The Worm
As 2024 winds down and we remember those we left in the ground we must look ahead, forget about the dead because like a record made of wax, they’re never coming back. Now all you rappers and hackers, you write an opening line that good you tell me all about it.
My closing words for this year are simple. While you may wipe a tear away from the memories of those we lost don’t let it cloud the vision of things to come. Unless some unforeseen comet cashes in our chips January 1st will arrive with hangovers and prayers and January 2nd will not be very much different from the next 363 days that will follow until on December 31st 2025 we’ll do her again and lament those we left in the boneyard for that year.
That’s the way life goes. And every year it goes and goes. And every year there are those who never come back. Years ago, as I watched the bodies being brought out of Luby’s I thought in my youthful mind, “Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been me!” What I didn’t realize at the time was that it was me. Those people being loaded in that ice truck took a little piece of me and I began asking, “Why?”
Today, this week, far from here and yet right in the neighborhood there are people who were born long after Luby’s asking the same question as some evil, soulless entity takes the lives of innocent children in school, all happy about the Christmas break coming and yes, we had to bid them farewell just like all the rest. Their tears are the wettest ones in our eyes.
I have read about “survivor’s guilt.” You know, where you survive a Luby’s, a Uvaldè, or a Vegas. I graduated in 1969. You cannot imagine how many of my friends there that day never returned from Vietnam. And what difference did they make? The idea was we didn’t want communism to take over the world. We lost Vietnam but China gained the iPhone contract. You tell me!
So what’s it all for? Other than a few clever letters what did the Romans leave us. Or any other so called “empires” that have salted history. Let me ask you this: Did they have as much effect on you personally as a high school friend you lost way back then. Or the loss of another that you heard died of old age last weekend. Old age. High school friend. Your age! There’s you some survivor guilt!
As a writer I have this foolish idea that my words may be remembered. And I become upset when my grandchildren do not heed my words. Of course they don’t! They’re writing their own words. Living their own lives. Never understanding it’s the same as it ever was. There is nothing new under the sun except due to our excesses they tell us we are going to burn up long before we get to hell.
There is a worm recently discovered at the bottom of the sea. That’s why it was not known of for so many years. It stayed at the bottom of the sea. This worm can be several hundred yards in length. But it is not “A” worm, it is many worms. All hanging together. Some eat and pass the nutrients to others in the string who digest. There are those who pull in the algae for a food source. And yes, there are a few buttholes in the crowd. They do the butthole thing when it’s all done. And this multi-worm lives its life, eats, craps, dies, and sinks to the seabed. To be consumed by other sea creatures including teenage worms who think they have it all figured out.
Jesus told us that God knows every bird that falls from the sky. And every worm that sank to the ocean floor, and every little girl who died from a cancer at Saint Jude in Memphis. And she is never coming back. But her memory lives in the minds of those who loved her. And that memory will be more important to that family than the words of some politician who won the bean count this year. It doesn’t take a village to understand. Just a worm.
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