Henry and his Aunt Betsy, Great Smoky Mountains National Park
I love so much the beautiful essay that dear Serge Bielanko wrote about my Henry today. I will treasure it always.
A snippet:
A Tennessee kid would have turned nineteen today. I never met him but I feel like I did. I’ve stared at him in pictures, his handsome face framed by a shock of thick dark hair, his thin frame usually wrapped up around his acoustic. He was the son of someone me and my wife met recently, someone who we like a lot. I cannot begin to understand her loss. No one can unless you’ve been there. Here’s hoping you haven’t.
Still, when I hear the tales of young men dying I think of that river somewhere way out there beyond the known sky. After the great big storm cloud of life melts away, after the whizzing bullets and the hydroplaning muscle cars and the dirty needles and the fistfights and the pills and the shitty cancers and leukemias and the bedroom nooses, all of it, after all of that slips away on the edge of a crisp afternoon breeze, what is left is this:
A young guy walking downstream, uncertainty in his gleaming eyes, headed right into the gaze of a kid who came before him. A good kid who’s been waiting to show a newbie around.
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For Henry. We’ll play guitars someday.
Thank you Serge. xoxo
– Katie
