The Gifts inside of the Gift

There are only two dead persons on our refrigerator. There's a photograph of my dearly department Father Vernon Robertson flashing me the "peace sign" with one hand while holding his glasses in the other. I'm sitting beside him on the sofa in the beach house he was renting and I'm laughing so hard I'm wiping the tears from my eyes. The picture is easily twenty years old.

The other is of my Dad, my son and me. I'm standing between Jeremy and Dad standing on his dock just of Billy's Beach. Jeremy's dressed up for some reason wearing a collared shirt and has a really fine haircut. We're all smiling though Dad was already beginning to fade. It was the last time we were out there together marveling at the green marsh.

Everyone else on our refrigerator is alive and doing fine.

There used to be a lot more deceased people on it. Chicago Bob singing as I kiss him as Johnny O showed off his newly shaved head and Kenny Wade held a beer. We were at the Breezy Awards where Johnny had won "Best Island Character" and I was "Best Author." The only reason I was there at all is because Johnny had called me ten minutes earlier telling me to get my ass up there. I'd won.

There was one of Trolley Joe and me standing on the Pier. He'd recently been diagnosed with cancer and this was his first trip out since chemotherapy. Johnny O had called me that day too. "Get your ass up here. Trolley Joe." So I rode my bicycle as quickly as I could. The next time we were all on the Pier together it was at his funeral where Johnny and I both spoke before pouring his ashes into the ocean.

They've been replaced with the alive and kicking crowd. Jeremy and Marie, Kristen and Chelsea are smiling with my Mom. Sarah's girls adorn it; Laurel stand on her head ...Cassidy flees the ocean terrified because I'd just yelled shark and Maddie is playing my guitar.

The Carnival of Friends, Conner and Hania, Carlos and Verna, the very famous Dr. Withers, D-Luv, Shirely Sessions, Jodee Sadowsky laughing at something Cassidy as asked him and a picture I took of a painting of Che Guevara when I was in Cuba with Bill Berry. Sam Adams himself is there hugging Sarah. There's one of Roma with her mouth duct taped shut!

There are lots of Sarah and I, laughing and dancing and getting married.

Everyone is held in place by Jesus.

Not the person Jesus but the magnet Jesus.

It all started when Bill sent me a magnet depicting Jesus presenting the very first pizza to the Apostles. He had put it in a Bible where he'd cut pages out of the center to conceal the gift. I opened the box and thought he'd sent me a Bible. Then I opened it and there was the magnet.

I was an instant convert to Jesus magnets!

There must be forty of them keeping us all safe and happy.

I'm struck that life goes on. Dad and Vernon remind me that, though they're gone, they remain very much a part of who I am. Chicago Bob and Trolley Joe do too.

Staring at them all, I say a prayer of Thanksgiving for my life and the people who are in it. I can't imagine what I would be without them.