Nothing we (speaking for myself) like more than to tell someone one of our love stories. Young or old, they’ve always popular, especially with the one doing the telling. Don’t know if their popularity increases as we age, but it seems certain that the thoughts of past love does not diminish. To an extent I think that it may even grow, as it blurs. Perhaps, however, there are not as many people around to listen. That’s another thing.
Max, my father-in-law, had a favorite love story. Right before Alice Shrade died she told her daughter, “Call Max Dopson and tell him I died.” Alice was Max’s high school girlfriend and Max came to NJ to live with his daughter when he was ninety. He lived to 96 and in the six years he and I logged a good many hours together, riding in the car, long walks, breakfast, lunch, you name it, just the two of us, to and from on various excursions. I probably heard the “Alice Shrade Story” (among others) a dozen times.
Obviously it made Max feel wonderful the he was remembered. And it was a love story that I enjoyed hearing as well. And could I just take a moment here to apologize to Max for, more than once, blurting out the punch line? Sorry Max.
Max would start the story – no segue required – “You know Alice Shrade, she was my girlfriend. She passed away. And when she died, you know what she said to her sister …?” This is where – a couple of times – I would butt in, “Yes I know – ‘tell Max Dopson’.”
“Right,” Max would say.
“That’s nice, isn’t it?” I'd say.
“Yes, that she thought of me.”
And so we would continue our drive, rolling along the road, life’s highways, we the living.
I liked Max’s Alice Shrade story, enough so that I thought perhaps I should think of a person or two to tell of my passing (I was born in 1940). Not so much that they would be informed, but if they were anything like Max, or me, despite some sadness, I think that it would make them feel good and perhaps some day they would tell the story to their grandchild, the story of how I thought of them, right before I passed away. Something nice to leave someone - no?
It sure made Max happy ... to be remembered so.
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