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Another dream last night. All the fellas, there must have been 600, were out on a 26-mile run night under the lights. Did you ever go to a party that one night when everything about it was perfect? Everybody was in a good mood. Everybody was making each other laugh. Euphoria persisted from the moment you arrived until you put your head on the pillow that night. A perfect natural buzz. All that is good about life coalesced into one evening.
That was my dream last night. DJ was there. Seemed like he started the run mid-way through. None of us called him out on it because the mood was too marvelous. DJ was in full-on DJ, reveling in all of the joy, making profound contributions to the discussion and what the night meant to all of us, talking about graduating from Wake Forest, what we learned, what it all meant, and how it applies to now.
Even Rudy showed up. We had finished the race and were shooting words and he started dropping f-bombs in front of my Dad, who was there for some serendipitous reason, and because we’re all adults let the f-bombs go because he liked and understood Rudy. I’m glad Dad was there.
Rudy was showing my Dad he was bold enough to curse in front of his friend’s old man. Rudy’s happiest when being bold.
The run kept going. Everything that had ever happened in our lives was being re-enacted and celebrated throughout the entire run. All events, parties, championships, triumphs.
All the while this song, “Times Like These” by the Foo Fighters, kept playing. No one wanted to hear any other song because it matched the perfect vibes.
What did the dream mean?
I woke up and started to wonder what this dream meant. This one made sense in some sense.
Yesterday morning I sat on a Zoom call with dozens of co-workers. The routine agenda items had been talked through, and it was time for it to come to a close, but one more thing had to happen.
It was time to pay tribute to a guy we all had been working with a few months ago who had passed away at 52 earlier this week.
There was silence. Up on the screen, there was a photo of him on his motorcycle smiling so genuinely. More photos of him with his wife and co-workers having a good time. Gosh, so many pictures of the guy smiling. I wished I had spent more time with him.
All during this we listened to his favorite song, “Times Like These” by the Foo Fighters:
What a nice way to be remembered by the people you worked with, as a guy who had a song he liked more than all others and it was played as a salute and thank you to him for being an upbeat person, a kind soul who while alive had music to soothe and inspire him.
I teared up listening to the song and looking at the photos of this man’s life. One day he was leading Zoom calls for us; on this day we were honoring his passing on a Zoom call in what seemed like no time at all.
Why did he die? Why were we still alive? When will our day be?
We don’t know. He didn’t know.
Music has a way of answering vexing questions.
We listened. There was beauty in those five minutes, a brief yet unforgettable pause in our frenetically paced lives to think about this one man’s life, why it ended, what he left us feeling about him, and how his passing made us concerned about our own.
It’s “times like these” – both the Zoom call and the dream with DJ and Rudy and everybody out running having the best times of their lives — that I’m thinking about, and am melancholy about, and grateful for, this morning.
It’s times like these that make me appreciate that I can breathe, that I have a wife and three kids, that I have a job and great siblings and fellas in my life like DJ and Rudy and Mac and Pete and TJ and Qweenie and Kenny. It’s times like these that I realize how short life is.
It’s times like these I know how important it is to sit here and write this and now share it with you
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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