Picture: Lucas watching The Ghosts of Christmas Eve by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.Warm day in the latter part of this December, warm enough for some of us to play golf. Dave and Doug and Short and Brian and I played eighteen, spending time together, trading good shots and barbs and commenting on times current and long past. Class basketball and the Lions last two games which saw them overpowered by the larger Hatchets, and in turn saw them overpower a team from a smaller school. And then life in the Sixties and the freeing of sex and drugs from their clandestine existence which led to the wide spread use of both in the seventies, outside of the bounds of marriage and the law. Or so it's been reported.
Others played before us and some played behind us. Eric and the boys arrived as we finished and I hied them off to Oma's house for games and drinks and eventually a dinner when Eric arrived and admitted to no set plans for them up north a piece. We broke bread together and ate ice cream with chocolate sauce and Ian got us started on very bad things that would get us sent to hell once we died - he didn't use that word, rather down, somewhere under the table and the house and even further. When pressed, he said a very bad thing, like killing your parents, that would for sure send you hither rather than yon, down rather than up. They filled their bellies with food and their heads with visions of I don't know what though we did speak of the contours of heaven a bit, the things we might find their, like video games and golf courses, limitless days (no having to go to bed) and no chores, of course. Didn't hear mention of songs and winged creatures or even the possibility of walking on clouds.
The boys tired and were ready to go home but then got distracted by a stray toy remembered from years ago when they were smaller and carted boxes of play things from the back room out to the living room. But Dad stopped that in a hurry with a big no and soon they were in their shoes and their coats and giving last hugs and a wave and a final good bye before disappearing into the dark of a December night.
Oma checked email and Opa cleaned up and before long we both settled with cups of coffee into easy chairs in the living room and let the television fill the room with sound and fury, or non fury as it turned out. So it went; so it goes.
2 comments:
There are those of us who think heaven is going to be whatever we think it is (or hope it is). Mine includes family and friends and good health and no worries... and it would be great to be forever 26 years old!!
Hmmm. That 26 for you would have been when there was the move from Oakland to Bellevue, from an apartment on a hill to your very own house on a rise. And I remember you loving that first house of your own.
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