The Song of Jay

Jay

Jay Holliday was born in late August on a Saturday of a year that wasn't too terribly important. Her mother and father fell in love with their baby girl the minute she was born. Her middle name was Martha, after her grandmother.

Jay Holliday was 3 when she met her first friend. His name was... unimportant. But she enjoyed teasing him, all the little games they'd play, all the little things they did as they grew through the goldenest years of childhood. Her friend liked to write music and even wrote her a song, it was cheesy and lacking in form but she loved it.

She used to look back on those years with him when she got older. Nostalgia and joy. Sweet joy.

Jay Holliday was unlike your typical 17 year old girl from across the street in the way that she carried herself and others around her. She walked with a knowledge of who she was and what she wanted to do, never bending to any way but her own. She was kind, sweet and positive when she chose to be. She felt that everyone was special and everyone should have second chances. Her friend from childhood had moved and she would never see him again, it was a sad day but she told him that he'd HAVE to visit her sometime.

He never got the chance.

Jay Holliday was a middle school teacher with dreams of finding love. She met nice men and broken men and handsome men and quiet men and lazy men and strange men and one time even a convicted man. She never loved a single one, she thought there was something wrong with herself, not capable of love in it's truest sense and a quarter of her life gone. She saw a doctor of psychology who said she needed a doctor of medicine, who said she needed a doctor of spirituality.

She accepted each of the offers and went along with it. She met someone special too.

Jay Holliday was struggling, but happy all the same. She met a man named Tom Deldubrauhm, whose name she declined to keep. They were married and in love and they almost never fought. Although this is a lie as no marriage that is worth something is ever THAT unreasonably perfect. But she couldn't stand the feeling of something wrong within her, she felt like there was something odd. She tried the doctor of medicine again. Hoping she was just confused or scared of nothing, that she was just worried about her recent change in life.

She had 3 months to live.

Jay Holliday was born in the late month of August on a Saturday of a year that was too terribly important. It was the same year I was born, her friend from across the street.

I found her house when I moved back into town, looking for my childhood friend, all the pits of floor lava and all the pirates and aliens and monsters under the bed and episodes of cartoons we cherished together.

She always loved to reminisce, and she made sure to tell me every time I asked. She was losing her grip on reality, a godsend I would say, so she wouldn't have to remember anything else but her happiness and the joy she brought to others. I visited her every day that I could while I still had work in our old hometown and every day I sang her music from my newest album or whatever she wanted to hear. Her husband appreciated my help, we became good friends.

She would lie there in her bed and talk for hours as I listened. She loved to tell the stories about her little friend from across the street who moved one day. But never came back. She told me how her friend had written her a song, as she hummed it to herself.

I couldn't bear the thought of this, as she would ask why I was crying.

Until at 7:03 pm on a humid Monday night, she asked me,

"Hello, I am Jay Holliday, who are you?"

And I said.

"It's.... Not important."

She didn't remember me. But I'll remember her. Even now that she's gone, and won't come back