Remembering Him
2004-04-21 @ 9:36 a.m.

I hate when I'm asked to help, then feel like I can't do exactly what the person needs. Not that I personally can't get it done, but that the person has put themselves in a situation that prohibits me from helping to the extent I could have otherwise. Bleh.

I drempt of him last night. I haven't done that in a long time. I haven't let myself remember that day in the park. The limping duck. Oh God how we laughed about that for at least a year afterward, maybe longer. We'd lay in the grass for almost 4 hours that afternoon, talking, about everything. I hated that he was moving to Illinois, but took comfort in knowing in less than a year I'd be living there too. I'd already been accepted to Northwestern's music school on full scholarship. (Bet you guys didn't know that, huh?) August.

I visited in February for his birthday. It was cold and icy out, but I was warm, and deeply in a renewed love when I saw him at the terminal. We drove the little mustang to the hotel, listend to "Great Big Sea" all the way there. He stayed for a while and then went home. The next night he came back and we went to David's steak house. It was packed and we ended up leaving to go back to the hotel and order in Italian. I remember laying on my back on the bed, with him on top of me, we were playing around, and he told me I was beautiful with my hair all a mess and in my face. I'll never forget that. I was snowed in for 6 days after I was scheduled to leave that winter. It was a great time.

I didn't see him again until that summer, our piece was produced and since all of our friends were in Chicago with him, it was only natural that I made the pilgramige there again. This time it was different. We were happy, happy with life and the current events taking place. But, there was something different in his eyes. He'd decided that he wanted to see someone else. We talked for hours on that whirlwind trip. Decided to be friends, continue to compose together.

It never works that way.

The next summer I moved to Chicago, got settled in and started school that fall. By October I was back in Texas. I couldn't live with the decisions he'd made about his life, about our lives. It hurt too badly to see them together.

It's funny now, I remember his piercing blue eyes, his sandy curly hair, and the way he always said "aboot" instead of "about". But I don't remember his face. I remember the blue button down shirt he wore that day at the park. I remember the way his car smelled in winter and how happy we were sitting, playing together.

The memories are starting to fade, and with them, should go my remorse, my hurt, and my cravings for him. But they don't. I keep thinking that one day he'll have drifted so far away that I'll remember nothing of him but the name in the distance. I think that may be the only resolute thing.

For now I keep him hidden in my heart in places that no one else gets to see. He can stay until I forget the last of him, and then, he'll be no more.