The four friends

A boy and his girlfriend were only 15 the first time they told each other "I love you". 

What would come after was 60 years of college, his time in the service, and raising a family.

At the other end of those 60 years was an old man and an old woman who had traveled the hard road together, and knew their time together was growing short.

Then a voice said I have something for you. It was their heart, who had kept their first I love you in a safe place all these years. When the heart gave it back it came with all the memories of the good and bad. But the elderly couple recognized their first I love you as soon as they saw it. “I am sorry” they both said, “that we waited so long to get this back.”

The last thing the husband gave her before he passed was their first “I love you”. Hold it he said until we meet again.

Boots crunching in the snow. From up the road were the sounds of kids sledding on the hill. The town truck with the plow goes by, the chains on its wheels heard coming and then fading up the road. A train whistle can be heard in the distance. Down in the basement the Lionel trains sat at the station, awaiting the arrival of the grandkids:

“Blow the whistle grandpa! Blow the whistle!”

The falling snow hadn’t stopped friends and neighbors from coming by, caroling at the door and at the piano not far from the steady glow of the fire. The same piano that had seen countless choruses of “Danny Boy”; and “He was born and bred in Ireland; his home was Castle Main. He was his father’s only son, his father’s pride and joy. And how his parents dearly loved this wild colonial boy!”

The fire below the ornate antique mantel: 

“Stockings were hung by the chimney with care. In the hopes that Saint Nicholas soon would be here.” Stockings were indeed hanging off the mantel. And Ned read “Twas the night before Christmas” to his grandchildren in the same old stained and faded armchair that he had read to their parents in. A hill of fancy wrapped gifts waited around the tree, lit up red, green and blue from the lights on the six-foot-tall tree with its scent wafting through the room.  The angel on the tree that was bought for their first tree and their mortgage, so many years ago now. 

Four of the most important people in the world to Ned emerged from the kitchen, hot chocolate in hand. First was the fifteen-year-old with the biggest blue eyes and smile who was also so shy she rarely spoke. 

Next came the 25-year-old blue eyed girl who found out she and her husband were expecting just before he shipped out for Europe. 

Next to Ned sat his wife Nedda, hot chocolate in hand, He had wanted to bring it to her, she told him in that way only a wife could: “Stop being such an old worry wart!”  

The names Ned and Nedda seemed to mean to them they were destined to be together. Her mother had talked her into helping decorate for the school dance. Ned went out of his way to offer to volunteer to help with the decorating. Nedda would always say: “I saw through that sneaky Irishman from the start!”

The blue eyes he had fallen for back in grade school still made his heart skip. The long blonde hair is now mostly gray. Still a beauty even when she didn’t believe it.

Age had taken a toll on the health of both of them. And the minds occasionally slipped. Ned would sit there watching her on days when she just stared out the window, knowing no one. 

All Ned saw was the fifteen-year-old with the blue eyes he had nervously asked to the school dance. As he told his side, there was a boy with his eyes on Nedda that he didn’t trust. It took the first black eye he had ever gotten. But that boy never bothered her again. Somewhere in her keepsakes was the scarf she used to help treat his eye, along with the telegram sent from the war department with their deep regrets that her father had been killed in action.

The fifteen-year-old that Ned remembers coming out of the kitchen with the first pie she ever baked on her own and was so proud. The same girl who would run her own bake shop for over 40 years. 

Then he remembers her as the 25-year-old pregnant and scared wife he left behind to fight in Europe. His purple heart kept in her cedar chest. Pregnant with the first of three sons. Now the fourth from the kitchen told him “Stop being such an old worry wart!” 

Best sister, mom, grandma, auntie, cousin

The disciplinarian that you thank in the second two-thirds of your life for guiding you (kicking and screaming at times) through the first third

Best friend

Best partner in crime

The fiercest defender of those she loves if crossed

A companion for life

Can make…

A family

A house into a home

A scratch on a tiny knee go away with a kiss

Us guys realize…

What idiots we can be

All there is beautiful in this life..

Their sons and their families will be here tomorrow, the sons who had finally talked their parents into getting a cell phone. Right now, Ned was having a steaming cup of hot chocolate with four of the best friends he ever had in the whole world.

I see friends shaking hands

Saying, "How do you do?"

They're really saying

"I love you"

I hear babies cry

I watch them grow

They'll learn much more

Than I'll ever know

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

Yes, I think to myself

What a wonderful world

Louis Armstrong

Bob McCue