Sounds: This is a different way to think of remembering Kade. Sounds. I can never hear the kickflip of a skateboard, or the jarring but not unpleasant sound of a skateboard deck scraping along a paved curb without thinking of Kade. Passing a skate park makes me freeze for a moment.

The bass line of any song brings to mind his focused form sitting on his bed teaching himself riffs. I have a bursting folder of bass tabs he printed from online.

Kade’s folder of bass tabs. Mostly Primus.

Seasons: all of them. When spring approaches there is an excitement of rebirth, but the sting that not everything can be reborn. With summer comes my favorite season whose associations were traveling, volleyball, and summer dresses. Now the season first and foremost brings the anniversary of Kade’s death on June 29th. When fall comes, the colors and crisp nights remind that winter, ski season (Kade’s favorite), is around the corner. As well as Christmas with its special brand of heartache, and his birthday, and the turn from one year that hasn’t seen Kade in it to yet another that will not.

Scents: Sometimes when I smell cigarette smoke on clothing I think of Kade, and his friends. And AXE Body Spray doused over cigarette smoke on clothing? A direct olfactory path back to some early teen times. One of my favorite times and places in my memory is him in a clean white t-shirt and pajama pants (with little penguins with Santa hats on), sitting in his satellite chair in the basement. I would come down to tell him goodnight. Sometimes I would lean in and kiss his just-showered head. Damp and freshly shampooed.