Writing Prompt #1

After years mostly dormant, I am attempting to work myself into being a writer again. To that end, I did a simple Google search for "writing prompts" and chose the first link listed, which included a total of 20 prompts. My goal is to write from a new prompt each day, giving myself 10 minutes before calling "hands up, utensils down" (so to speak), and then posting the unedited result in this blog. The post below is today's entry.

 

"Write about a song and a feeling it invoked in you."

 

My friend Bryan Hayes wrote a song called The Other Side. On the surface, the lyrics speak of saying goodbye to a close friend, seemingly shortly after their death. Having talked to him about it, though, I know that the initial inspiration came from the sadness he felt after his beloved Labrador retriever Fender died. 

 

I almost never make it all the way through the song without crying, and I don’t cry as easily as I wish I did. Heck, I hardly ever make it through the first chorus without my eyes becoming wet with tears. The chorus lyrics are “Meet me at the station, my friend / Save a seat on that ride…I’ll see you again on the other side.” So simple, perhaps familiar even the first time I heard them. But I cannot hear them without projecting a movie in my mind, of dogs I’ve had to say goodbye to—Mr B (Bubba), the first dog I had as an adult and who was also my (now) wife Cindy’s first dog as well, and Cy (Mr Man), our gentle giant of a golden retriever who became ill out of the blue and had to be put down less than a month later. I see one or both of them in a train car, usually a dining car with a table between two facing seats as in a restaurant booth, just sitting, smiling (tongues out), turning their heads to look at me as I sit next to them, and hug their necks, and cry and cry and cry.

 

Fuck you, Bryan. And thank you.