"Shiny Faces, Foggy Memories, and Mack's Strange Promise"

Former classmate Mack Larrimore rests peacefully in the arms of God at Florence National Cemetery in South Carolina.

​This morning’s birds are in full gossip mode—chirping like aunties at brunch, while one or two whistle something so sweet I nearly forget I poured coconut milk instead of actual motivation into my cereal bowl. It’s a decent start to the day, but my brain has other plans: it’s been lingering on funerals.

I went to one recently. First time in over a decade. Not exactly what anyone circles on a calendar in red—but funerals do funny things to memory, to time, to faces.

Because after the tears and the tissues and the tactful silences... something strange and kind of wonderful happens. People show up. People you haven’t seen in thirty years. People you don’t even recognize until they laugh a certain way or mention your name in a tone reserved for back-when-you-were-skinny anecdotes. Some faces don’t change much. Others arrive like masked versions of a memory you forgot you had—a stranger with history pressed into their cheeks.

It’s like this: you remember the face you met at sixteen, and then thirty years later it’s still trying to peek out beneath crow’s feet and extra wisdom. Your mind plays mix-and-match with features, desperately trying to stitch together the then and the now.

But you know what? I liked it. I liked meeting faces I forgot, faces I half-knew, faces that walked me back to places I hadn’t thought of in ages. Reunions by accident. Mini documentaries narrated by memory. And somewhere in that wandering collection of reconnections was Mack Larrimore.

Mack was the guy who always said, “Someday I’ll give you exactly what you want.” We were sixteen, so that probably meant a slice of forbidden joy, a promise made between urinal tiles and teenage limbs. I remember his hand, I remember the wall, I remember the open shame—and strange happiness—that comes with being seen too closely by someone you thought might understand you.

Of course, Mack is gone now. But his shadow lingered a bit that day, like the scent of cologne on a jacket you find in the attic.

After a funeral, you collect phone numbers the way kids collect seashells—precious, fragile, and destined to be misplaced. You promise to stay in touch. Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t. Time’s funny like that.

Eventually, you trade the past for the present, trade memories for moments, and find yourself sitting down to write—with birds as your soundtrack and Mack as a flicker in your peripheral vision.