Damn you, Maynard Ferguson
A few days ago I was skimming through my RSS feeds, not expecting to find much of interest, since many of my blogging friends were out of town. I read the CNN headlines and saw this story about Maynard Ferguson, the great jazz trumpet player, dying. I thought, "Aw, that's too bad, Mark loved Maynard Ferguson, he'll be so sad."
Then the sucker punch: "No he won't. Mark is dead."
Crap. Crap. Crap. How can it still hurt this much after such a long time? How can it sneak up on me and make me cry when I'm snug in my safety zone, reading CNN?
Mark was the first boy I loved. That was a long time ago, and we weren't even in regular contact at the time of his death. The circumstances were just so bizarre: I lived here in Seattle, and he lived in Minneapolis. He happened to be visiting Seattle for the weekend for a tae kwon do competition. I didn't know he was in town. He and a group of friends were out clubbing. There was some kind of misunderstanding about a good parking spot near a club, and a thug opened fire on the car. Mark was killed and someone else was seriously hurt.
I found out about it a few days later when I happened to turn on the local 11 o'clock news after getting home from work. I so rarely watched the local news. And the one time I did, there was Mark's picture on the screen, and the announcer was talking about the candlelight vigil in his honor earlier that day. That I had already missed the official mourning period made it hurt even more.
I wrote this shortly after Mark died.
Then the sucker punch: "No he won't. Mark is dead."
Crap. Crap. Crap. How can it still hurt this much after such a long time? How can it sneak up on me and make me cry when I'm snug in my safety zone, reading CNN?
Mark was the first boy I loved. That was a long time ago, and we weren't even in regular contact at the time of his death. The circumstances were just so bizarre: I lived here in Seattle, and he lived in Minneapolis. He happened to be visiting Seattle for the weekend for a tae kwon do competition. I didn't know he was in town. He and a group of friends were out clubbing. There was some kind of misunderstanding about a good parking spot near a club, and a thug opened fire on the car. Mark was killed and someone else was seriously hurt.
I found out about it a few days later when I happened to turn on the local 11 o'clock news after getting home from work. I so rarely watched the local news. And the one time I did, there was Mark's picture on the screen, and the announcer was talking about the candlelight vigil in his honor earlier that day. That I had already missed the official mourning period made it hurt even more.
I wrote this shortly after Mark died.