Love, Laugh and Live
By: Ashley Griffin

I met a man when I was nineteen years old.

Now this man was no ordinary man. He told me three words that would come in handy one day. Now I was a young guy, just going into my sophomore year of college at the University of North Texas and I was walking about in the stockyards going to The Tattoo Ranch for my new tattoo when I saw an alley way.

Now this alley way was run down and rugged. It had bear bottles and tons of liter everywhere. Now the alley really didn't catch my eye, but the old man that was under the stairs in the alley way.

He looked about forty or maybe fifty, the palest man I'd seen in my life. His hair was long and down his shoulders, a little past. He wore a dark cloak that covered his entire body but his face. He looked sad and depressed, like a dying soldier losing his way home.

I didn't want to bother the old man, so I went along my business and opened the door to the tattoo shop and talked to a few guys about doing my new tattoo. I'd recently loss my mother and I wanted to get a memory of her inked onto my body and these guys agreed to do it for $100.

My tattoo took two hours long, maybe even longer. The main guy inked some large angel wings on my back, on the shoulder blades and wrote my mother's name under my left blade. He just outlined it and he told me to come back in about month or two and then he'd finish the rest. I payed the man and left the tattoo shop and started walking to my car.

On the way back towards my car, I saw the alley way again.

There was the man, being hit and beaten to death by a couple of teenagers.

I ran for my life and told them to go away and leave the man alone. The kids looked up and saw me and took off immediately. I stopped at the man lying down on the ground, clutching his stomach in pain.

"Hey man are you alright?" I asked him, bending down and touched his arm.

The old man coughed a bit and looked me in the eyes, "Yeah," he said with a rugged and torturous voice.

"Man, you don't look okay, you probably need to get a doctor to look at the for you." I told him and tried to get him up, but he pushed me away and backed up towards the wall of the buildings alley way.

"Kid, don't worry about me, alright?" he told me, with a wrinkle under his right eye. He placed his hand into his cloak pocket and pulled out a whiskey bottle and took a swig of it. He winced at the taste and sighed. He then looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "You're still here?" he asked with a slight attitude.

I then raised my eye at him and shrugged my shoulders and winced when I did, knowing I had just gotten a tattoo there. He noticed my facial expression and gave me a questioning look. "You alright there?" he asked in a slur.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just got a tattoo, so it kind of hurts." I told him and he nodded.

"What'd you get?" he asked and took another swig of his whiskey.

I didn't know this man so I wasn't going to tell him exactly what I had gotten. "I got a memorial of my mother; she passed away a couple of months ago." I told him and he sighed.

"Death is pretty weird, ya know?" he told me drinking his whiskey.

"Yeah, it takes you when you're not ready." I answered him.

"How do you know when you're not ready or not?" he asked me.

"I don't know, but death isn't something you take lightly, so I assume that we shouldn't have to die, when our time isn't up to bat yet," I told him truthfully and stuffed my hands in my hoodie pockets.

"You assume, huh?" he spoke to me, his grey eyes wrinkling and he laughed.

"Listen kid, I'm a forty-seven year old man, I'm homeless and I live in an alley way in the stockyards. Death has come at me from every angle. I'm used to it. I think my time had passed for me to die, but for some reason I'm still here." He told me and put a lid on his whiskey bottle and set it next to his leg.

"What's your name?" he asked me after a minute of silence.

I was a little skittzy about giving this old man my name, but I decided that why the hell not? "My name is Finn." I told him.

"Finn?" he asked, amused. I nodded and he nodded along with me.

"Remember these three words for me. Love. Laugh. Live." He told me.

"Isn't it the other way around?" I asked him. He gave me an amused glance and shook his head.

"Not in my world."

I was confused. "Why do I need to remember these words in that order?"

"They will come to you in that order." I replied to me. "These words gave me the hope and spirit once upon a time ago and I had a very great life."

"Why are you here now?"

"Because I chose to live this way."

At the age of twenty-three, the first word that man had told me that fateful day came to me.

Love.

I met her at the grocery store and we bumped into each other, literally.

All I wanted was a box of mac n cheese and as I went to reach for it, her cart slammed into me and I feel to the ground.

I groaned as my head had hit the floor and I opened my eyes to see a young woman hovering over me. The first thing I saw about her, were her green eyes that lit up when she was talking. Why was she talking? Oh she was talking to me.

"I am so sorry!" she screeched.

I groaned out again and I could feel her soft hands on my head. I could see the panic in her eyes as she looked for the sore spot of my head.

"I'm fine," I muttered finally and she finally relaxed and moved her hands from my pounding head. She stood up and then tried to help me up. After a minute or two, we finally helped each other to help me stand straight up.

"Are you sure you're okay?" she asked with so much care in her voice. I noticed her raven black hair that was tied into a hair tie and her soft pale skin that lit up as she walked. She was gorgeous none the less and here I was just your average guy in sweats and some converse.

"I'm fine," I told her with a laugh in my voice. She smiled at me and blushed. "I'm Finn Matthews." I told her, holding my hand out. She glanced at my hand for a little bit before placing her small one in my big hand.

