I want to write a story about how I’m going to remember you

I want to write a story about how I’m going to remember you, in a narrative like Kurt Vonnegut would imagine -- first we pull you magically out of thin air, then we put you into smoke, then vapor, then moisture, we put you into ashes and with a flash you go into an old body that is very still and pale. Under a sheet, then Voilà! You breath and you spend a few days visiting and then from time to you stay in different hospitals always getting a little bit better, stronger, more clear eyed. You tell stories, you help friends. Then as the years go by you get younger and younger, have a happy marriage and interesting career starting as a know it all but always learning something new every day. Giving up knowing it all, all along, finding one laughs more. Admiring waterfalls, mountains, rockets and rodeo queens. A fast car. Bunches of roses for lovers. Dreamy nights. Bright stars. Becoming thirty then twenty then teen, running and jumping and laughing and finding a crush then school, home, mom and pop in brighter and ever tightening circles, dawns and starry nights, orchards and field, your favorite dog, you’re small and fast and you sense the rhythm of all little things like waving strands of grass and polliwogs in the creek and you’ve got your blanket and then soon you’re being held close, everything amazingly given to you, now in such a safeness you don’t know where you are you’re in solace that gets bigger and bigger and even more peace, a humming and thrumming, until these definition between you and bliss becomes totally moot and even irrelevant.. sweet motion until there’s no sound no dark no light not taste touch thought or sensation, no self and no not self … just bright and aware and full of a seeing, wise delight without any boundaries that goes on beyond infinity and hope and fear


For Jerry Thompson
1935 - 2025