I spent a couple summers in the late 1960’s working “construction crew” at a summer camp in the Appalachians (most of the time I cooked and baked….). The camp was one which espoused meditation, cooperative living, and, though it was not yet a “thing,” could have been called New Age.
Many of us kept in touch through the years, and in 1999, we had a reunion of sorts. You could call it our hippie reunion. Many of us had (as would be expected) become quite mainstream in the intervening 30 years. And some were still….hippies.
At campfire one night of the reunion, talk turned to the universe and threads that connect us in it. “Ray,” (still a hippie….) explained that the universe was made up of “well….like, slinkies. You know….they stretch and bend, and then another intersects with it….and they bend around each other….and then you can slide from one slinky to another and make new connections….and that’s LIFE, man!” In the dark, around the campfire, sitting on top of a Virginia mountain with a bunch of old hippies (and buoyed perhaps by a surreptitiously imbibed glass of wine), Ray’s pronouncements seemed quite sage. DH and still laugh about it, and when trying to explain something unexplainable, we revert to “slinky theory.”
On this past Maundy Thursday, Marcia came up to me at the “peace” portion of the service, took my face in her hands and said “You know, our sons have met in heaven, and are waiting for us.” Her adult son died just a few days after my own son passed away.
On the first anniversary of Steve’s death, I posted to Facebook a reprisal of the picture montage set to the music of the song he wrote, “Sound of Mom’s Dream, ” and rejoiced in the responses of love and remembrance from his friends and family, and marveled at how many people, in far flung spots, had been impacted by knowing Steve.
Doug commented on my post: “Beautiful boy and beautiful dream. We look forward to meeting him someday.”
I was taken aback by Doug’s comment. “He knows that Steve died…..,” I said to myself. Then I read Doug’s next line: “I know the one who dreamed him into existence will make the dream come true.”
All these strands….Marcia’s vision of our sons’ connection, the remembrances of his friends and family, Doug’s hope to meet Steve in the future, my and DH’s own memories of our life with Steve, made me think of Ray’s dissertation around the campfire.
“You know….they stretch and bend, and then another intersects with it….and they bend around each other….and then you can slide from one slinky to another and make new connections….and that’s LIFE, man!”
So, Steve, keep bending, and wrapping and turning, and sliding, and connecting us all the process, until I can bring Doug and introduce you in person.
Slinky Theory, man!
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