Memphis was maybe 14 years old, about my own age way back then. It was the birth of the 1950's when music was soft and sweet and so were the girls.
She was from Memphis and my uncle Chris's niece - but not related to me. So I felt I should at least try to get the courage to speak to her and maybe even try to hold her hand. I had just met her and somehow I was emotionally in a twirl, in a world of feelings I had never known. A world of very vivid senses that somehow I had never really experienced. A warm type a caring that was strangely different.
When I walked onto my Granddad's screened in porch, she was sitting there quietly. Sitting on the porch across from my Grandma's rocker. Sitting on the big white wicker chair looking out over the lake. She seemed intense, focusing on the view of the dock, the boathouse, willow trees and the lake.... But she didn't seem to want to look at me.
I was not so bad looking or so I was told or perhaps imagined. I sure was looking at her. Then she spoke very very softly to me. Almost in a whisper. Her eyes were bluer than blue. Her hair was golden and my heart was fluttering and pounding so much I couldn't really hear what she was saying very well.
Something about wanting to see all she could see while she could and touch everything she could. She was saying that she was leaving in a few hours that she and her dad had come to visit my uncle who was living in Granddad's 'little cottage' next door that summer.
I was a shy kid, at least when it came to girls I didn't know. Girls seemed a bit strange and yet incredibly special and this one was more than special. Right there, sitting on the wicker chair, but not touchable, not by me, not in my lifetime.
It was the early 1950's and a kid like me could look and dream but dared not touch.
Then she said she'd like to walk to the dock and feel how cold the water was. I jumped up and offered to walk down to the dock with her. It was hard to believe. She actually smiled at me and said it would be her pleasure!
We crossed the railroad track and down the steps to the dock we went, not too fast, not too quick. In fact she walked very slowly. I wanted to stop the clock and stop time and just enjoy this incredibly beautiful and pleasant young woman. I wanted to touch her hair and hold her in my arms, but I was just fantasizing, that couldn't really be an option. Wow, would my friends be impressed with the charm and beauty of this pretty southern belle!
She paused on the steps, stooped and carefully picked some mint leaves and then reached out to share some with me. "Smell them" she said. "Life is wonderful, its so great to be in such a lovely place". I can't put her southern accent into words here but if ever a young man was instantly in love it was me and this was the time and the place. This young woman was more than attractive, she was magic. She had instantly stolen my heart and maybe even my soul.
We walked very slowly past the boat house and then out onto the dock. First we sat on the bench under the willow tree Granddad had transplanted there the year I was born, then we moved to sit on a blanket that my cousin had left near the middle of my Granddad's grass covered dock.
She carefully spread the blanket out as if it hurt her to reach her arms. Then she asked if I'd hang on to her while she reached over the side to feel the water.... And I did. And she did. When she stood back up I wanted to pull her into my arms, but I dared not.
No one had ever acted this way, said these things, been so pretty and reached out to me like this and now I knew this was a living angel and even looked like one.
There was more small talk and then she reached and took my hand as she got up. She held my hand tightly as we walked very slowly back to the little house, the cottage where her uncle lived. No girl had ever held my hand so firmly. It was as if she were afraid I'd let go.
Somehow I found the courage to ask for her address. Suddenly she turned and looked at me very sadly with those vibrant blue eyes and softly said, "My address is Heaven". That's what she said. Then she said "I have to go now, cause my dad and I have to visit everyone before I leave". There seemed to be tears in her eyes and and its for sure there were tears in my heart. Somehow I got the courage to tell her I didn't want her to leave. "Couldn't she stay a few days?" There was no answer. She just looked at me, then turned away.
A little later, she, my uncle and her dad climbed in my uncles old car and she was gone. I waved and she waved back, smiling brightly. The next day my uncle returned and I asked him for her address.
In in that slow deep southern drawl of his he said that she and her dad were visiting all their relatives before she was gone forever, that she had incurable cancer. He told me she had only a few weeks to live, that her kind of cancer was fatal and that her family had chosen not to put her though the pain of some of the more outrageous cancer treatments which in those days were even worse than treatment is today.
I didn't want my uncle to see my tears. I turned and walked away. I walked and walked and walked some more. I felt a terrible burden of pain and mixed up emotions I had never experienced before and rarely felt since.
Over the decades since then, every time I visited our family dock, and it was many thousands of times, I remembered. I remembered this especially beautiful human being and her intense beauty and her quiet dignity.
I remember today also, this very special and very brave and very courageous young woman from Memphis.
Today I too have cancer and the clock is ticking. And while I'd like to believe I have a little courage, its not a fraction of that shown by the incredible smile and will of that beautiful young woman from Memphis.
