Scattered Treasures

 

Scattered Treasures

Noel Laflin

11-9-21

 

I sat at my old friend's desk on the night he passed.

And although it was only in late August, it now seems like a lifetime ago.

Phone calls had to be made, and I selfishly wanted to be alone in the dark den, sitting in his chair among his things as I made those calls.

I keep this photo in my phone as a token of remembrance to both my old friend, that sad night, and fondness for some of the items on the desk. I remember taking the shot before switching over to the phone app and delivering difficult news.

It gives me comfort knowing that the small treasures placed about here and elsewhere throughout his home would eventually be given to other worthy homes.

Gandhi is with my friend's brother as the fellow who painted the picture was a great friend to both brothers and who is now also gone. 

That pretty girl in the frame is now with the pretty girl - a wonderful woman who was the light of my friend's life and cared for him like no other.

Moses holding the Ten Commandments is with a retired priest, a man who was of great comfort to my friend for nearly all his life. 

The Scout patch is with a former Scout, an old friend of my friend when we were all just kids together for several magical summers.

And I have Mr. Churchill sitting in a place of honor on my own old childhood desk, along with other treasures that will be given to more friends of my friend when next we meet up.

The snapshot is just a freeze frame - a brief moment in time - frozen, but mightily treasured.

But treasures of the heart are harder to explain.

 

Nighttime Run

 Nighttime Run

Noel Laflin

10-31-21

Some nights we dared one another to make a run the entire length, and back again, of the cemetery grounds beneath a bright full moon.

As we frequently slept out in one another's back yard on warm nights listening to tunes on a tiny transistor radio, we told ghost stories and tried to scare one another, as children love to do.

Eventually, like a pack of nervous young wolves trying to prove their worth, we'd leave the comfort of our lair and sneak through the dark neighborhood, silently scaling a neighbor's fence abutting the cemetery and run swiftly through this city of the dead.

Barefoot and breathless we finally found our way back to our sleeping bags, listening for our parents voices quietly talking indoors, catching bits and pieces of a sixties television show, willing our hearts to beat normally once more.

We resumed the telling of the same corny kid jokes, the same stupid ghost tales, and greatly embellished our recent dare, eventually falling off to sleep, one by one, awakening to dewy grass and stiff limbs in the morning.