Candy Time Machine

   It’s just a little thing really. A bag of candy at Bass Pro. However when I picked it up it propelled me to 1963.  I was 8 years old again.

  I am sitting in my Dad’s car eating these peanut butter bars waiting for dad to come out of the hospital.  Mom was taking care of me and my little brother Steve keeping me quiet with candy. I remember dad coming out and for the first time in my life I saw my dad crying.  Grandma Janie, his mom, had died.  I asked mom about what was going on. When she told me I stupidly said out loud what I was thinking. “One down and two to go”. Mom looked at me in horror and exclaimed “don’t say that”. 

  By the end of the year mom’s mom passed away as well as her grandma.  In between those deaths JFK was assassinated.

What happens to a man reaching the twilight years that causes him to review events in his life?  Am I looking for forgiveness?  Am I trying to justify my actions of so long ago?  Or is it just a memory tied to a little piece of candy the little 8 year old me wishes to keep.  To keep it in that memento drawer with all the little and big events of ones life.  

I will eat that little piece of candy and remember.  I will also look forward to the next memory of a life lived.  A life of love and loss.  To put it another way: life.