Autobio.
Endings

By Carolyn

Friendship

They were the best of friends. My dad and Neil lived across the alley from each other in the little town of Sheridan, Missouri. From the time they were five years old, they were together all day and stayed at each other’s home almost every night. I remember my dad telling us stories of how he and Neil played ball in the park, created their own game of ice hockey with sticks and tin cans, slide down the steep, icy hill in the winter and warmed themselves at the bonfire at the foot of the hill. They rode horses together, walked to school together, picked gooseberries with their mothers along the Platte River, helped each other with the animal chores, played by the grist mill and went fishing together…a Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn childhood. My dad didn’t have a brother. Neil was like a brother.

One Sunday while on a picnic with his family, Neil and his friend were playing along the Platte River. Ten year old Neil didn’t know how to swim. He fell into the river and was drowned. He was only ten years old. My dad lost his best friend at the age of ten.
Another young friend and my dad were the honorary pallbearers at Neil’s funeral. They marched ahead of the little procession… from the church… down Main Street through the town… to the cemetery on the hill. The church bells at the Methodist church tolled their sad sound until the little procession reached the burial site. A turn of the century picture comes to mind with the black horse drawn hearse, folks dressed in black standing outside the church, a warm summer day in the picturesque little village filled with mourners, the slow cadence of the procession of family and friends, many of them children, across the bridge by the grist mill, over the Platte River, up the hill to the cemetery, with two little ten year old boys leading the sad procession.

My dad never forgot this tragedy. He never forgot his best friend, Neil. He kept a favorite picture of the two of them in a safe place on his desk. The picture was taken on Easter Sunday when they were eight years old…Neil standing on the left, my Dad on the right, in their Sunday suits. The last time Dad showed it to me was the year he died. The friendship of two ten year old boys came to an end on that day in 1917. Or did it?