Diclementi
I have thought about Mike off and on the last 18 years, sometimes it is pretty difficult, sometimes it is fun to think about what may have been. Usually it is all in my minds eye.
We went up to Los Angeles to see my parents this weekend, celebrate my mothers birthday 5 days early and then have the kid play with her cousin. Just a standard day in the life of the McGuffin. Only today took a weird turn to say the least, after dinner we got home and we talked about stuff and I asked to see if the pictures were still around and my mother pushed them out and Joe and I started to go through them. Great times, great memories, all fun times. Going back tot he old black and white pictures from Korea to Joe’s wedding on the Queen Mary.
i had seen the pictures before, but it had been over a decade since I last looked upon them. I went through all of the photo albums as they were already lined up. I remember when my mom and dad bought some of them, very oddly colored with weird patterns on them. They were not really put together in any real semblance. There was the Danny photo album and a Joe photo album, kind of, general family photos and everything. Then I saw one picture that I did not expect to see.
It was a picture of my mother, my brother, myself, in front of the yellow Toyota Cressida that was my car for a few years in Baumholder. Standing next to me, sort of leaning on the Cressida was Mike. He was smiling. I recognize the face, the smile, the eyes, the hair, everything. It brought back a lot of memories at that moment. It was almost like I wanted to scream to him, don’t get on that motorcycle in 1991, just don’t do it. It was like I had a connection to that picture at that moment and i could hear his voice telling me that he wouldn’t. Knowing full well that he would do it anyways.
I did not go through the stray photos in the box, but there is one more picture, I am not sure if it is there or not, but there is one picture of Mike that I am missing. It was of him probably 18 or 19 wearing a black jacket with his hair all done wearing sunglasses I think, or smoking a cigarette in his house in Germany. How I long to find that picture.
I know now that I have to go back to Jacksonville for Christmas. There are things that have been in storage for the last 6 years that I need to go through. Pictures and the like. There is probably a bunch of stuff from my family history there as well mildewing in the storage unit that need to be retrieved before they get into any worse condition. Hopefully, if Mike’s picture is not in the stray photo box, that it is in storage in Jacksonville.
