The Return of James Dean

Mom had three or four different James Dean posters that she bought after my dad died because she always thought he was a dead ringer for James Dean.

My mom even went so far as dressing my dad in a long, black London fog over coat with a cigarette in his mouth; snapping a photograph as the burning ember, attached so fragile at the tip, gave birth to the dead remnants of paper and tobacco that would soon crumble to the ground. My mom used to say my dad was like nothing she could eat but everything she wanted to consume.

...I walked past the garage and noticed moving boxes.

That’s when I saw it – the edge of a rolled up poster sticking out of a partially opened box. I walked over curiously and, with a gentle tug, slipped the poster out into the remaining light of the day. It was one of my mom’s posters of James Dean; but not just any poster – her favorite. I could see why; there he was, wearing a turtle neck sweater, gazing off into some other part of the room he was in as some anonymous photographer snapped an unauthorized picture.

It was easy to see how my mom could pretend that this was her very own, personal picture of her husband; if he indeed resembled James Dean in the slightest.

For a moment, as I held the poster, unrolled just enough to see his face, I too imagined it was my father. For a solitary moment in time, I was my mother with a broken heart; yearning for my one true love to come home.