30 YEARS LATER - I'LL REMEMBER YOU

Elvis

Last night, I don't know how it caught up to me, I watched Larry King Live with Priscilla Presley from Graceland. Every year as soon as it is August, I remember. This year I have been distracted and am glad I took the time out now to stop and reflect.

I was 10 years old and my mother loved Elvis. She had all of his albums and we would listen to them constantly. My little brother J at the time was 7 and he would dress up in his jumpsuits just like Elvis and play air guitar in the living room. I used to believe that when I got married someday, it would be on a float going down a river in Hawaii with pretty girls wearing lays around there neck of flowers, just like Elvis Blue Hawaii movie. We grew up watching all of his movies and just loving him.

My mother had the live from Hawaii album which was actually blue and had a picture of Elvis on it. I remember thinking how special it was, how awesome and that if it got scratched that would be so horrible because his beautiful picture was on it and how devastated my mom would be.

I was in our garage with the garage door opened. I had been playing our piano. My mother had just gone shopping at Pomeroy's for one item. I'll never forget her walking towards me as she got out of that car and her kneeling down to me and hugging me as she was crying that "Elvis had died".

That moment is right up there for me with The Challenger and the day Princess Diana died.

Such quietness. Something missing that was huge and bigger than life and that filled others with such joy and promise and comfort and then with Elvis, such shock as to why? The speculation of drugs at the time and him overdosing when to outsiders it looked like he had it all. His beautiful daughter Lisa (who I thought her and Cassidy Bono from TV) were my little friends, now had no father.

To make this date even more important to me, a few years ago my father and I were going through some old pictures/junk from a junk drawer that had been in my parents bedroom while I was growing up. For reasons I don't know, I found a receipt from Pomeroy's for $4.99 dated August 16, 1977 for that one purchase on that date that my mother had made.

I think she must have saved it for her own sake, as something for her to remember where she had been and then I found it 25 years later. I looked at it last night where I have it tucked behind a picture of my mother in my wallet. It is still in unbelievable condition and shows the time she was there was 5:31 pm. I can still see her walking toward me that day.

She and Elvis are on my mind today. I'll remember you is one of the most beautiful songs that he did, in my opinion along with Something In The Way.