Something old, something new…
About thirty days ago our newest friend Dan died shortly after being sent home too early from some fairly major operations (score another one for American best-in-the-world "healthcare"). We'd clicked immediately and got to know him for all of three whole, entire months. »blink« Gone. Everything I should have been able to write here never got a chance to happen.
The day before yesterday I got word my longest-running friend Mike's gone dying, too. I'm told he'd been keeping a diabetes diagnosis to himself, and early last week started having blurry vision. He lay down for a nap on Thursday morning, and his wife couldn't wake him for his doctor's appointment. UPDATE: He was on a medication that built up to toxic levels. He didn't go and take an overdose, an overdose just gradually "happened". While he was alive, his doctor said they couldn't monitor blood levels of it, which of course explains why the coroner could do so (score yet another one for American best-in-the-world "healthcare") »blink« Gone. I met him a couple decades ago at the University of Oregon; we took some classes together. We also both were involved with campus radio: I did news, and he-an actual real hippie; the kind I'd only read about, in my cloistered whitebread suburban upbringing-did the late-late shows on Saturday Night: Infinity Time and The Stone Zone. Oh, that's why "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is so long: plenty of time to get down to the parking lot, spend a few hours minutes grazing in the grass in his VW Microbus, and get back up in time to put on the next track. Our friendship seemed always to develop and deepen in directions I couldn't or wouldn't have predicted. Here's Mike when I visited him in 2009:
It's a one-two gutpunch to the heart. Both of them were pegs far too square heptagonal for this world's relentlessly round holes, and they had the scars to show for it. But they still managed, despite their relentlessly uphill slog, to make the world so much brighter and more colourful and more interesting. Now it's darker and greyer and more boring; they've both left big, jagged, irreparable holes. I hope they both have an easier go of it next time round.
The day before yesterday I got word my longest-running friend Mike's gone dying, too. I'm told he'd been keeping a diabetes diagnosis to himself, and early last week started having blurry vision. He lay down for a nap on Thursday morning, and his wife couldn't wake him for his doctor's appointment. UPDATE: He was on a medication that built up to toxic levels. He didn't go and take an overdose, an overdose just gradually "happened". While he was alive, his doctor said they couldn't monitor blood levels of it, which of course explains why the coroner could do so (score yet another one for American best-in-the-world "healthcare") »blink« Gone. I met him a couple decades ago at the University of Oregon; we took some classes together. We also both were involved with campus radio: I did news, and he-an actual real hippie; the kind I'd only read about, in my cloistered whitebread suburban upbringing-did the late-late shows on Saturday Night: Infinity Time and The Stone Zone. Oh, that's why "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is so long: plenty of time to get down to the parking lot, spend a few hours minutes grazing in the grass in his VW Microbus, and get back up in time to put on the next track. Our friendship seemed always to develop and deepen in directions I couldn't or wouldn't have predicted. Here's Mike when I visited him in 2009:
It's a one-two gutpunch to the heart. Both of them were pegs far too square heptagonal for this world's relentlessly round holes, and they had the scars to show for it. But they still managed, despite their relentlessly uphill slog, to make the world so much brighter and more colourful and more interesting. Now it's darker and greyer and more boring; they've both left big, jagged, irreparable holes. I hope they both have an easier go of it next time round.