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exhausted Soaks in toward you like dry socks on wet carpet.
Chris is dead. I have skin. I'm invincible. Though i am cold straight through to see the strongest man I know cry... i am okay. It wasn't My brother that didn't make the curve in front of the Surf Station... Chris was Shawn's big brother. We were always little pests- potential snitches to his too many girlfriend's :). He was THE player. The laugher. Surfer. Poster Boy for fun...The loving father... The brother I wish I had. Shawn shivers beneath the weight of quiet sobs and we are all useless.
Saint Augustine Record:
http://www.staugustine.com/stories/1023
He looked fine. Like he was sleeping. doesn't everyone say that?
Viewings are fucked up. The spirit has let go of the body, moved on. Yet as part of the "moving on" process We the-guilt-ridden that have taken that same turn far-too-fast, far-too-many times and lived, "view" the discards?? Lori developed the pictures for the Sherrif's Dept. Not knowing, Never having met Chris. Never having seen his picture save those she developed of a helmet so far away... "I Could not stop..." she told me later "thinking of Shawn the whole time. Could you call him- Check on Shawn tonight?" "Sure, Baby" I said and went back to doing some important nothing.
"Shawn's brother died." Amanda said... and i thought omg i didn't know Shawn had another brother- she couldn't mean Chris. This was brilliantly expressed by my poetic tongue as: "What?!"... "Chris..." she said"... motorcycle... curve... can you come?"
Shiny? Maybe matte
C-41 prints sliding
gently onto Krispy Kreme type-o conveyor belt...
Double prints pressing
branding iron of memory
Pre-dawn images:
man-n-machine v/s tree.
Flashes of stillness slammed into her memory forever:
"...he looked fine, Sweetie... he looked fine." She'd repeat it like a shocked mantra and I believe her. Hard. Hard enough to think him standing, laughing, not laying in some surprisingly beautiful box. I saw him out of the corner my eye. Twice. Beside Shawn. Beside his mom. His spirit larger than his body ever was.
Does John Edwards take apprentices? I wan't frightened. It was bold though. Like memory.
I kept thinking.
That's a body. wow.
That was Chris' body.
wow. I wish Lori were here. I wish i were not. I wish i could wish Shawn's pain away. I wish his wife Amanda were not so beautiful. I wish i wasn't such an ass to notice such things right now. I wish Lexy or any ten year old, would never have to lose her father. I wish 10-87 were not such an awkward time for a girl. I wish i had not seen Donna crying for another mother's loss on the anniversary of her daughter death... I wish i had not seen how useless Mike felt to his wife and the absolute dismay in his eyes. I wish i had said more than (for the first and last time) "i love you, man-" <----WTF is that? Beer commercial shi!? and "you're the strongest man i know." Children- thankfully , children were children and there was laughing and gentle stumbling from wide-eyed bright faces.
FF>> the "service": Kingdom Hall @ Old Moultrie Road
I envy preachers and their ability to speak
oblivious to the uselessness of their words.
...to be continued when drier eyes appear.
Prepare for really bad poetry :)
Note's to update on tomorrow: Joey- yay!, Brian-n-Mandy, John's take on dog ownership, Jaimie's car, Lori's Homecoming
Stacy, Jennifer, Ed, Borders, Rascal
