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September 22, 2003
Autumn Time, German Town
I had a blissful weekend on beautiful South Padre island, surrounded by good friends, perfect waves, and the wail of mariachi music on the patio of the motel next door. I couldn’t ask for a better birthday celebration.
And then I got home and checked my email and learned some terrible news.
When I was in high school, I had a really good friend. He had a station wagon with wood paneling on the side (later to be replaced with a little red Gremlin), two very gracious parents with a basement that was constantly wide open to us (along with a refrigerator full of all the Sun-Drop and Miller Lite that we could stomach) and a great capacity for adventure and absolute wackiness. We’ve lost touch, although I know he’s married and expecting a child, which is fantastic news, considering that none of us even knew if he would make it to thirty.
The terrible news concerns his father. He ran a barber shop in our tiny town, where my dad would go get his hair cut every month or so. He was related to almost everyone in town. He had a wife, three kids and a home up the street from my mama. They always had room for us, always let us bang on the drums in the basement or run around like maniacs in the backyard, building fires and drinking rotgut, insane from small-town living, teenagedness and general boredom and precociousness. I remember one summer in particular where my general routine for threee straight months was: sleep ‘til noon. Get picked up in the wagon or Pork ‘N Beans (the carro of another cohort) and head to Wimpy’s for breakfast/lunch. Go swimming in the afternoon. Go work at Vicky’s shitty diner for even shittier tips. Meet back up with my friends to drink whatever we could scrounge up and listen to whatever records were most recently found at Vintage Vinyl. Make it back across the river and stumble into bed. Wake up. Rinse. Repeat.
My friend’s dad was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound last Thursday night.
And I can’t stop thinking about him, the hospitality he offered my weird-ass teenage self and the devastation his entire family must be enduring. I consider many of his nieces and nephews among my good, long-time friends. We went camping, cavorting and canoeing together all the time.
And I don’t know how to make a proper farewell, or offering of respect, or sympathy. I have no prayers to offer. Just so, so much sadness and surprise and all the good and strong wishing in the world, all the the kindest thoughts I can muster for everyone involved. All the gratefulness in the world for this man who was kind to me when he didn’t have to be, and all the wishing I can, hard as hell, to take all of the shock and sadness and loss out of these people that are left behind and throw it into the cold and flurried dashing of the Missouri River, carrying it far, far away, out to sea, and as far from their hearts as can be, so that nothing but the goodness and kindness will remain.
Posted by pogo at September 22, 2003 9:40 PM
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As one of those who indulged their adolscence in the convulted backyard bacchanalia mentioned here, I must say I feel the same thing. The last time I saw our friend’s dad was about three years ago when we were much too old to be engaged in the behavior of our childhood, but- fuck it- we were anyway. I found myself in a situation that placed all of my 27 years of life and experience in front of an irate father whose son and blissfully idiotic friends kept him awake all night. And so there I was, a teenager again, being told that 5AM was well past the time that normal folks generally retired,and that this was “HIS house, damnit!” And all spewing from the mouth of a scrawny gray-haired man clad in the oldest of brief underpants. As he roared, all I could think of was how this ridiculousness reflected on my life and where I was at in my development. I never even thought for a second about where this haggard man’s head might be. And now, (excuse the morbidity) his head is blown all to smithereens. And I sit here, still, a few months after the cataclysm that ended his life, full of something that makes me silent and a bit ashamed, and I can’t for the fucking life of me figure out exactly what it is. All I know for sure is that I spent several of the most important years of my life with this man in near proximity, and I never thought a bit about him one way or another until he had died a violent and self-inflicted death. Aren’t humans a hell of a conundrum?
How horrible and beautiful and full of disbelief is life?
Posted by: Aaron on December 13, 2003 5:00 PM