Reprinted from Instagram.
Your mind plays tricks on you at twelve thousand feet. Sleight of hand. Things disappear. Problems. Worries. Anger. Stress. Little doves out from under a handkerchief. Flowers from a cane. Hocus pocus and abracadabra. The real ones never tell.
There was a birthday today. A college friend. A fraternity brother. Fifty-five years before this moment of quietly floating near the clouds he uttered his first cry. It wouldn’t be his last. Though maybe out loud. There was a storm inside his head. Thunder and lightning and static and rain and clouds there too. Except these were different clouds. Heavy and dark and unrelenting, creeping creeping creeping over the horizon. Only he could see them. The cold. The wet. The fear. How terrible that storm must have felt.
He was a quiet soul. Kind. Thoughtful. Caring. Curious. He loved. He was loved. He had family and friends and work and adventures and memories and hopes and dreams we can only imagine. He had it all. At least from the outside. At least what we could see. Or wanted to see. Masquerading pain so deep the reality and the illusion blurred into one. Sleight of hand. Flowers from a cane.
Two years have passed, but they haven’t really. It stopped then for those that were closest to him. Frozen in time. A before with no after. Your mind plays tricks on you. What ifs and I should haves and god fucking dammit why didn’t I’s. Around and around and around and around. What did those shoes feel like? Why did they hurt so much?
The real ones never tell.