I know that I'm supposed to be all about what I saw and did and lived on my vacation, but right now I'm listening to Somewhere Over the Rainbow, the version by Israel Kamakawiwo. You think you don't know it but you do. It's the Oooo Oooo song behind a Hallmark commercial a while ago and most recently the Rice Krispies commercial, the one in black and white, save for the mother's apron and the little girl's hands as they make the Marshmellow treats. Israel is Hawaiian, the instrument is fittingly a ukulele. The commercial about moments, just those moments.
It reminds me of Michael, this song does. Michael who has been gone for so many years now, I can't tell you if the years are 12 or 13 or 15. It's no longer important, how long he's been gone. What's important is that he was here. AIDS stole him from his life, his family, his footprints and his hugs, all he had to give. He was robbed. So were we.
I have a framed photo of Michael on my bedside table. In it, he's standing in the parking lot of his apartment complex, looking right at me, his arms spread out as wide as his grin. He's standing right there, alive and bright. Alive with life. It was just a moment.
What would you notice about me, I wonder, if I hadn't loved him. What would be absent from my face? I think my heart is a crime scene and I wonder what is obvious. There are bloody stains, fingerprints, residue from the fighting and resistance. Usually, I am careful with love but with Michael I let it go. With Michael I had helium lifting my heart. He was my friend.
My life, it's at an age where it's less about what I've been taught and more about what I've learned. It's about the lives I know, and the lives I knew. My life has a bedside table, upon which are carefully placed silver-framed photos of people I love and have loved. There's a lot of death there on that table. Lives gone, relationships shifted, children grown, my uncle gone, my father gone. Every night though, every night, I glance that way and I look at those faces, and I remember that love is not what happens to you, love is how you happen to others.
And just before I fall asleep, I wonder what song is in their heart, I wonder about little Jackie Paper's lifelong friend. And I feel my heart lift, and I smile about the other side of the rainbow.
3 comments:
What a wonderful way to look at it. That's the important thing at the end - who we have touched, and who has touched us. (I think I like thinking that Honalee is 'somewhere over the rainbow'!)
youre right, in the end, the only thing that matters is th elove given and received.
My parents bought one of his CDs while in Hawaii last month. That song is on it too!
-sdhb
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