12:32 a.m. - 2024-02-17
Forever Young

it’s just past midnight on Friday and the weekend is here. The Jam Social tonight was an easy going affair with Jamie, Uncle Ross, John and myself.

I played well as did the other guys but there was no real momentum, and we ended up spending more time drinking tea and eating biscuits and cake. No complaints really from me in that respect and the banter was really good between everyone.

I had a moment of clarity on Friday afternoon while working on the red knob twin and it’s now working and actually sounds pretty good. More faults came to light after testing it but the client doesn’t want to pay to get it gig ready, just basically working enough to sell it on. So it’s a minimum cost option. I’ve put it all back together and I’ll take what I’m owed.

I woke up again on the wrong side of the bed on Friday morning. The dreams I have been having are different from usual. I dreamed last night that I was sitting in the tall grass of a farmer's field in high summer during school break with a girl I knew in my younger years. Cecilia was my first ever friend who was a girl. It wasn’t romantic or anything like that, we were just school friends who enjoyed each other’s company. I liked her a lot and her mum always liked me calling on her during school holidays. She was a bit of a tomboy and didn’t hang much with other girls in her school year.

One day in mid July, I called on her but her mother said she wasn’t well. I called most days for the next week or so only to be turned away. I stopped visiting her as I thought she didn’t want to see me. A week passed and her mother showed up at my home to say Cecilia was asking for me and would I like to come see her.

she was sitting up in bed, pale, thin, and with a drip in her arm. She must have known how ill she was but never said so. I visited her almost every day for several weeks and she became paler and thinner until one day she wasn’t there anymore.

She died just a week before her twelfth birthday and a week before we were both due to start High School. I didn’t know what Leukaemia was, only that it was fatal to her. It was the first time in my life that I’d been exposed to the grief of losing someone close and I realised then that I did care for her.

In my dream, we appeared as the eleven year olds that summer before she became ill. She was asking me all about how my life had turned out and had I ever fallen in love, got married, and had a family of my own.

I asked her why she was asking me these things and she said she could still speak to me that way because I was still so young at heart. You’ve never really grown old. Stay that way she said, always be young at heart, even if you sometimes feel old. I just wanted to tell you I’ve missed you, she said. I asked her if we would meet again and she just smiled as she got up, and waved to me as she skipped away into the tall grass of the farmer's field.

I woke up feeling a sense of reunion but at the same time that same sense of loss I felt the day she went away. I have no idea why Cecilia appeared in my dreams, I’ll think about it but try not to dwell on it. I’ll do my best to do as she suggested and try to stay forever young. It makes perfect sense to me really. I also miss her, even now after almost a lifetime has passed by.