Forever Be"Holden"

"Just because somebody's dead you don't stop liking them, for God's sake.
Especially if they were about a thousand times nicer
than the people you know that're alive & all"

Holden Caulfield
 

A brother's love has the strength to magically transform a little girl forgotten into a little girl cherished.  And my "brother" wasn't a brother at all, he was a family friend.  But when he twirled me around and looked into the mirror over my shoulder, I felt more cherished than I ever had before.

"Do you see her?"  I can remember him asking me as he pointed at my reflection in the mirror.  "That . . . is the prettiest little girl in the whole wide world."  He said - spinning me around the room again.  "And you'll always have something that those other girls don't have.  Because you're different.  Because I can see your beautiful soul right there in your eyes.  Because there'll never be another you."

So when they called to tell me that he was gone, I had only one thought.  A thousand tears and one thought.  One thought that haunted me - that still does.  It was a single regret that wrapped itself around my teenage brain and wouldn't let go.  "Why didn't I ever tell HIM how special HE was?"  Because he was.  Because I couldn't stop wondering if it would have made a difference.  Because I knew what it felt like to wish you could have saved someone . . . and why Holden Caulfield wanted to be The Catcher In The Rye.

It's a tattered paperback that still gets me.  And I identify with it's protagonist's distaste for the phonies of this world just as much at 33 as I did at 15.  When I read the news of JD Salinger's death, I pulled it off of the shelf again, poured a Scotch, and made a Toast to an old friend.

The day that they buried my "Allie" the sun felt, on my face, very much the way that I always felt when he smiled at me.  There were ladybugs . . . swarms and swarms of ladybugs.  And it was on that day that I decided to surround myself with them.  

Now the little red beetles perch here and there in my house to remind me that you can't ever let yourself overlook a chance to tell someone how special they are.  That you can't say I love you too often, or too soon.  That thoughts of admiration should be spoken aloud and from the rooftops.  Those little Love Bugs give me hope.  Remember . . .

 "hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

Andy Dufresne