What's He Doing In This Picture?

The shirt, the sweater-shirt, the braided wrist band are all here. The clothes hang in a closet and keep their stories to themselves. "I'll tell you later, I don't want to talk about it right now", was a typical answer from Aaron when pressed to elaborate on these MBA Intervention pictures. We know the date was October, 2004 and Aaron, a summer Intervention MVP, was invited to be a student leader at the fall Intervention. Boys became men at Intervention.

Johnny Cash is the music of Intervention: Don't Take Your Guns to Town, Drive On, Me and Paul, I Still Miss Someone, Folsom Prison Blues. It's OK for men to cry. Anger is only one emotion of a man. A real man has a spiritual side. Real men fall down, get up, and move on. Real men respect others. Johnny Cash and Intervention have special meaning to Aaron.

The watch continues to slip time. It's in a drawer. I look at it. Time keeps on slipping into the future. Time is not my friend. It's a bandit, a thief in the night. Time heals nothing. Time's a killer. Aaron didn't like time. Time made him wait. Aaron couldn't, wouldn't wait. To Be Continued.. were three words he couldn't read at age four but he knew exactly what they meant: You, Aaron Meyer, have to wait! "NOOOOO!!! TO BE ConTENyoud!!" Oh, Air Bear. What you didn't understand made you what we love.

If his ears made the first impression on me the moment Aaron was born, his fingers and hands were a close second. "A piano player" was the doctor's observation as they weighed the new born. In church I had Aaron's hand on one side of me and Patrick's on the other. I remember those little boy hands. Patricks held on to mine. They were little boy soft. Aaron's were not damp, but a little sticky. Just right for catching footballs. Those long fingers eventually glided the strings of a guitar. A real man explores his artistic side.

Smoke from the fire is Unchained. Captured in a photograph but gone forever. If I press my face into the sweater, maybe a hint of smoke is twisted in the fabric. Drive On.

Intervention is roughing-it I understand. The grief journey is a rough and rocky road. The leaves are falling, and I'll always miss my son. I see those eyes and those arms. I'm sorry our life ended when it had just begun. I wonder what you could have told me about this picture?

You're Always On My Mind.