It's In The Bag

It is astonishing how sometimes, the least little innocuous thing can completely rattle you, throw you worse than you ever could have imagined.

After all, this particular "least little innocuous thing" happened less than 12 hours after I learned that another of my older brothers, Fred Wesley Jones, had died. I was walking from my bedroom to the living room this past Tuesday morning when I noticed what was written on the front of the bag my friend Kelly had ferried from New York to Nairobi the week before. Kelly has been a real life-saver these past couple of years, generously agreeing to be the "mule" for all my online shopping. And she always meticulously packs everything, making sure to tape the tops of liquids and put them in gallon-sized Zip-loc bags, and carefully ordering all the packing receipts. She also puts everything in really cool bags, like from Henri Bendel or Barneys. I've kept quite a few of them, hooking them onto a doorknob or over a rack in the closet, so I can pretend I still have access to Upscale East Coast shopping.

Actually seeing the front of this bag felt like somebody thwacked me in the center of my forehead with a log. I had lain awake most of the night before, after talking to my brother-in-law Ron and my sister Marilyn, trying to sort through the shock and the details. I guess I'll be able to write about it one day, but right now, I just can't. It's too raw. But I know I didn't think of him as "Fred Wesley" as I tossed and turned in the tangled sheets. I thought about what we used to call him 40 years ago, when he was young and strong and healthy and a high school football star and had the whole world as his oyster, it seemed.

We called him Freddie.

So even though it's not spelled the same way, and even though there's a rip on one side, I think I'll keep this bag right where it is for a while. Maybe I'll even keep it forever. To me, it feels like somehow, I was with him when he passed.