Riverside Cemetery

Dear Matt:

You were so good to indulge me yesterday. I've been wanting to get a picture of your license plate for a long time. I see the truck there nearly every time I walk through the cemetery, but rarely see you, and even more rarely have my camera with me.

While I was undergoing treatment for cancer last year, I was determined to keep my 3-mile walking route intact, and that meant going through the cemetery. Lovely as Riverside Cemetery is, a walk through it still makes you think about life, death, disappearing from the earth as we all will. When you've got cancer, it doesn't take much to get the mind really working on that little knot.

Your license plate has on many occasions set into motion a train of thought -- sometimes it heads toward a dark tunnel, and sometimes it heads toward light. Sometimes I feel like death is just rubbing it in by having a cemetery truck bear this license number, and sometimes I feel like the Universe is saying something friendly, reassuring. I always notice the plate, and watch to see where my imagination will take me.

Thanks so much for dropping what you were doing and backing the truck up for one shot, then backing up again for another. I think our brief encounter qualifies as a random act, and your part in it certainly qualifies as one of kindness.

paula chu, alive and kicking (for now)