Real Love

The Swinging Medallions were wailing in the background and the crowd collected at the Pier obviously were enjoying themselves. The sky was clear and the night was warm. We sat alone on the beloved back talk ... talking. Everything in the world was happening ... over there.

We were alone in the stillness of the night, in our own world, while everybody else was in theirs.

Music ceased and the first BOOM of the fireworks exploded!. You can't help but stop and look so we did and ...

Fran came back from the dead in the biggest of ways.

We were close friends in college. She was beautiful, olive skin, long black hair that grew naturally into curls, large brown cow eyes, a pirate smile and ... M.S.

She was tiny and would topple over for no apparent reason but she was determined to live until she died. She taught me green one day. We got wasted together one night because she wanted to do that before she died. She would ride around campus alone on a bicycle built for two because ... she believed like nobody I've ever met.

I'd be walking to class and she would peddle up, her skinny brown legs weary because her muscles just weren't there for her anymore.

"You wanna ride," she'd ask, dripping in beauty and sweat.

So I'd jump on the back and peddle cause she couldn't anymore. She smiled though it all. When we got to the bike rack, I'd have to help her off ... she was so lite ... so much beauty and wonder packed into such a small body.

One day in a busy crowded hallway someone bumped against her and she toppled over onto the floor. She sat there with her legs spread, sitting up, palms on the floor to steady herself, books spread all over the place in front of her, and people just rushing by to get to wherever they were going.

"Hey Fran," I asked when I walked up, "what are you doing?"

She looked up at me with more beauty than I'd ever seen ... the fragile beauty of holiness ... and she smiled.

"I could use a hand," she said.

So I reached down and pulled her up and she had to throw an arm over my shoulder to steady herself. Then we laughed as I picked up her books this way. We looked stupid as people rushed passed but we laughed as both of us would bend over to retrieve a book and then make our way to the next.

Then Fran died.

Many years later I died too ... but in a different way.

One afternoon depressed, slightly drunk and sitting alone on back deck, Fran came back to me. There is this wall of trees with a thousand shades of green. The sun sparkled through the leaves as they danced in the wind. She reached down and touched my sadness and ... my resurrection from the dead began.

So when the fireworks blasted off Fran stood before them and we looked at her ... dressed as Christmas trees with wonderful lights glittering as she danced before us.

It is so Fran.

She was celebrating where I am now.

And letting me know it.

"Hey Fran," I say out loud today. "Thanks for last night. You are as beautiful as ever. I miss you. Thanks for coming back and saving me for myself. And ... umm ... remember that night we got drunk ... and we talked about finding love ... the real love that we all want so desperately ... thank you for blessing mine."