Requiem for J
He was a precocious child, so I’ve been assured. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. The eulogy was brief, heartfelt, and opened up passages about his life we never knew.
If it had been me, I would’ve had communion served at the memorial service, but it wasn’t my place, and his legacy was honored, kept it short.
Then there is the dispersal of the ashes.
A final request was to be scattered at the beach, while not a great beach, for me surely a sense of solace. From the jetty in Port A?
Requiem
More than two dozen years back, I had a cell phone, but no iPod or iPhone things, not even some burned CDs, just the local radio. It was an americana station, just a pirate-like FM, with that Texas roots rock, country, Austin’s “Best Western” swing music.
Music I grew up on, and the tradition carried forward, the Texas Outlaws when they really were outlaws. It was that memory, from years gone by, then, resurrected, again, on a trip, this time towards the coast, ashes in the back of the truck.
For nearly a decade, maybe, I was in and out of Corpus Christi couple of times a year. I like the winter months, cold, but it’s a damp cold, and really, not that cold. I know a few sleazy dives, a nice place for relatively fine dining, and much in between.
Solace and entertainment in equal measures. A chilly walk on the beach, then curl up with some epic tome or splendid trash? Either works.
It was the radio, than last glimmer of a western sun fading, then the stars, and the twang on the radio. Now it’s a radio station in France, “Vous ecoutez Texas Highway Radio avec George,” spooled over the interwebs, and it works all the way up and done that highway. That echo from decades blown by? Radio signal fluttered and failed about a hundred miles from the coast.
Intervening years, some good, some bad, some in the middle, and now, ashes to ashes.
The music of the radio plays on.
the Portable Mercury Retrograde
