THE GHOST OF FREDFESTS PAST
Special to The Leader
Many a word has been bandied about between friends and university officials these past weeks, and the prevailing opinion seems clear: I, the Spirit of Fred Fest, may not be long for this world. And if, by some unlikely confluence of forces, I live to draw breath in the year 2015, I shall be a shadow of my former virility, faint and ill-defined.
Hush, hush child. Wipe away your tears. This is simply the nature of the world: things grow, live, flourish — and then yes, child, things die. This is something we must learn; something we must accept. Life can not be a static thing, child, and it is not something you or I or anyone can ever truly hold and call our own. A life is not a possession, but a swift current into which we briefly slip until, at the end, we are deposited once more into the wide-open enormity of the sea.
“But what consolation can this be?” I hear you cry in protest. “How can we be expected to go on, knowing there is no light at the end of the tunnel, as there always has been since first our ancestors paced Fredonia’s fabled halls?”
To this I say there is but one solution: love. The place in this world which I relinquish will come to be occupied by another someday, and you shall love those parties that replace me with the full force of all that is in you. You will cherish them, revel in them, learn from them, teach them, nurture them until they are strong and can walk freely and with strength through this world.
But, child, what is important to remember now is that no matter what happens — if we meet again come May, or if I succumb to the forces conspiring to take me from this world — I will always, always love you.
And I will remember you, even when I have no mind left with which to remember. We will remember each other, and in this memory we will be together, united by our occupation of the same moment in time.
I will not be gone from you: I am there in every pong ball’s glittering arc, in every 10 a.m. glass of boxed wine; I am there, reflected in the shattered screen of every dropped iPhone, lingering in every cloud of sweet smoke.
Ah, child, the time draws near. Death creeps soft-shoed up the stairs to my chambers. Tell Cortaca I’ll be waiting at the pearly gates with bells on.
Come here, child. Lay your head on my shoulder. There, there. One day, we will stumble down the Great Temple Street in the sky, together again. My eyes may close. But other eyes will never cease to open, look around, and realize that they fell asleep with their shoes on and a calzone in their bed.