Chance Encounter

In the post below, Perry (From Lottery)  and Sam (from The Rock and The River) .  The two have a chance encounter in a waiting room in Chicago where they discuss the two friends they have lost, and try to find closure.

Hi, my name is Perry, and I’m not retarded.  Keith was my best friend in the world, all the way up to the point to the day he died..  I loved him a lot.  Yes, that is true.  Sometimes I miss Keith.  Sometimes, I miss Keith very much.  Cherry misses Keith too.  One day, I was walking to work, when suddenly I saw a flyer on the ground.  The flyer was for a person that could talk to people that were already dead.  Unfortunately, the person was located all the way in Chicago.  Still, Cherry and I both really missed Keith, (and I also missed Gram) so we decided it would be worth the trip.

When we arrived in Chicago, there were a lot of things and it was very confusing to find where the flyer led to.  There also were a lot people that were saying bad words.  I tried to ignore them.  Gram didn’t like it when I said bad words.  After a long time, I finally found the person who talked to dead people.  There was another person who was there named Sam.  He looked like a teenager that had gone through a lot.  Cherry didn’t come to Chicago with me when I was there, I was lonely.  So, I started to talk to him.

“Hi.  My name is Perry.  Who did you miss from the dead?”

“Hi.  I lost my best friend who was my brother.  Even though he was a member of the Black Panthers, I still loved him.”

“Wow.  I also lost my best friend.  His name was Keith.  I’m unsure if he would be ok if he knew that I married the woman that he loved.  Yes, that is true.”

After we introduced ourselves to each other, we started to talk about how much we missed our dead friends.  Sam was pretty passionate about trying to get African Americans more rights.  I think that he thought that he was still in the 1960s.  Sam tried to help me make myself feel better about Cherry.

“All that matters is that you love her and she loves you.  It doesn’t take a message from the dead to tell you that.  If Keith really is the nice person you say he is, then he’ll have wanted your wife to move on and be happy.”

Those words resonated (that was one of my old dictionary words) with me.  I left Chicago with a feeling of happiness and joyfulness.  I didn’t even need to talk to the dead.  In order to repay Sam, I sent him something that no one from the 1960s would have imagined would be possible.  I sent him a picture from President Obama’s Inauguration.