While driving today, I heard the end of a song, “Don’t You Want Me”, by The Human League. When the song ended, Casey Kasem came on and told us that was the number song in America, according to Billboard, for the week of July 10, 1982.

The station went on to mention that it had been a digitally remastered recording of the recording that was made in 1982. All this fired multiple memories: July, 1982. Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. American Top 40 was played every Saturday. Broken neck with my head immobilized in a halo device. Hot and humid summer. A wonderful cat named Jade we inherited from another family, and another, a sweet little Bombay Black named Crystal, also a gift from another family.

I’d broken my neck on the previous Memorial Day weekend. I was freed from the halo after three months. Crystal died in 1995, taken by cancer. Jade passed away when we lived in California twenty years after she started living with us. She earned the nickname Pokey because she liked to dawdle, but she was a damn smart feline, definitely the smartest cat we have ever known. She was infinitely smarter than the four who live with us now. Casey Kasem died in 2014. The Human League still rocks on.

It’s all life.