Right here waiting

Hot damn, it's the third Half Nekkid Thursday I've missed in a row... Miss you folks. I have been gettin nekkid, there just haven't been any cameras around...

I've kinda been floating the past couple of weeks, a half nekkid angel, if you will. But a Sassy one oh yes.

Speaking of angels, my Nicky winked down at me today (on what would have been his 34th bday). He is the only other close person in my life who has passed, besides my oma.

We were babies together, our parents good friends when we all lived in the Eastern townships, south of Montreal. Our family moved to Cowtown, and theirs ended up in California, and it wasn't until a dozen years passed that we got the chance to meet again.

My mom was coming through on a promise to take my sister and I to Disneyland. We 'did' California, from SF to San Diego to Yosemite, with lots of entertaining stops in between- Carmel and Santa Barbara stand out in my memory, that beautiful coastal highway. Mom navigated them so well, as well as the widest and busiest and scariest freeways in the area around LA.

But I'm rambling... must have windy roads and beaches on my mind :)

I loved everything about the place. So lush and green, equally as refreshing to my soul as the laid back attitude of the people living there. It was about the middle of the trip when we arrived at our dear hosts for a few days (Nick's dad was teaching direction at USC). We became very fast friends, having long talks under the stars in the pool and innocent/daring shoulder rubs and giggles till late in the night. We were totally innocent... I was a very young 14 and he was 16.

Our correspondance over the next three years was sporatic on his part (he spent the following summer in France and then was entering his freshman year in his dad's program). Mine was frequent (and rambling) as I shared all of my high school turbulence and triumphs with him. We had a great bond which intensified with regular phone calls soon after.

That summer he got a job at the Springs hotel, and what film student wouldn't jump at the chance to work in the place that the Shining was filmed? Plus, he's only be an hour from Calgary so we would get to have our long awaited reunion... ahhh teenage love!

We ended up determining pretty quickly that our romantic compatibility just wasn't happening, but this didn't stop our deep connection and friendship from continuing its flow. Nicky was just one of those people who was meant to be in my life for a specific reason.

Tragically, he lost his life in a climbing accident about a month after his arrival. It took me a good 10 years to be able to even look at that particular mountain again. His death altered me to the core, and had me asking myself for the first time ever what exactly this thing called life was and what the purpose of it all was. He was 19, I was 17.

We had a song (of course). That song pops up from time to time in odd places, and over the years I have come to take it as a little hello from my Nicky. Every once in awhile, when I least expect it, there it is. A warm smile and a comforting reminder. It came on the radio station I 'landed' on tonight, on the glide down the somewhat tarnished red mile to my positive thinking class. I smiled back, through Jules's sunroof, took a deep breath and thanked him.