up Broadway together from the driveway of the Lutheran Church a block up from Saint Pat's. Me, pacing because that's what I do, and he, seated on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle that drew compliments from passers-by as they walked towards Chelsea Parade in time with the marchers on Broadway. And now he's gone.           

Dylan offered that it takes a lot to laugh-it takes a train to cry. My mother, world-renowned wrangler of six of the most thick-headed and strong-willed children to ever walk the planet, demonstrated her smartness to us all when, without consulting the Internet (there was life before the ether. Who knew?), told us it took more muscles to frown than it did to smile. We believed her because she was our Mom and it didn't hurt that she was also right, but how did she know? 

So we can wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up faster (and yeah I know where I swapped out one consonant for another and why). I always wear trousers with pockets so I have someplace to put all the fun. We can promise to not miss what we do not have and enjoy our now in the here and now and look towards tomorrow with hope and not dread. "I'm carving 'em up through the dust in your town. Crawling over rubble just to sound me out. Tend to wonder why?"
-bill kenny