There are particular moments in life that are milestones. First step, first laugh, first word, becoming a teenager. You get the picture. In my life (and family) one of those milestones that came and went with only a bit of fanfare was my first official date. I took Jamie Simmons to the Thompson Theater in Tahlequah Oklahoma. We had been classmates since the sixth grade. I don’t recall why we ended up on a date. We would have been in the 7th or 8th grade. There was no particular social pressure and no particular infatuation that I recall. And it wasn’t a “car date”. That came later with Rosemary Miller but that’s another story (and song). I don’t remember the movie or much about the date but her father ran the Ben Franklin 5 and Dime and I recall picking her up there and walking the block to the theater. All that said a couple of days ago I checked in to our high school alumni page on Facebook and there was a notice that Jamie had passed away. I hadn’t thought about her in years and our lives hadn’t intersected even during high school to any real extent but it got me back in my memories of simpler days. There was the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of the President and of course the war in Viet Nam heating up. But most of our attention was on football and basketball and fishing and hunting and playing in the Illinois River. Flash forward all these years and I’m recovering from a heart attack and bypass surgery and enjoying my before the New Mexico heat morning walk and my meditation brought together the morning shadows and the death of this person who had shared a moment and then disappeared. Sometimes the quiet moments that mark the passing of our days come up and poke us gently so we remember.