Just Fucking Because

This is my friend, Lee Halbrook, at my 60th birthday party summer before last. Bastard went and died on me this past May. I'm pretty good with death, most of the time. Oh but damn, sometimes the hole in your heart left by the death of a friend sneaks up on you and kicks your butt. Tonight Lee came into my mind and I was overwhelmed with nostalgic sentiment. I totally teared up. God I miss him so. 

And then my phone rings.  My Canadian buddy, Christopher, whom I call Sugah and everyone else calls "Honey" called. This is Sugah-Honey from our trip to Palm Springs a couple of years ago. Sugah-Honey is also the one with the Airstream with whom I go rodeoing up in Calgary every couple of years.

He just called.  Good timing, Buddy, good timing.  I'm still a bit teary, but there's a bittersweet joy to it.  Yes, I'll come up to Canada this winter and go skiing. 

I haven't finished mourning Lee's death yet.  I think it takes at least a year to get over the loss of someone close to you.  In my cultural tradition, mourning is given a year.  It's only been four months since Lee died, so  the hole in my heart caused by his death is still huge.

This is Lee in New Orleans a couple of years ago.  Our last great road trip began in New Orleans.  We called it the Post-Katrina Pilgramage Tour.  We met in New Orleans, drove to Miami because Lee had won a weeks accommodation at a fancy resort in South Beach.  After three or four days, we ditched South Beach in favor of Parliament House in Orlando.  Here's a picture of Lee after half a dozen or so bloody marys.

In the ten to fifteen years I knew Lee, he had at least one heart attack, maybe two.  He also had a couple of stgrokes, one in New Orelans about 1998.  It was Labor Day week-end, and there happened to be a full moon.  He waited until Tuesday to go to the hospital, explaining to me that only a crazy or a desperate person would choose to go to Charity Hospital in New Orleans on a full-moon, holiday week-end. 

To celebrate my 50th birthday, we partied in New Orleans at Southern Decadence.

This is how we marched through the Quarter:

That's me holding the alligator's head.  But that's another story saved for another day.

Comments

[brenda]

Your friend came to mind because he was visiting you in your heart. He's not gone Sweetheart, he's nearby and letting you know.

[Kathy]

Grief isn't something that you just go through and then one day it's over, at least not for me.

Grief doesn't have a statute of limitations, it's a lifelong process that changes over time.

Lee was lucky to have a friend like you. The memories are painful, but that's how we hold the ones we love close.