Breadcrumb #612

JOSH Boardman

Here lies an unimportant man. One of those who spoke of himself as a drifter because one summer he drove all the way from Michigan to Los Angeles in one go. It was better he learned to make a journey without drugs than with them. He vowed to return to Los Angeles. After failing out of the communications program he moved halfway north. The hunting was not bad you couldn’t get lost in the snow. He reenrolled in community college for nursing (his mother compelled him) and bought a Siberian Husky named Rabbit. He met a fine lady and though she wasn’t a knockout (his father said over a snifter of whiskey) she was steady and rustic and strict. The fine lady got pregnant. He was accepted into the nursing program at state college. They had a girl. His wife stopped working while he became a nurse practitioner and his mother was happy and they lost Rabbit. His mother died and a boy was born and then his father. Then he was the oldest man in his family his wife showed wrinkles his children went to highschool and college and he bought a cabin. Bourbonconked by eight o’clock. The man owned a rifle but now he was an old man and never shot a deer or a rabbit or even a pheasant. He died before his wife. She threw a sleepy funeral with heavylidded snapdragons (her favorite) and all the younger generations of his family. His son spoke at the rostrum—my father was the most important man in my life. We ask so much of the dead. He never returned to Los Angeles. Trudging through the snow he deceived himself. He did not miss the warm Venice wind on his back. He did not miss the tideworn pebbles between his toes. He swore he knew joy in his life.

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