A song can always take you back to days long past, evoking old joy or sorrow. Today, for a short span, I was drawn back to 50 years ago and the last time I saw my first love. I can still envision him standing there on the corner of Bessemer Avenue and Church Street, his long honey blond hair hanging loose below his shoulders. I have no photos of him or of us. Those are lost to time. Not even his sister has one. The evidence of his life is long gone. But every now and then, a faded memory pops into my mind, a postcard from times that will never come again, and I see his face, those Cherokee cheekbones and Irish eyes. And all of it floods back to me, every particle of our overwhelming love, our mad youth, two wanderers clinging to each other for life. He was only 21 when he was murdered, shot in the heart. It was all so long ago. But at least his sister and I remember. His brothers are gone from this world too. But I believe the traces remain. The walls and floor of that little white house where we once lived all those decades ago surely hold the ghosts of him and me echoing through time.