"I'm Taylor Phillips," she said smiling, looking into my blue eyes. I smiled back at her and I knew then.

I knew she was the one for me.

I was right a year later, when I proposed to Taylor and we got married five months after that. By the time I was twenty-six, we were having our first child and it was a little boy that we named Wesley Allan Matthews.

The second words of advice came with Wesley had his first laugh that lit up my world. I didn't understand how the whole laughter came into place, but I think that the birth of my first son was the joy and laughter of my life.

When Wesley was two, we had another child another little boy and we named him Jaxon Alexander Matthews. I was going on twenty-eight when he was born and my kids and wife were the light of my life.

By the time I was thirty-six, I had two more kids another little boy and a little girl. They were born when I had turned thirty-one and they were twins. Samuel and Savannah Matthews. At this age, I felt like my life was complete.

I decided that I would go and get my kids and wife's name tattooed on my memory of my mother's tattoo. I was at the stockyards and I walked past the same place when I first met the man that changed my life, which was almost seventeen years ago. He wasn't there and I felt disappointed. I wanted to thank the man that changed my life and told me three things were going to make it better and they did.

I got my tattoo with their names and passed the alley way once more. He was there.

I don't know how or when, but he was there.

He looked exactly the same as he did all those years ago. Same hair, eyes and clothes. I approached the alley way and I saw the old man drink from his whiskey bottle.

"Excuse me," I spoke and the man looked my direction and his grey eyes immediately crinkled at the sight of me. He smiled big and laughed.

"Well if it isn't Finn, I thought I'd never see you again." I smiled at the old man and he gave a big smile back.

"Yeah…You look…so much the same." I told him and he laughed once more.

"Yeah, I'm forty-seven." He answered and took a swig of his whiskey bottle.

I thought about it and that was what he told me last time. "No you're not. You must be at least sixty-five or so," I told him, stuffing my hands in my pockets.

"Ahh, yes of course. You remember those words I gave you?" he asked me. I looked at this old man and nodded. "Which one did you enjoy the most?"

I thought about it for a second, I loved the life I had with my wife and four kids with all my heart and I would never give it up. The laughter and joy that I had along the years was pretty good and I still lived my life to the fullest.

"Love," I told him truthfully.

"Love, huh?" he asked and I nodded. He got onto his knees and then slowly but surely he stood up as best as he could.

"I chose to live." He told me. I didn't understand what he meant. "I chose to live, Finn. I took away love and laughter and chose to live forever….to change a person's life…to save them from their mistakes."

"When I saw you enter that alley way the very first time I met you, I knew you were different and heading down a twirling path called life. I knew that if you had those choices then you would follow them and choose wisely." He answered and placed his hand on my shoulder. "You chose correctly. Love is all you need in the world."

"What does this half to do with anything?" I asked him and he smiled.

"Life is all about the choices you make, and you made a sacrifice to love someone other than yourself and you proved to me that you could love more than one person. Now you have a beautiful wife and four gorgeous kids. They are your tomorrow. Don't ever forget that Finn Matthews." He told me and shed his dark cloak.

Under his dark cloak was a bright white cloak and he smiled once more at me and started walking away.

Wait…how did he know my name? And my wife and kids names? "Hey! How did you know my family's names?" I yelled at him. He simply turned and smiled at me.

"I know everything. I'll always be with you." He answered and he vanished just like that in thin air.

"Hey man!" I turned around me and saw that the guy that gave me a tattoo was running towards me. "Hey dude, you left your phone in the tattoo shop…What are you doing down here?" He asked looking at me.

"Did you know the man that lived here?" I pointed to the whiskey bottle and clothes and what not.

"Man, nobody has ever lived here. I've been going down this alley since I was a kid. No man ever lived here." He answered and picked up the whiskey bottle and smelted it. "Besides there is nothing but water in this bottle." He said and handed it to me. He smiled and headed back to his tattoo shop and I held the bottle.

Water? I smelt the bottle and it was water. No liquor at all.

Who was this man?

"I know everything, I'll always be with you," I whispered, repeating the old man's words and looked at the alley way where he used to sit and saw that nothing was there anymore, but a note. I picked up the note and saw three words scribbled on it.

Live. Laugh. Love.

He wrote them in the right order….and Love was last. I chose my path and I was going to stay with the love that I had.

I had gone home that night and as I lay in bed, I stared at the ceiling.

"Finn?" I turned towards Taylor's voice and saw she was awake.

"Yeah?" I asked and turned towards her.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

I sighed. "I met a man today. Seventeen years ago he told me to remember three words."

"Love, Laugh and Live?" she asked me.

"Yeah how did you know?" I asked her astonished.

"I ran into that same man all those years ago. I always thought he was like God in disguise." She told me and laughed. God? Could that be true…?

"What did you chose?" I asked her, seriously.

She smiled, "I chose Love."

Maybe he was god and he led me to the path I needed to go on…

Love, Laugh and Live, huh? Choices we need to take that plan out our futures. Mine was chosen for me…by God.