Slackjaw's Forum

The funeral was last Wednesday. The second one in the last month or so, the first being Sweeties brother who ended his life at the beginning of July. Last Wednesday’s was for Sweetie’s mom, who finally got caught by the cancer that had been chasing her for the past few years. The service took place at Holly Cross Church against the dying wishes of her mom, who had been a life long member of the Church of Saint Patrick and had always asked that her service should be held there. Due to some bad planning on her death, however, St. Patrick’s was closed until November due to it’s 100th anniversary renovations and since we all thought it bad form to wait that long for a ceremony, the service was moved. The pastor of Saint Patrick, Father Seamus, presided and Sweetie alongside her oldest sister gave the eulogy. I was asked earlier if I’d like to do something for the service and decided that I would play a song that she liked. It took us a little while to come up with one, but the minute Sweet...

It started off as just a comment in a yearbook. I had already left school the year before and made my way to this northwest corner of the states. My friend Bret agreed to take the yearbook around when they all came in so that I could have people sign it. Ninth grade was a big turnover year and by the time the yearbooks arrived at the start of 10th, I had already lost a number of my friends who had also moved away during the summer. When it was finally sent to me, Bret had written “I’d like to hope that the Evan, Bret, Reed and Andrew foursome will someday join in the same place again, if at least for a few days, and raise a glass of beer, but I doubt somehow this will ever happen. The radicals have split, the partying is done and the past will never be relived.” It’s a comment that has stayed with me for 25 years—that thought that maybe you can’t ever go home again, back to a place that most likely never even existed in the first place. I used to wonder if we ever would have that ...

Well I can honestly say I’ve been waiting for this week for quite a while now—ever since February when Jeff and I got together for a beer. Tomorrow I go back in time twenty five years to look at people I have not seen since I was 15. Las Vegas is calling long distance and I’m about to pick up. Last year I asked this website and in turn, the universe, to find these people. To what end even I wasn’t sure, since I just figured that I would deal with that when I needed too. Of course, the universe provided as it always seems to do when asked nicely—provided in almost exactly the way I had hoped for. I don’t know why that surprises me any more. Every time I have asked for something, put it down in writing and preferably drawn a picture, the universe has given me a pretty damn close facsimile to the request. I don’t know if this is true for everyone but this seems to work in our family pretty well. I remember years ago drawing out a picture of our old blue van before we even knew ...