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Ed's Challenge....Remembrance
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Ed's Challenge....Remembrance |
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Ratleader
since 2003-01-23
Posts 7026Visiting Earth on a Guest Pass 
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This seems like a good day to write about remembrance...but then any day is a good day for that, we just show it without shyness now. Here's mine: Old Friends He won’t talk, turns questions aside with no more than some neutral story about base life, that I’ve heard before. I never probe: the only time I tried, his face held on, rock steady, but his eyes begged, “Please, not this.” I know this much only now for certain, that he held a rank but didn’t like it, tried to give no orders that would kill, kept a friend he had survived with, who had run the radio on long flights over darkness and God knew what. It was a hobby shop that got him. Just walking through one afternoon, hunting daydreams, buying batteries, spending time we both had to share, mostly being men together in the way dads and sons so seldom get to be. Trains and rockets, big and little cars, bright grownup toys for children, children’s toys for grown-up men. Overhead the models, all to scale, wings, propellers perfect, even girlfriends nose-painted where they would have been. Slowly, a tear he refused to acknowledge and a look of distance I had never seen; the years lifting, crashing back too heavy as he saw me notice he’d gone lost. A shy memory smile drawn in, then “Old friends,” was all he could say. |
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suthern
since 1999-07-29
Posts 20723Louisiana |
You expect me to type through the tears in my eyes? *S* Yes... I will... for the need to say thanks exceeds any shyness. *S* I'll be grateful if mine can get within waving distance of your contribution... Old Friends is absolutely incredible!! /pip/Forum91/HTML/000887.html |
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Gentle Spirit Member Patricius
since 2000-10-09
Posts 13989 |
/pip/Forum91/HTML/000915.html Heres mine. I think that alot of these should have came with a hanky alert! |
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Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354Listening to every heart |
Sounds that Shattered I remember enjoying Fridays, simply because it was either macaroni & cheese or cheesy pizza and Fridays were the days I saved for school lunches to relish the taste of youth. I remember enjoying innocence simply, because my world had been sheltered and yes, I knew of life and death but I was {almost} twelve and inexperienced I remember times of edginess, simply because I didn’t yet fully understand words like fey, or perception, or intuition although I could spell them very well. ~*~ Sounds shattered in Texas that Friday, I knew it in the running of a teacher, down long hallways of education, talking to the teachers, then running, as teachers crumbled, and crumpled asking an already still classroom to please, be quiet, as she shattered our innocence in a few words but intuitively, we {I} began to feel the repercussions ripple forward into our {my} forever-changed lives as we were excused for lunch, to go, please, eat, we will let you know if you will be going home; we did as we were told, talking in whispers, some of us not whispering at all, but wanting to know only safety. ~*~ They kept saying she was dressed in pink, but black and white forces you to use your imagination, so we only saw shadows on her skirt, as if some dirt had forever stained her suit. There was no magazine for People then, that colorfully played the moment again, and again, only three stations to broadcast shadows as horses slowly clopped, carrying the fate of a nation; only pages of Time held print in silent remembrance of a man who passed too soon, the media not casting Camelot aside wickedly until decades later, and we would learn more than we cared to know. Some moments ~ a day, or time, a bowl of creamy mac & cheese, a smell, or a color pink brings back the sound of footsteps, running, whispers of fear, feelings gone insecure, when the sounds that shattered innocence came and went, one November Friday. |
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