The Stranger

I met a stranger on the day that he died, and my life was never the same.

I was just a boy of fifteen when the stranger rode into town. I was sitting in the saloon, sipping on short glasses of ice, complete with a couple of molecules of ginger ale. This justification was a lie for a man who could never look at himself in a mirror. I was a passenger. I had in tow with me the girl I would know forever, but the days of our acquaintance were numbered.

December came, and I was almost giddy with self-imposed tradition: I would turn my attention to the nighttime stratosphere and extract light that could not be seen from the dark sky. The times were changing, yes, they were, but I gleefully felt that I could hold on to the world I grew up in.

I was hanging with my southern boogie friends and my guitar-wielding women. They fed me everything I needed when that stranger came to town. As he approached the entrance he was thriving but I did not hear him at all, and then suddenly oblivion, he was shot down the moment he arrived.

I woke from a misty December dream and saw him lying in the street, the town echoed with the wailing of his widow, hands bloodied, disbelieving in shock. I came to him, knowing that there was nothing that I, nor anyone could do.

Photo by Juan Di Nella on Unsplash

Everyone around me knew him so well and a shockwave blasted through the crowd of people that were gathering like a fire fueled by gasoline. A trapdoor opened under my knees as I knelt next to his lifeless body and I fell away from all of the people I knew, joining the friends of this stranger.

Suddenly as if in a dream, the stranger got up and told me to take a journey with him. The first part of that journey lasted four years. As we traveled, somehow he let me feel his life but in a way that only I could feel it, so it was not the same as it happened to him, but in a strange way, it was exactly what I needed to understand so many things about myself. The southern boogie friends and guitar-wielding women were still dear to me, but they paled in comparison to the stranger who had become part of who I was.

As the years went by the idea that we as a world once lived, jumped and breathed in a season of such unparalleled creativity seemed so impossible, yet we know it was there. So many years later, I am still learning from this friendship that I could never have imagined. The relationship built friendships in my life that I think may never have happened, had I not met the stranger.

I met a stranger on the day that he died. My life was never the same after that, and I am so thankful that I got to know him at all.