Emily's Big Day

Scene in the town cemetery from Act Two of Our Town.

Today is the 138th birthday of Emily Webb of Our Town. This year is a special birthday because it falls on a Tuesday.

That's how I met Agnes, by the way. If I mentioned this fact to her about the date, she would no doubt launch into lines she spoke to me on stage as Emily forty-five years ago in our high school auditorium. She's not the only friend I have whom I can prompt into spontaneous dialog that way.

The line in which the date is given in the play was spoken by the Stage Manager character, who was played by friend Ken, We'd drive around together in his car and try to figure out the world. The last time I I saw him was in norther California in May of 1984, when I went out to stay with a friend in Berkeley who had had also been in the aforementioned theater production. He came down from Santa Rosa to meet me in San Francisco and we went to a sushi restaurant (my first time experiencing such an exotic thing). The dishes were little boats. Then we went up to Santa Rosa where he lived, and I met his girlfriend who was petite and Asian (Ken himself was Jewish). We went to a Zen monastery in Sonoma County. I tried to do zazen and my leg fell asleep. When I stood up I fell over into a monk. Everyone had a good laugh.

I lost track of him after that, until Facebook came along and I got friended by half my entire high school class. I said it felt like going the high school reunion in the gymnasium and and getting locked inside forever. It felt so unnatural. Agnes was very good at it, and we used to joke about it.  That was around 2010.

Ken never appeared on Facebook. But his wife did, an Asian woman. I don't know if it was the same one. We didn't have much interaction after the initial one. Then one day, not to long after, she announced that Ken has passed away. Everyone who remembered him piled on with remembrances. 

Ken and Agnes were close as friends too. I think they had been sweethearts at one point, but it was innocent and they went on their way. They were both in the class ahead of me. Agnes always loved him as I did. Agnes loves everyone, and everyone loves her. 

A couple years later I asked her if she had ever found out how Ken died. She said she didn't. Nobody we know knew his widow. 

I wondered if there was any trace of him online. I just went searching for him in Google, which I have never done, and after refining the search I found an obituary from June 2011 from a funeral home in Denver, which is where I know he was living when he died. There was a single comment. I just submitted a new one, saying it's because of the date today, and that Ken would know what I meant.