Awake and In Love
By ice rivers
- 571 reads
On Memorial Day in America we remember our vetrans who lost their life in battle. Also, if we are lucky, we make a memory that we can relate on Memorial Days to come.
I began the day by wishing Happy Memorial Day to my illustrious Uncle Phil, who came over from Ireland during the Civil War and joined which ever side offered the best boots and whiskey. Surviving under the pale flag of non-allegiance for most of the war, he ended up on the Union side and after the war decided to go with Custer which led to an amazing WTF at Little Big Horn shortly before he was slaughtered, scalped, disemboweled and castrated.
Although his body was never recovered, my father went to great lengths to obtain an official memorial stone from the Military Dept. for Uncle Phil. That memotial stone stands a few feet from the gravestones of my mother and father in Lima, New York.
The memory that we made today that I will talk about on Memorial Days in the future occurred around sunset in our lovely lanai. We had a beautiful day in Birkdale. We ate a couple of Burger's at Big Daddy's and would have bought a tee shirt if they had any xxl's. We went to a movie, a nasty little anti-superhero thing called Brightburn. When we got into the car to go home, the temperature inside the vehicle read 106 degrees.
When we got home, I read and Lynn watched a biography of Gary Cooper.
At 6:30 we watched the news of shark attacks and climbers meeting their death on Mt. Everest after paying $11,000 for the privilege of high altitude entombment.
Lynn suggested we go out on the Lanai and have ice cream sandwhiches. She asked me if I wanted chocolate or vanilla. I chose chocolate.
All of this is nice but hardly memorable which was fine with me. You can't force memories.
We put our Sonos speakers outside and Lynn hit Spotify.
I had never heard the song that emerged.
I loved it.
I asked "who is this?"
She told me it was the Ruen brothers and the song was called "Walk Like A Man."
I knew that I would remember the moment whenever I would tell told people about my love for the song and my discovery of a new, young band.
I just needed an anchor.
The anchor was Memorial Day.
Perfect
I know now that going forward, every Memorial Day, I will tell whoever is near me about the sunset on the lanai, the ice crean sandwiches and the discovery of the Ruen brothers. If you haven't heard them, give them a listen and when people ask how you discovered them tell them the story of how you read a story called Awake and In Love
Hearing a favorite song for the first time will have that lasting effect if we are awake at the time and lucky enough to be in long term love.
- Log in to post comments
Comments
Fascinating story. I'm glad
Fascinating story. I'm glad Uncle Phil got his memorial stone.
I went and checked out the Ruen Brothers on YouTube and their website. I assumed they were American, and then it turns out they're from our own Scunthorpe!
I loved your last line. We tend to think that it's the songs from our youth that stay with us, but new ones can have the same impact in the right circumstances.
Also, I'd never heard the term lanai before, so I looked that up too. I've learned lots today!
- Log in to post comments