TERRY MOSHER
PORTVILLE, NY
If you live long enough you see things you have never seen before, and if you continue to live you will find that your friends drop one by one until the so-called rat pack that you once were part of is no longer a pack and you are suddenly all alone.
That’s about where I’m at. The door continues to close on people I have known or have been friends with. Lance Kahn and Dick Winderl are the latest to depart leaving serious voids not for me because I didn’t know either one well, but for many folks in this region.
So it goes.
And goes.
My childhood and my early adulthood have been wiped nearly clean with losses of friends. I was back in New York State a year ago and wandered the neighborhood where as a kid four of us spent years roaming the woods, the river and the back roads looking for, and finding, adventure.
It was quiet – deathly quiet – as I walked the familiar paths I did as a kid with Dean, Tommy, Eddie and Gary. All the homes are still there – some still haven’t been painted in the intervening years – but the deep emotion I felt for the place is gone, as is all four of my childhood friends.
When I got done walking, I climbed into my car and slowly pulled away, leaving behind memories that will never vanish but are dulled with age. The river still slowly flows, the hills are still thick with trees, and hawks still circle looking for prey, but the quiet is deafening as the scene fades in the rearview mirror.
Three thousand miles away in Ferndale where I spent my high school years, the quiet is also deafening. The laughter as we gathered around our cars downtown is stilled. Where once Frank, Joe, Pete, Adolph, Ray, Inky and I were standing around and talking all at once, the laughter echoing down the empty street, now time stands still and the quiet screams, ‘where have you all gone to?”
It’s difficult for me to journey on alone, filled with memories I can’t share. Memories are like those faded pictures stored in a dark closet. They never get looked at and just stare blankly back at the darkness they are stored in while life goes on around them; unconcerned and lost in the memories they hold.
What is disappointing, and frustrating, is that nobody knows the friends I had. Not only don’t ‘they know, but they don’t care to know. So your memories are locked inside of yourself, never to be exposed to the living again.
I guess the bigger question that needs to be asked now is what does it matter if we lived or not? Ray died in 1971 and does anybody know about him, and if not why did he live?
What difference does it make if Ray lived?
Is that question too abstract?
Should I even ask the question?
Ray, by the way, was a sweetheart who died just six years after getting his degree from Western Washington and just a couple years after he married. So who cares?
Well, I do. Why, I wonder, did he exist only to die just before he started to live? Is there a reason for him? If not, why not?
So it goes. Here I sit, perched above the water as seagulls soar in the wind, enjoying themselves and a guy like Kahn goes out on the same water full of life and comes back hours later devoid of life.
Does it matter?
Yes it does to his loved ones and to his many friends. But like Ray, 40-some years from now the question, if it is even asked, will be who was Lance Kahn? And if he lived, why did he live?
Am I the only one asking such a question?
What I do know is that we come as easily as we go. We each have some impact on live around us and when we suddenly leave, the void is felt, to varying degrees, but it is felt.
But then time erases much if not all what was felt. It is as that person didn’t exist. I know that Ray existed, but you don’t. And chances are good that I may be alone in knowing Ray existed.
My favorite quote about myself is that at my memorial service two guys will show up and as they leave one will turn to the other and ask, “Now who did you say that was?”
Easy come, easy go. We may think we are important in the scheme of things, but really, when it comes right down to it, we are insignificant. Life goes on whether we are part of life or not. If I go tomorrow, the kids will scrap any mention of me and move on. I’ll not even be a footnote.
Back in New York, in my old neighborhood, the river continues to flow, the hills are full of trees, and hawks continue to circle the sky looking for prey.
And on forgotten trails and back roads, the quiet is deafening.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.