A Day in the Life

I originally posted this as a FB note exactly three years ago today and decided it's well past time to move to this venue. For the record, I still feel exactly the same about his decision to leave us. I wasn't done knowing him yet. Dear Brian: Your heart was broken? It happens. You felt like you weren’t where you “should” be in life? Yeah, that happens too. You weren’t excited about aging? Welcome to the club. Absolutely none of that excuses or explains robbing those of us who love you from the blessing that was you. You were so shiny with your epic hair and awesome fashion, always fun to watch bobbing around on the dance floor. You made others happy just by showing up, and I loved when random people on the street would ask to take a picture with you. You had an enormous heart, always there to listen and help someone. You were a self-proclaimed asshole, but I disagreed. I trusted you completely and knew that you’d never betray me. You were my go-to guy for so ...

Mom died of brain cancer 25 years ago and it was the hardest single death I've experienced thus far. I joked for years that I started with the worst and everything after that was easy by comparison...I was wrong. One of the weirdest things I've noticed about being in my 40s is that you have to start watching your friends die from things that you used to think were for older people. I've lost friends to heart attack, diabetes complications, stroke, cancer, you name it. I think in your teens and 20s if you have close death, it's primarily to accident or dumbassery. 2014 started off like any other year, but in May I lost a friend to cancer. With his life circumstances and the progress of the disease, it almost seemed a cruel joke for him to go. I took it really hard. Then came June and I got completely floored by the suicide of someone I loved dearly. To be honest, I'm still trying to recover from that one. It was at this point that my depression started over...