WISH YOU WERE HERE

Image by MIKE QUICK via Flickr

This is another re-post from my Myspace blog.

I lost my best friend, Mark Scneider, on June 1, 2006. I posted this after I visited his grave a year later. His death was the final link in a chain of events that led to the near destruction of my marriage as well as my own self-destruction.

Uncomfortably Numb
Current mood: sad

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

I went up to Beaver Dam on Friday. I went to stand by my friend, Mark's, grave.

I never understood the point of visiting a grave. Even my own mother's. I drove an hour one way to look at a headstone?

I did it anyway. Friday was the one year anniversary of his death. It was a year ago that I started on this blog. This was my way of coping with the grief and the loss.

So. I'm standing there, looking at the grave. When I first walked up, the grief welled up and a had a few tears. Then nothing. I kept thinking I should have brought something...A flower, a card, whatever. Like I said, I don't see a point. There is a dead body there.

So I left and went to the Shopko and got a stuffed penguin...He liked penguins. And some beer.

I came back, put the Penguin and a bottle of Leinie's Red on the grave. Then I stood, looking, waiting for the tears. They weren't coming. Had I lost the feeling all together? So soon?

Uncomfortable, I looked around at the other headstones. Next to Mark is a soldier that died in 2004, I don't know if it was Iraq or Afghanistan. There was stuff on his grave. I noticed a little, flag...I guess. On it was, I supposed, some kind of religious poem. I looked a little closer and picked out the words, "Hot ashes for trees." Then I broke down. Just those words made it come. They are, of course, lyrics from "Wish You Were Here." by Pink Floyd. There is so much attached to that song in my past lives. I can hardly listen to it. "Fade to Black" is the same way.

Anyway. I got this urge to take that little flag and put it on Mark's grave. That's something he would have appreciated. I know he would have gotten a kick out of that. Understand that back in...um...1987 or so we went to see Pink Floyd at County Stadium. That night had Enormous significance for all that went. I won't go into it, but it was one of the memories that I keep from that life. One treasured piece of a past I've chosen to forsake.

The only thing stopping me from taking that little banner was the fact that it was a soldier's grave. I could not disrespect someone who died serving this country. Regardless of how I feel about this war.

Mark's memory represents something for me that I cannot have again. The time in our lives that we were the closest of friends is like a snow-globe. I can look in, shake it up, and see the scenes like snow falling around. But I can't reach in and touch it. It is fragile, and I keep it in a safe place. I pull it out once in awhile and remember.

I miss you my brother.