2003-10-01 - 10:49 a.m.

In childhood we ran in the fields together, we laughed in the snow, we cried and hugged and laughed and played together. Do you remember the gumballs in the snow? Do you remember the ill fated snowmobile ride before church? Do you remember sneaking across to the cove on the canoe and being bad. Do you remember that time my mother caught me, sitting on the back porch of the camp taking a drag off your cig? Do you remember climbing the trees and looking for mushrooms? Do you remember the night...when we stared at the news for hours unable to believe it was real, do you remember when we sang him goodbye? Do you remember the games of pool? Do you remember speeding around the lake on the boat and singing at the top of our lungs. Do you remember ice fishing in shorts...and the day my grandfather came to love you. Do you remember the rings, and the vows of friendship, the long nights of crying, the suicide attempts, the drugs the alcohol, my motherish ways. Do you remember how I loved you?

It seems an eon ago now that you cast me off, left me by the rode as you walked on with another. Callously you toss me without a care to whatever tomorrow may bring me, after I guarded your tomorrows for so very long.

If life were fair it would no longer burden me to love you, to care, to wonder. Yet, fair life is not. Maybe it was a gift you gave me those years ago when you left my side, a freedom to no longer have to clean up after you and love you and have my heart break because of you....

I don't know, nor do I know why today I expend this energy wondering, why you're crawling through my mind. Why are you still here when you're so far away