The Mind of ~Ifer

In our final days with James, he asked us to memorialize him in a special way.  He was not leaving any family behind, and he didn’t want a formal service.  He asked that each of his friends go out and do something that they used to do with him, something that would remind them of him.  Relive a good memory of him, if you will.

So Saturday, that is what we did.  A group of us gathered together at one of our friend’s house.  A house we used to gather at to play Dungeons and Dragons, one of James’ favorite things to do.  We sat around and talked, we watched a funny movie about D&D gamers, and then we went out to Ryan’s and did some damage to the buffet there.  If there was anything James loved in this world more than gaming, it was food.  Not that you could tell, because he was always skin and bones, but the man could consume more food than should be humanly possible.

We laughed, we told stories about our memories and smiles.  We placed a picture of him on the coffee table while we watched the movie.

At the restaurant, we had 9 people seated around a table for 10.  As I sat there, laughing over something that was said, I looked across at that empty chair, and I was reminded of the Hebrew tradition of setting an extra place at the table (for Elijah I think, maybe?).  And I smiled to myself, because I felt James there with us.

He would have loved that gathering.  He would have laughed over the movie. He would have piled food from the buffet like it was going out of style.

He is still very much with us.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.