Losing Friends is hard……………………..

As I get older I realize that I have been to more funerals than I wanted to at age 44 and it sucks. One of the last funerals I went to was for a good friend of mine who committed suicide and if I were to grade funerals to go to, that one SUCKED bad! My friend was in his 50’s, had, what appeared to me, a good life, wife, kids in college and doing well and a good job in sales.  He lost weight during that last 6 months, at one point it was very noticeable and I was concerned. We talked about that and the challenges and struggles that come with taking psychotropic medications, it was all very new to him and he was not accustomed to the side effects. The medications had a negative affect on him and his personality and that forced me to stay in touch with him more often. The last time I spoke to him was the day before Thanksgiving 2008 and we spoke for about a half hour. Small talk really, what we were doing for the holiday, what we were having for the feast the next day and we touched briefly on the medications and how he was doing with that.

I received a call the day after Thanksgiving 2008 telling me that my friend had committed suicide in his office at work. I almost hit the floor, literally. I went over that conversation I had with him in my head a thousand times trying to find a sign that I should have caught, something that told me my friend was struggling. I could not find anything, and trust me I looked, over and over in my head that conversation went round and round to the point I have to resolve that there was nothing and it was not my fault for not catching anything. I no longer run that conversation in my head anymore, I just miss my friend. We used to go to lunch every few weeks and talk about all manner of topics from how the Gators were doing to the state of the broadcast industry. Knowing that he took his own life leaves so many questions that can never have any answers.

He is the second friend I have lost to suicide, that sucks because you have to accept that there will never be any answers to your questions. The positive that comes from it though is that it has made me more attuned to my friends, I want to know them as well as I can. Suicide of a friend is a reminder that no matter how well we think we know someone, we really just don’t. Everyone has those secret demons buried at different levels, some of them you may know about but there are always those that people never let loose. I have resolved to never hold back when talking to my friends, I do not want that dark corner that no one knows about. I want my friends to be able to spot the troubles, if I am having them. I can not imagine life wearing me down to the point of contemplating suicide but I thought the same about my friends so ya just never know.

Several years ago I lost another one of my good friends to Melanoma, skin cancer, that was especially tough for me as well. We had worked together and when he first contracted the disease, he thought it was a spider bite on his neck. He made light of it and I even jumped in on the thing, copying a story from CNN.com about spiders being launched into space and then doctoring it to include a paragraph about some of them getting away and how they lay there eggs under the skin. It was an elaborate paragraph and I then printed it out and placed it in his inbox. I remember him running around with that piece of paper confirming his diagnosis of a spider bite. It was all quite amusing, until it finally was diagnosed as melanoma. That day sucked, well it was not long before this vibrant 53 year old was reduced, reduced from the daily chemo and radiation therapy. It was very hard to watch my friend withering away and even harder to keep a smile on my face and be optimistic when I was around him. I remember we took turns taking him to his appointments, at this point he had broken his hip, or leg (I hate that I can not remember) and was in a rehab facility that he HATED so we would go on field trips after the treatments.

We would go to the beach on some days, some days we would drive to places his friends worked. In some way, I know he was acutely aware of his own mortality and wanted to do and see whatever and whoever he wanted. He was always funny and it was great to go on the trips with him, my favorite was a trip to the Krispy Kream donut shop in Mandarin. He was in a wheel chair at that point and we get there I get the chair from the trunk and we get inside and he orders I think 4 donuts. A plain cake, a glazed, a key lime pie and I do not remember the fourth. Anyway he had undergone a couple of surgeries so his mouth was only really half working, I never thought that would be funny but it turned out to be funny. He is eating the donuts and having a time with the cake one but then he gets to the key lime one and I almost pee’d myself laughing with him eating that donut. He was attempting to cram this donut in his mouth and was getting key lime filling all over his face. He looks at me and says “I know I got it all over my face but I do not care, this is a great donut” we laughed about that for the entire rest of the visit. I was blessed, I got to spend the day with him the day he died, he was not conscience but a few of his friends and family were there telling stories from his childhood all the way through the key lime donut story. I cried and laughed for the whole day and left the hospital around 8pm and by midnight my friend was gone. I miss him terribly, both personally and professionally to this day.

Unexpectedly losing my friend Evelyn was especially tough on me, we were together for most of the day before she died. Evelyn was a great woman that I met through Bride, her and bride both worked for Barnett Bank back in the day and Evelyn was one of their IT people. She had a great heart and was a kind and giving woman who loved cats. We would find little packages of cat treats by our back door, out of the blue and we knew she had been by. Evelyn was having a house built in Ibus Point on San Pablo, hers was about the 5th or 6th house in that development. I was helping her with the inspections and walk throughs as they built it, she was moving from the home she shared with her ex-husband and was excited by the newness of life after the divorce. She came to me asking about teaching her woodworking, she could learn anything and had a lot of hobbies and interests and I felt honored she trusted me enough to teach her a new skill. She was not by any means timid and our first lesson was a set of mahogany dining room chairs, ambitious I thought but I knew she could pull it off. We put together a set of plans and a materials list, I picked it all up from a hardwood supplier on the west side. We were working on the chairs on the weekends and her last Saturday we spent preparing the pieces for finishing before assembly.

Now Evelyn had huge boobs and was only about 5 feet tall, I tell you that because on this day we were using a floor mounted stationary belt sander. The table for this sander was about chest high and I remember telling her to be careful not to get her boobs to close to the belt. We laughed as light red sawdust covered her jet-black hair making her look much different. I wish it had been the age of digital cameras because I would have taken some pictures of the scene. So after 4-5 hours of work she cleaned up and bride joined us just BS’ing for a while and she jumped in her Toyota Forerunner and took off for home. We had another walk through on the house the following weekend and more work on the chairs. We found out the next day that she went home, drew a bath and died. We were to find out later that the doctors had misdiagnosed heart problems as asthma and that was the day I stopped having blind faith in doctors. Some of them squeaked through with D’s just like people in every other profession. I still have some of the mahogany lumber and every now and again I pull some out and make something out of it, something that is not chairs. The last pieces I used created a computer table for my Niece, I enjoy just looking at the lumber but am happy when I get to build something with it. The happiness is twofold, I get to remember my friend and I make something that will always remind me of her.

This is by no means a complete list of friends I have lost in my life – and I am sorry for the buzz kill at Christmas time but for whatever reason, I have been thinking about them and I miss the joy they brought to mine and so many others lives. I feel honored that we got to ride along for awhile together on this crazy ride.