Haunting Memories and Our Own Mortality

The older I get, the more reflective I tend to be at estate sales.  I begin to wonder what my estate sale will be like, if you get my picture.  You try to brush it off as some distant future event, yet the clock continues to tick and the face in the mirror continues to age.

I was at an estate sale over the summer, casually looking through someone's lifetime accumulation, and I came across this mask.  I didn't think too much about it other than it was another vacuform mask to add to my collection.

It was made by Topstone, whom I know mainly for their rubber masks I would dig through at our local Ben Franklin every Halloween season.

Later, at the same sale, I came across a hardback book I recalled from my childhood, a collection of Peanuts comic strips.  It was a book I would check out from my elementary school library on occasion.  When I opened it up, I noticed a name written on the inside cover.  It was the name of a childhood classmate named Karl.  I thought perhaps this was one of his parent's estate sale.  Later in the sale, I bumped into his brother and asked.  No, he sadly said, this was his brother Karl's estate sale.  He'd passed away from a sudden heart attack earlier in the year.

It then struck me, this was Karl's Halloween mask.  One I'd probably seen him wear at one of our classroom parties.

I went to school with Karl from first grade through senior year. I knew him, but I never really knew him.

He was an odd kid, from my childish perspective; a loner, likely not by choice.  He never said much, but he smiled a lot.

I remember him sitting by himself during recess, sometimes talking to the aides while other kids ran around playing tag, climbed on the jungle gym, or sliding down the long metal slide. He seemed to have more adult "friends" than kids.

He was probably somewhere in the autism spectrum, although kids weren't diagnosed back then.  I do recall he left class for assisted math and reading classes.  I also recently learned he had been held back a year in school.

I never made fun of him, although other kids did.  But I also didn't reach out to him, ask him to play, talk to him about things he liked.  There was that childhood stigma of being friends with someone the other kids didn't like which I later learned to disregard, but not in elementary school. It's sad how kids compartmentalize others. 

I lost track of him when we moved into Junior and Senior High. I don't even recall seeing him in the hallways or any classes, but he was there.

I came across his elementary school yearbooks at the sale.  I felt like I needed to save them the trash, so I bought them.

Looking through them, one girl's message from our 3rd grade yearbook stood out.  It read, "You are the nice boy in the class." 

My mind jumps back to that book of "Peanuts" strips I found that he liked enough to write his name inside.  I too loved reading "Peanuts" growing up.  It's a common subject I could have talked with him about.  So often, we think others are so different from us that we couldn't possibly have anything common.  But possibly the most common thing among all of us is, we all want a friend.