To those I won’t see again, I remember
CHAPTER 17
To those I won’t see again, I remember…
I remember you, I remember all of you. The recently released inmate I met on the subway, the Japanese girls I met in the streets of New York, the 109 year old war vet, the curly haired aspiring EMT, the 3 year old Mexican girl who sat next to me at a rest stop Starbucks. I remember all of you, I remember when I met you, how I met you, what we talked about, if I saw you again, and the last time I saw you. I worry about you, I think about you. I wonder, if you went back to prison, and if you made it to your daughter’s dance recital. I probably won’t ever see any of you again. I wonder if you made it back home safely to Japan and if you ever made it to the Met Museum. I wonder if you’ve passed on. I wonder how your children are doing, you spoke so highly of them. I wonder if you know you’re a hero. I wonder if you made it back home to Texas, you’d be about 6 now. And to the lot of you that I haven’t mentioned, if you’re reading this, I think of you too. Jose, did you get your citizenship. The English boy, did you get your scuba certificate. The Austrian girl, did you go on your trip to New Zealand. That sweet old lady in midtown, did you make it to dinner on time. To the American couple that got engaged in Japan, how was your wedding? To my waiter in Darling Harbor, did you ever move to LA and become an actor. To my Uber driver in Nashville, I hope your daughter is doing well and that her leukemia has gone. I say I probably won’t see you again, not because I wouldn’t want to but because I don’t know that it’s meant to be. I didn’t catch all of your names and I don’t know that I needed to. If we meet again that’d be great. But I enjoy the mystery of life and in a weird way I like to torture myself with the wondering. I think the mystery of life is that you could know someone for years and they mean nothing to you, but you could spend seconds with someone and they mean everything. Sometimes you’ve known someone your entire life, but your life wouldn’t change, should they walk out tomorrow. Then, sometimes a person you met for a second on the train stays with you, in your thoughts forever, and you wonder. Know that I think about you, and know that if we meet again, I will have a lot of questions. You all live on with me in my thoughts your lives, and the seconds, minutes we spent together give me the ability to keep living. I think about you, and that pushes me to meet other people to go outside and talk to the stranger waiting for the train. For the seconds we spoke all I thought about was you, your struggles, your life. It wasn’t about me, and I loved that. For that I thank you.
That brunette girl,
The one who wonders