This continues my effort at catching up on reminiscences and memories from over the summer and early fall 2025.

Steve resting on a random office chair in the middle of the woods, Fall 2022.

Tuesday, 9/9/2025, 1:20 am

One of my favorite tunes came seeping through the haze of my sleep as I napped Monday afternoon, exhausted from being up so late the night before. I really NEEDED that nap.

Peter Gabriel, Solsbury Hill, 1977, hummed through as I caught the words. 

“I did not believe the information, just had to trust imagination, My heart going Boom-Boom-Boom”. “Son,” he said, “Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.”

Yet my dreams were unformed. Just the lyrics and tune floating through them.

“When illusion spin her net, I’m never where I wanna be. And liberty, she pirouette, When I think that I am free.

As the notes wafted through my dream state, my consciousness began to float upwards to just before wakefulness.

“Watched by empty silhouettes, Who close their eyes but still can see.
No one taught them etiquette. I will show another me.”

And then I saw him, standing in the woods, the golden colors of fall leaves surrounding him, just as he had been when we went on that hike before we discovered his cancer. But rather than sitting alone in an office chair in the middle of the forest, he was standing, looking back over his shoulder towards me and smiled.

“Today, I don’t need a replacement. I’ll tell them what the smile on my face meant.
My heart going, “Boom-boom-boom”

He turned to his left and reached down to a very small child, a little boy, Richard. And somehow I knew it was the brother he’d never met, one who died as a young child, and who we discovered only when we went to write Steve’s obituary when we reviewed his mother Florence’s. 

As he looked back towards me, I asked him: “but where is your older brother, John?” The first born child of Florence and Charles James, John had died in an automobile accident when he was only 19 years old and it had devastated the family. 

And no sooner had I asked this question when a taller thin young man appeared beside Steve on his right side. Steve turned away and the three of them walked off into the forest.

‘”Hey,” I said, “You can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home.”’

And my eyes open to see his smiling face in the photo across from me.

Steve and Mara (author) wandering around the countryside.