One last visit

 I paid one more visit to my hometown to relive precious moments before time ran out and my memories followed. I stood across the street looking at my childhood home, which seemed so very small but, as a youth, looked so large. I remembered things like the apple and plum trees, now dead with age but once full of fruit for the picking, which I did until I got a stomachache. I can see the ice-skating rink my dad made every winter of my youth, and my family is skating and laughing as if it were happening now. I see a young me riding my orange peddle car up and down the driveway under my mom's careful watch. I can see my grandmother and me walking into town, looking in the store windows, and her opening her change purse for a nickel I could use to buy my favorite penny candies.

I was tired but walked into town, seeing once familiar stores and diners gone by the wayside and replaced with Dollar General and cell phone outlets. I had a seat watching people speed past me, never saying hello or giving a wave. Just too busy, I said to myself as I remembered the small town at Christmas when all the light poles were decorated along with the department store windows that drew a crowd every day of the holiday season.

I never saw a police officer walking his beat and tipping his hat to the ladies. It was just a SUV cruising past me and parking. He asked if I was lost and asked to see my identification. He left, and I continued my walk down the street of my first true love. I stopped in front of her house, only to be recognized by the house number I'd never forget. The memories of our love and the heartache when we went our separate ways, then the news of her passing at such an early age filled me with tears I would shed for decades.

My last stop was the cemetery, where I said hello to my parents, my sister, and my true love. My nephew and my brother-in-law were also there, gone but never forgotten. I spent a long time sitting on the stone bench as darkness crept upon me. Tomorrow, I will fly back home, remembering my visit, feeling closer to my youth, and praying that when my time comes to rest alongside those I loved, I will shed no more tears of sadness, only tears of joy.

Mike 2024