A night when the past comes shining back

All the parking spots on Main Street in Smithtown are full, so I round the corner and park in the lot behind Napper Tandy’s Irish Pub — my destination for this 50th reunion of Hauppauge High School graduates.

I slip inside to find a mass of people, faces vaguely familiar but, well, older. I’m scanning faces nervously when suddenly time stops as he appears. The boy next door — my childhood crush. I never thought I'd see him again. But as he leans toward me in the crowded room, and says his name, I am instantly 12 again. We smile at each other in shocked delight. Four hours disappear in a minute. We marvel at the passage of time and share stories of triumph and loss — a major one for me: the recent death of my father. We share a dance, contact info, an embrace goodbye. Then I'm thrust back out into the deserted night, the late hour now rendering the world mine.

I pull out of the parking lot and am shocked to come face-to-face with the funeral home that is housing my father's ashes — yet to be picked up. I didn't realize it was here. I pull to the side of the curb, the silent night close upon my shoulders.

"Dad?" I whisper. I know he is both in there and not.

I grip the steering wheel and catch sight of my hands. My hands — that are like his hands.

When Dad died three months earlier, I consoled myself with this notion: if I miss Dad, I only need look to myself as I am, in fact, comprised of both him and Mom. Hi, hands. Hi, Dad. Bye, Dad. I'll come for you soon.

As I pull away and turn the corner, there, straight before me is the strip of Main Street in Smithtown where Dad often filmed me marching in the Memorial Day parades of my youth. Caught on Super 8 film, I had actually just watched some of those clips we converted to view on more modern devices. Although grainy and silent, there I was — a little Girl Scout, smiling, casually waving a gloved hand before I threw a sassy wink in his direction. I stare at the patch of road, the very space that held my same body, all those bright years ago.

Oh, this night.

Something in me breaks.

The first flush of excitement, after 54 years, from seeing the boy I loved; the remembrance of our first childhood kiss that became the measure for all I looked for in love; Dad's remains lying in such close proximity to where he first shot the footage of my marching when he was alive and loved the little girl that was me. This Smithtown reunion of my life's memories crushed side by side, and I'm sobbing.

This fleeting life!

My own mortality, no longer waiting in the wings, but marching brazenly down Main Street.

Tears slide down my face at the hopeless wonder of it all.

Reader Helen Murdock-Prep lives in Huntington.