06/02/08

Mean Tom

Tom was a mean guy.

OK, to be fair, he could be nice at times. But eventually he always went back to being mean. I don’t know where it came from, I guess he was born with it.

When he was younger he wasn’t as bad. He hung around with my brother and even dated my sister for awhile. He was a good friend of my cousin Chris when they were both young and Chris was still alive. When Chris died at the young age of 22, Tom took it pretty hard.

In his adult years his meanness kind of took over. He got married young and they had a bunch of kids, and he was mean to the whole family. By now his wife finally got smart and they are divorced. But she put up with a lot before doing that.

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I haven’t seen Tom in awhile but his sister tells me that he’s as mean as ever.

Then I heard something about him last time I was in our hometown. My aunt told me this story:

“I had noticed that someone was cleaning Chris’s grave once in awhile. Someone besides us, I mean. We would go out there to bring flowers or something, and we’d see that the grass was cut and everything was cleaned. But I never knew who it was doing that.

Then one day we were sitting on the porch when the little paper boy, who happened to be Tom's son, came with the newspaper. He stopped to talk.

-     “Mrs. Bahler, can I ask you something? Are you Chris’s mom?”

-     “Yes, I am. But how do you know about Chris? He was a lot older than you.”

-     “I’ve been to see his grave.”

-     “You have?”

-     “Yeah, my daddy and I were there on Thursday. Since there was that storm on Wednesday, he said he wanted to go out and make sure everything gets cleaned off.”

-     “Really? I was there Thursday too. I wondered who had been there and cleaned it so nicely.”

-     “Daddy and I go out to Chris’s grave a lot. We clean things up a bit and sometimes take flowers out there. He tells me things about how he used to hang out with Chris when they were young, and what kinds of things they did.”

-     “That sounds very nice. And we’re so happy that there are many of us taking care of the grave. You tell Tom, I mean your daddy, thank you from us.”

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WORDS: Mean: ilkeä, Hang around: hengailla, Date: seurustella, Grave: hauta, Paper boy: the kid who delivers newspapers

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