Missouri Ferguson Trout

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You see, my favourite name is on one of the headstones: Missouri Ferguson Trout. I think he had the coolest name ever. But you know what I know about Missouri? One thing: he lived from 1863 to 1951. That's it. It just really bothers me because I know he was a teenager, probably with a crush on a girl his age. I can see him walking barefoot with her down to the Broad River, telling her for the first time that he thought she was "swell." Maybe he cried when her family moved away. His father told him about how the year he was born, brothers died fighting each other outside an unknown town called Gettysburg. Missouri was 2 years old when President Lincoln was shot. Missouri loved, and married, and had kids. He worked a job and went to church and scratched his coon dog between the ears. He died the year my father was born. The 1951 Ford that my dad has always wanted, Missouri probably admired from his rocking chair on his front porch.

But what does Missouri Ferguson Trout's life mean now? Who remembers him? What did he ever do that has remained in someone's thoughts till this day? You then, of course, start asking those questions about yourself...and that's where it all gets so confusing.

So what if I loved a girl more than my own life, but didn't marry her?

So what if I stood in a field and showed a friend the Milky Way?

So what if the first time I told Joel I loved him was when he could have almost died?

So what if a theatre performed my plays?

So what if the near-loss of my mother was the biggest turning point in my life?

So what if I held Aedan in Uxbridge and danced with him to David Wilcox?

These things matter to me...but do they matter? You have all these experiences piled up as memories in your life...but what do they get you? I guess a more important question is: so what if you don't leave anything for the future? As long as you love those around you, share something of yourself with them when you're alive...maybe that's all that really matters.

It's just all so confusing. It's like you don't really know what it is that you should pursue, because it all seems so big...or so little. Maybe this is why I live so spur of the moment. Maybe this is why when I want something (or someone) I tend to fight for it.

A trip with someone I love to Krispy Kreme in the middle of the night may not seem like much to someone reading my headstone, but it's important to me. Missouri Ferguson Trout holding the hand of a pig-tailed, ginghamed-dressed girl, watching the reflection of the stars bob up and down on the Broad River may not seem important now, but it was to him. He prayed for that night to never end, knowing already that it would.

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