I dont know why I feel the need to post this. Perhaps I was reminded today again of the quickness of life. A friend of mine says that life is that dash between the dates on a grave stone. Maybe I’m reminded of the way time is catching up to us boomers...I was the class of 65 and I was going to live forever or maybe just until 30 - its hard to remember now - I did the best I could to kill myself with all kinds of potions and powders so I have to figure the only reason Im still here is to provide an object lesson or to help someone else with a kind word. Or maybe its just because my higher power has an extremely strange (by my standards anyway...) sense of humor…I say all this because I just got word that an old teenage running buddy of mine has died after many years of courageously fighting MS. The disease took his speech, his ability to play guitar or run and in the end ( and Im told for many years...) the ability to move. Greg Lessa loved music (as I recall he turned a bunch of us on to folk Dylan..), and had a great sense of humor. He also wore wife beaters (in my day everybody called them guinea Ts because all the tough Italian kids wore them...thats before we all got so PC.), black pointy shoes and drove a pretty cool car. He had a quiet strength about him that made the guys we hung with realize that he was no one to mess with and would not be made to play the fool. I admired and respected him as many of us did. I remember seeing “American Graffiti” and thinking George Lucas could’ve just as easily based his movie on the Berkely Heights, Watchung, Mountainside kids as he did on his childhood in Modesto. Greg would’ve been the Paul Le Mat character: that’s how cool he was. Greg went to Vietnam. I didn’t. I was drafted but apparently a few years of standing in front of Marshall amps turned up to eleven had diminished my hearing in one ear by 50% and I went home. I lost track of Greg but I know he went on to have a successful career, lived in Scranton PA and raised a family. His cousin Mike and I played in bands together for years and every once in awhile he’d give me an update on Greg and then for a couple of decades nothing - until a year ago when I got a friend request from Greg Lessa on Facebook. My wife had just died so I wrote a long rambling response and then got this back: This is Lori .. an old classmate of Gregs. I put him on FB to get him back into the world of the living. He has been in Scranton, PA, Veteran Nursing home since 1999. He is in the latter stages of MS and is totally immoble. His short term memory is fuzzy most of the time, but long term is sharp as a tack. He has seen your picture on FB & your photos. Hell be so pleased you got in touch..I will read your message to him when I go back up on Saturday (Oct 18) everyone sends their messages here & I read them to him & he answers back, while I type..(his hands don’t move anymore, only his neck, slightly. He lost his wife in Jan..2012. She had Alzheimers for 10 yrs. He never saw her after he signed himself into the Nursing Home. I go up & bring him the music, Italian food & tender-loving care.” Like i said - i don’t know why i feel the need to say something - maybe it’s just to honor Greg - or maybe just to acknowledge a special time and place that is still very much alive in my heart...
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 13:19:45 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015