Tom

Flipping, last night, through our grade-school memories, Tony told me a story I don’t think I’d heard, about a kid in our class whom I barely remembered, but who it turns out had lost both his parents when we were all together in Mrs. Applebaum’s Grade 7 class. And you’d think I’d remember something like that, but the only thing I remembered about Tom was from the first time we’d showered together after gym, and that he was the guy who had clued me into the fact that people with red hair would of course have red pubes.

     Sorry Tom.

But wait, it gets worse, because Tony could barely believe it himself, and so I decided to show off a little and see what I could find online, because sometimes I think I’m pretty good at that stuff, and then other times I just wish I could stop, like when I found out that Tom’s mom had died on April 20th while visiting her family in Montreal, and his dad had died just nine days later, like when I discovered that Tom—their “chosen son”—had been adopted as a baby . . . and then that poor Tom had died in 2019.

Inspired by Dying. Photo by Walker School Photo.