The Hellhole

Thursday, September 25, 2008

My posting history to the contrary, I don't like going for several days without an entry. But sometimes life intervenes and that bitch doesn't just throw me curve balls, she blams me right upside the head and concusses me with a wild pitch.

One
of my dear friends died Sunday.

The visitation (vigil) was last night, the funeral (Requiem) and burial were today.

I had known this guy for years; we were at school together although he was several years older. I knew of him, and knew his younger brother, who was still a couple of grades ahead of me, but closer to my age. Then years later, we wound up briefly working for the same company, compared notes about school pals and what we'd done in the interim, and forged a friendship that has spanned two decades. He was already a CPA while I was an accountant-in-training, and he passed on a valuable piece of information, his patented eponymous rule of embezzlement: "One transaction. Seven figures. Leave the country."

(I'm still waiting for The Boss to reach seven figures in any one bank account, in case you're wondering.)

We shared a love for single-malt Scotch, Monty Python, outre music and movies way outside the mainstream. He was sarcastic, warped and twisted, and I mean that in the highest possible way. He was the only person I knew who, when he made a pun or a double entendre, never failed to make it polysyllabic and fairly abstruse, leaving many in the group scrambling for a dictionary, going, "Wait - what???" while three or four of us howled with laughter.

Less than one year ago, he was 47 when what he thought was horrible pain from a stomach ulcer turned out to be a particularly nasty form of colon cancer. 1/3 of his intestines and some ancillary organs were removed, chemotherapy was started. He had no family history, warning signs or indications, no extraneous health problems like obesity or high blood pressure or diabetes or anything.

He died Sunday, and we buried him today at the age of 48. 48, with a sixteen-year-old son and a thirteen-year-old daughter.

I'm pretty pissed off and angry and raging against Fate, your deity of choice, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, life, the universe and everything - although I'm sure Patrick would chide me (in a great German accent), "You would find the conversation a trifle one-sided". I don't have anything cosmic or philosophical or Zen to write here and I really don't have anything to write about what a great, wonderful, fun and giving guy he was, either. If you knew him, you know, and if you didn't, I can't do him justice.

But the thing, the one thing, more than any other thing that really hurts my heart? I'm never again going to pick up the phone, say my professional greeting spiel and hear, in a voice so eerie that you'd swear Mel Blanc had prank-called me, "SHHH! Be vewwy, vewwy quiet! I'm hunting wabbits!"

The only fitting end I can imagine to this entry is one I did not write, nor did Patrick, but which he could recite with me word-for-word - and not just this bit, but at least 80% of the entire movie, which we did to the confusion of many a coworker - often - and which we did back in the day, children, before there were DVDs, when, if you wanted to memorize a movie, you had to really WORK at it - and lie to your parents and sneak out and go to a lot of midnight showings which of course I never did because I was a Very Good Girl, except when I wasn't but anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yes, a fitting end to my Patrick entry.

"Well, I don't really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It's like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how - what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what's stopping it, and what's behind what's stopping it? So, what's the end, you know, is my question to you."

6 Comments:

  • I'm sorry for your loss.

    Afton

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:55 AM  

  • Helly:

    I'm so sorry to hear about your friend. Sounds like your friendship went all the way to 11.

    -Sandy

    By Blogger Topcat, at 4:53 PM  

  • Thank you, ladies, very much. Yeah, Sandy, he definitely went all the way to eleven, that's just the kinda guy he was.

    By Blogger Helly, at 11:18 PM  

  • Alan told me what happened. I'm so sorry for your loss. Times like these I always feel like words mean nothing.

    cheers,
    Phil

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:57 PM  

  • I'm so sorry, Helly. He sounds like a really cool person. What a loss.

    By Blogger Anonymous Me, at 9:56 PM  

  • I am so sorry. Your memories of him are fantastic - thank you so much for sharing them with us, and I hope you get (have had) the chance to share them with those who knew him. He obviously was a wonderful man, and will be missed...

    By Blogger Z, at 2:21 PM  

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