The Day The Music Died

I died 48 years, 249 days, and 3 hours before I was ever born, but the worst part is that I´m still breathing. My mother calls it obsession, although it isn’t obsession when everyone has moved on but you’re stuck there. I’m still on that four-seat Beech craft Bonanza, drinking a passion fruit martini or maybe even something more glamorous. I look around me at these musical geniuses whose words could bring tears to a tough man’s eyes, I look around and they are completely bored., anyone would’ve died to be on that plane and they just sat there lifelessly. Reminiscing on times when they only dared to sing in their shower, or their one-car garage. Richie Valens’ caught my attention immediately he was only a few months older than me and held a humble persona which I admired. He had sad eyes that tied in oddly with his smile that looked like it came straight out of a crest toothpaste commercial. When we boarded the plane he reached Into the pocket of his blue satin shirt and pulled out a small photograph, rubbing his finger across the Polaroid softly. It was of his dashing mother who had teeth like pearls and sleek, black hair that appeared bouncy and I can only assume smelt like lavender or coconut. She probably missed him as much as you can miss someone who’s still alive. The guitar deprived him of a typical childhood but all she could do was be proud. She didn’t try to compete with a dream, because as much as she wanted to keep him all to herself she knew the whole world deserved his talent too. So while his mother waited up with the porch light on, he was out playing grownup; maybe dancing in a bar with a girl he won’t ever see again, or performing on a renowned stage he looks around the crowded room and wonders how he accidentally got everything that he has ever wanted then he tilts his head back and laughs the way real people do. Now, his mama can’t even be upset because in the seventeen years that his heart has been beating she’s never heard her boy laugh like that. He carefully places the Polaroid back into his pocket where she can be near his heart while still being a thousand miles away. In another life Valens is my best friend, someone I can talk to about things that actually matter. We can sit on a grassy field on a picnic blanket and when I say something poetic and odd. He doesn’t even look at me; he just listens and takes it all in, thinking about whether my words could be used in a song. I could tell him about his Mama and their porchlight and maybe he will just take it all in. Everyone asks me why a girl like me ended up on this plane and I tell them about how Several Saturdays ago Buddy Holly sat down at my table at the Main Street Diner in Lubbock Texas. I was immediately starstruck by his presence but, acted cool and clueless. I must’ve waited around 40 tables a day, but somehow I never forgot an order. ¨Two scrambled eggs and a black coffee¨ he said while handing me the menu, he paused to read my name tag. ¨Rachel, that’s a great name¨ He said with a smile, I never thought about my name all that much it was just a name and it didn’t even feel like my own. Every time I passed a mirror I said it aloud as I stared at that stranger that somehow snuck into my bedroom. No matter how many times I said it It didn’t feel like my name but when Buddy Holly said it at the crappy dinner I worked in it became my favorite thing about myself. I wondered why a man so renowned would sit at dinner all by himself on a Saturday, I also wondered if he minded all the people asking for his autograph every time he tried to lift his coffee mug towards his lips. When he was finished he left a two-dollar tip for his dollar- meal, as he walked out I noticed his brown leather wallet was still on the booth seat. I grabbed it and ran outside yelling ¨Sir your wallet¨. I finally caught up to him, trying to catch my breath due to my lack of exercise. ¨My goodness, thank you¨ he said as he placed it into the back pocket of his pants ¨my whole life is in that wallet. I reassured him it was no problem and turned around to head back to the diner. ¨Rachel, do you like my music¨ he asked me. I smiled softly as he had to know I did from my wide-eyed gaze ¨I mean who doesn’t ¨ I chucked. A few weeks later, he was sitting in front of me on a flight to North Dakota on the tour he invited me to. The world is a funny place when you’re in the mood to laugh and I almost didn’t go to work that day. We sat in the plane for about thirty minutes before takeoff and Holly made jokes the whole time. He wasn’t particularly funny, but he cracked himself up. He went to tell a joke and laughed just thinking about the punch line, he had a good laugh too, it was contagious. It was hysterical the way he couldn’t get through a joke he would set it up so well and then couldn’t even get the next words out he was laughing so hard. We all just looked him up and down and then couldn’t help but laugh too. For a moment I wondered if the joke even did have an ending or if the joke was his failure to tell it. Either way, he had us all in a good mood; I told him I was afraid of flying so he made sure to take my mind off of it. February didn’t only make me shiver, but I’m worried it froze my heart completely. Lately, I’ve been pondering on the question of “it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.¨ I shouldn’t think so deeply when I’m only a child but it’s all my mind comes to when the world around me is silent. I think the answer is simple now, it’s always better to love. Loss can be a beautiful thing when it’s the only way you can travel through time. Missing someone is a beautiful thing because you don’t owe it to anyone. I miss his music but what I miss more, is the music he never got to make. My ears long for the songs that were never written. I always wondered if I would feel any different on the day when I would breathe my last breath. Will I put on my socks and get an inexplicable lump in my throat? Will I be extra kind that day, so my friend’s last memories of me can be genuine? I know I keep speaking of death and things of that nature, but If I don’t who will write about these things? That and sometimes we have to hurt so we can understand when things are actually decent. I asked them to sing me just one song, and they told me they would when we were in the air. I never heard them sing, no one ever heard them sing again.I died 48 years, 249 days, and 3 hours before I was ever born, but the worst part is that they got the wrong guys, and Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson, are in the ground instead.