the birthday - 6 March
i’d received an auspice of him even before we ever met --
It was 1972 ...
i was at work robotically running a project through the copy machine
where i caught bits of a conversation between a girl i didn’t know
and another whom i knew only casually …
the one i didn’t know and i had been hired together a few weeks earlier …
she got the cushy job (ass't to the VP)
i got the grunt (customer service)
it was she who was going on about some guy and some party -
ho-hum, to say the least, i thought, mindlessly collating page copies …
it was when she said his name that something happened –
i would come to realize that, at that moment, i’d ‘shifted’
and could ‘see’ him because something deep inside recognized him,
and further, not only was i 'told' that we would meet,
but also that we'd met before in another lifetime ...
really? i asked myself impatiently stapled together another inane sales booklet …
i wrote the whole thing off to being pathetically suffocated,
and already bored by this job … (a shaman doesn’t do well in a nine to five)
one day soon after, Spirit intervened via one of those
seemingly inconsequential but in hindsight life-altering bumps in the road …
at the end of the worday i discovered my VW bug needed a jump ..
but it was late, and most people had left already -
because cell phones were still way in the future,
and since i lived on a remote Cape Cod inlet island, getting help was a strategic call,
so i sat inside my car in a near empty parking lot, gathering my thoughts
and considering my next step when i was startled by a rap at the window…
“'Everything ok?”
it was the girl i’d been hired with
“Battery's dead,” i told her
“Ouch! bummer way to start a weekend"
“Yeah, no kidding”
“listen, if you want, i live only a few miles away –
my boyfriend could help you -.come home with me and we’ll bring him back here”
As she pulled into her driveway she laughed at the sight
of a bunch of cars parked around her little cottage -
“i see we have company” she said in a tone suggesting company was the norm …
sure enough a number of folks crammed the small space inside –
watching t.v., cooking, visiting, reading,
a couple folded diapers i assumed belonged to the toddler running about …
As i surveyed the room, it was then our eyes met –
through the crowd (there’s always a crowd) we saw each other –
at this point in my own defense i still had no idea who he was –
and my heart pounding so loudly impeded my brain to think clearly. -
he stood by the wood stove warming his thin tall frame -
when our eyes locked, it felt like his were peering into my soul -
he lightly nodded in my direction ...
for only a nano-second did i think he was acknowledging me,
because my co-worker was pointed in his direction, saying,
“There he is, c’mon, let me introduce you two”
it ws ironic to me how unnecessary introductions were …
Little did either he or i know that less than two years later he would walk on …
when the small aircraft he was in flew into the Atlantic Ocean,
"... and there were no survivors"
eight days prior to the crash, i'd just turned 21 -
and three weeks before that, he'd just turned 26 -
we'd celebrated fiercely because on his military stint,
an Asian tea leaf reader had told him that he "would die during [his] 25th year" ...
on that last birthday a mighty weight had lifted from his shoulders ...
In fact, as it turned out i was the only bug in his ointment -
based on the visions i was having, i’d been begging him not to take that job,
but his excitement was fanned by exactly what i feared –
the flight itself -
he said, he wanted to experience what commuting to work in a plane felt like ...
this Aries sun even took my concerns to the edge of a majour blow-out between us,
and while in hindsight i’m glad that i backed off,(a fight is such a nasty last memory)
it was a monumental event of profound personal ineffectiveness -
while most spend their 21st year partying, i spent mine in mourning -
(perhaps i mourn still)
today would’ve been his 78th birthday …
... everything is happening exactly as it should ...
...or so i'm told
NHT
©2016, 2017, 2018, 2026
related reading:
--cracks in the universe
--stranger on a greyhound
--faces