DO NOT MISS ME WHEN I’M GONE

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: David Simon <davidworld2@me.com>
Date: February 15, 2018 at 8:57:58 AM EST

DO NOT MISS ME WHEN I’M GONE

I died.  Yesterday.  

I was sitting next to Diane Henley, the prettiest girl in school who I have never had the courage to talk to.

But she was on my mind.   Just like always.

I could smell her perfume, the one that I wished that I could somehow package, like in a  little ring box, so I could carry her home with me and at night, I could open it up like I was popping the question and then I would have the courage to talk to her.

Right before I died, I was pretending that she and I were dating and I was imagining a magical moment like it was snowing right here in Florida for the first time ever, like on Christmas morning.

In my daydream, we were sitting in study hall and when the snow started, everyone ran excitedly to the window, because none of us had ever seen anything like it before.  Was this God’s gift to us for graduation?

Diane was like a little girl, jumping up and down and that kind of broke my heart and made me want to cry because I couldn’t believe that she could look even prettier.

That’s when she suddenly turned to me and said, “Do you want to go outside with me?”

We ran down the stairs like we had wings on our ankles and burst out the front doors of school and immediately started to dance in the snow, like Belle and the Beast.  

She was that pretty.  It was that magical.

And she was just with me.

The snow felt like a million falling white butterflies and I remember thinking: I will never, ever be happier than this.

I can die now.

We built a snowman together and did snow angels.

And then her mom came to pick her up and just as she was about to run to her, she suddenly turned and kissed me.  On the lips.

Her lips felt like the warm silver dollar pancakes at iHop and tasted just as powered sweet.

I was the one who finally stopped, because her mom was honking and yelling something about not being late for her orthodontist.

And then, to my surprise,  Diane sprouted real, actual angel wings and as she flew away from me, she sang, ‘I will always love you” like Whitney Houstonand just like that she was gone.  Like fairy dust on the gust of a suddenly rude wind and all that I heard was the piano piece that I played at last year’s recital: Gymnopedies by Erik Satie, which always sounded like the music that ballerinas must listen to when they are lonely.

And in my dream I float home, like the air  was a skate board or the people moving sidewalk at EPCOT where mom and dad took me for my fourth birthday just because I had said off the top of my head one day, “I need to see magic.”

I had a lot of magic in my life.  

There were all the birthday parties with the piñatas that were filled with chocolate coins, which, when it finally broke, would shower me with gold and make me feel like the richest boy in the world.

There were our annual family trips whose destinations were always picked by one of us blindfolded, fishing around a fish bowl that was full of folded papers, each with a different place written on it.

Every year someone else got to be the picker.

We always went to church on Sundays.  Always.  When I was little I hated it and would always crawl on the floor and untie people’s shoes, or I would lie on my back and stare at the ceiling and wonder if that was the way in to heaven.

I was in school plays, too shy and self-conscious to try out for the lead. But I would memorize all the songs and in my room, especially when I couldn’t sleep, I would sing a song quietly, like ‘You Have To Be Taught” from South Pacific.  And I would imagine me and Diane, singing it together and all the shadows were the audience, rapt and moved by our performance.

That would make me cry, but  not the bad kind of crying.  The kind you feel when something is unimaginably beautiful.   

Sometimes things that are exquisite are just too painful to bear.  

Every Sunday, right after church, we always went to Denny’s for a grand slam breakfast and everyone else from church would be there.  Once, during Christmas, when I was like four,  I stood up on my seat and started singing “Jingle Bells” at the top of my lungs and one by one, everyone else stood up on their seats and joined in.

That’s when I knew for sure that there was a God.  Or when the Marlins would suddenly come out of their slump.  Baseball was our other route to God.  It’s a place where men get to forever act like boys and boys get to forever act like men.  

There is no time in baseball.  Just the plush velvet luxury of sitting with your dad, who seems to sparkle with Old Spice, as he gently narrates the game like a wise, old timer actor, with the unexpressed but readily agreed upon understanding that he is sharing all this wisdom with you and you alone, so you can inherit the wind and do the same for your little boy when you are a dad.

In the summers daddy would take two weeks off and we would stay home and pretend that we were at a rich person’s lake house and had the best time.  The Galloways, who live next store, always let us play in their pool without a formal invitation.  One time we lugged our fishing gear there and pretended that we were fly fishing in a pond where daddy said fairies could be caught.

When I look back, as I am right now, as I soar over the panorama of my life, with it’s many lights and happy days, all I can think about is how lucky I have been.

All the sounds are already starting to fade.  The fire alarm.  The firecracker blasts of his gun.  That girl screaming right next to me, whose tape they keep playing on the news.  She was screaming but I wasn’t.

I didn’t feel anything, but the end.

What I felt bad about the most, was that my being suddenly taken away was like firing mom and dad whose job was to keep me safe and far from harm’s way.

What will they do now?

No one, other than my folks, friends and relatives will ever know that I was here.  On earth.  

Most will never know my name or the fact that I got a B+ in Chemistry for the first time that day.

I guess all our triumphs and all our losses, in some ways, have the same effect to everyone but you.

You either suffer of celebrate in silence.

Maybe prayers are nature’s way of sharing. 

Death is quieter than life.  

Much quieter. It’s like those snow butterflies are fluttering angels who flap madly around you and weep right along with you until your crying becomes a song.  Like a South Pacific song.

Nothing makes sense other than birth and first love which is what you stay connected to for your entire life.

I don’t feel my shredded skin anymore.  There are no more bullet holes.  No more fear.   I feel exactly the same way I did the day I was born and the first time that I saw Diane.  I never did get my breath back

So do not miss me when I’m gone, because I will always be there.

 I did my chores,  I did my homework without being asked.  I tried not to be mean and when I was angry, I did what dad told me to do, I went out back and chopped wood until I was able to chop out the bad feelings, until all the huffing and puffing finally pushed out the coal black darkness from my lungs and my heart.

It’s too bad that the boy shot me, and my friends and coach, didn’t have a dad to tell him to go chop wood instead.

I will miss Ginger, secretly the most.  

Ginger is our golden retriever who was like Nana the dog in Peter Pan.  Ginger always slept on my feet at night and would woof in her sleep when she mistook the sound of a wind swept branch scraping against the side of the house was a bad guy.

The word dog is god backwards and I think they were all sent to us to walk us, to bring us a squeaky ball when we were sad and to kiss us when no one else would.

But do not miss me when I’m gone.

Remember me.  

And I will help.  

When the next baby falls from a mortal gunshot that rips their heart apart like shredded cotton,  I will be there.

When the next grown up lady or very old man falls to their knees, strangled into silence by a hail of angry bullets, I will be there.

When the next news report pulls you to your TV in the middle of the day, I will be there.

It takes sick people to slaughter us.

But it takes enlightened people to save us.

Maybe we should send kids and moms to Congress instead of men because children love life even more than them.

Because none of us comes with a price.

No one can own us. No one can tell us what to do.

We respect grown ups and have learned to listen to them.  We know who is good and who is bad.

We talk to each other.  

We cry together.

We laugh together.

We live and die together.

Remember me and I will send you a broken sky of  kisses.

Remember me and I will sit on your quiet feet, just like Ginger.

And I will woof, even in my endless sleep, when the branches stroke the walls of the house just like mom’s hand, when she quietly moved my hair from my eyes.

Keep the right light on.

So I can find you.

T

Sent from my iPad