Albert J. Taylor

I do not know Albert J. Taylor.
He is dead, in fact he died in 1980 and I wasn’t even born at the time (I just dated myself).Albert J. Taylor came into my life about this time of the year last year.

I was getting out of work around 5; 30 pm, and as I walked towards my car I noticed that a piece of paper was stuck in the left, front tire. It had been a windy day so I thought that the wind had blown it in the direction of my car and somehow it had been stuck there. I picked it up ready to discard it as a useless piece trash that someone had thrown away carelessly. As I was about to let go of it in the air, I noticed that the other side of the paper had a picture printed on it. I pulled it closer to take a better look and noticed that it was a folded card which wrote “In Loving Memory”. I eagerly turned the front page and found out that its purpose had been to announce someone’s death. On the left side was printed a religious poem, and on the right Albert J. Taylor’s birth date (April 18, 1901), date of death (January 3, 1980) and some information about the funeral services.

It felt strange to hold that piece of paper from a funeral service in 1980, but what I noticed a moment later totally amazed me. The funeral services had been held in Staten Island and New York. Here I was 25 years later, holding that piece of paper in Tampa, Florida. I wondered how it got there. If someone had thrown it away, or if it somehow had flown down here from state to state until it reached Florida. I know it’s quite stupid to even think about the latter, but it also seems strange that someone who might have moved to Florida and had held on to that piece of paper for so long would have thrown it away carelessly. Perhaps I’m trying to create a story when there is no story, but I could not help and wonder about Albert J. Taylor. What he did in his life, what kind of man he was, what kind of temper he had, what his profession had been and what kind of life he had led. I wondered if he had been happy, if he had suffered when he died, if any of his family was still around, if he had loved or if he had hated.

I have held on to this piece of paper in a red box where I place anything memorable. I do not have a sentimental attachment to this piece of paper, but somehow I feel obligated to hold on to it so that once a while I can take it out and wonder about this stranger who came into my life many years after his death. In some bizarre way I feel like this is the least that I can do to still keep his memory alive, although I do not know the man.
Albert J. Taylor came to me one October day in 2005.