Nearly seventeen years have passed, though every time I see an old hearse I'm taken back to a day.I'm 15, give or take a year, riding along in the front of Brian's big black death taxi. We're perusing the city streets and I'm glancing at sympathetic passersby, laughing and knowing that despite what they think, no deceased person is riding in the rear of this beast with us. We are all alive in this wagon my smile reads. Riding windows down, carrying on about anything or nothing as we see fit.
Brian and I, most times with other faceless friends journeyed to the simple places. To school and home, to Reams grocery store, the gas station, the canyons, friends homes, Brian's grandmothers cute little pink house near 9th west where I waited outside because she wasn't a fan of him riding around with girls. We caught a few drive-inn movies too, which is a given considering we had a theater(if you can call it that) in town and a hearse to accompany us.
Brian was a year older, funny, good at conversation, confident, kind and so much himself without apology that he made it easy and comfortable to spend time with him... and share a seat in his cool car.
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Facebook lends an interesting perspective to a life I lived so long ago. Suddenly a modern day picture exists of a 'friend' that has continued to exist in my memory as a fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen year old. Are these people as different yet very much the same today as I am? This happens for me with nearly every old 'friend' I've recently come back in contact with since the Facebook revolution.
Reflection of people and our places and times together breeds nostalgia for a brief moment. But, it is in that fleeting flashback to the past that I contemplate not necessarily what we spent our mindless teen years doing, but how great a particular person was at such a critical time in my life. I think about what they taught me, what good attributes of theirs that I adopted and rely on to this day. Mostly, I wonder if I gave them the best of me, because let's face it, I was a teenage girl after all.
So, it makes my heart happy to know that I'm not just remembered as 'the girl that rode in the hearse with me' but someone who has "always been in my thoughts as one of the sweetest people I have met".
Thank you Brian.
Love that! I think about old friends often, and how who they are and how they treated me truly impacted my life and made me into the person I am today. I feel like I've always been so blessed with the greatest of friends at each critical period in my life. I get new ones along the way, who eventually become "old" friends but still remain in my life. I LOVE how intertwined we all are on this Earth, and how relationships are the most significant and meaningful things we can have. Love you!
ReplyDeleteThat was really beautifully written and very, very sweet at the end. Not all old friendships/aquaintances turn out like that - especially teenaged ones.
ReplyDeleteThe beginning of the post gave me a jolt back into my own teenage years. It revived a memory long buried of my first year in college, 18 years old, and a fun Halloween night all dressed up and riding in a friends hearse. We thought it was so cool on Halloween.