It is disconcerting to say the least when your friends around you start to die. Suddenly, you realize you have reached an age when death comes regularly if not yet often. You are struck by its reality, its finality. You are struck by your own sense of mortality.
I am not at the age when you expect your friends to pass on. I’m a Boomer, and at this point in time and medical history, most of us are expected to live into our eighties and even nineties. But clearly some don’t make it. For some, life’s little game of Beat the Clock, offers a more truncated existence. Suddenly we are gone, leaving others to grieve and reflect.
I lost yet another friend, recently. I had not called him for a couple of months, and when I did I found his business number was being transferred to his Las Vegas office. I knew right away he was gone. No way, he would voluntarily leave California to move to Las Vegas.
He had struggled for years, having been inflicted with the ill effects of Agent Orange. He had come into contact with it while serving in Vietnam. Agent Orange was reported to cause all sorts of damage and lead to severe illness and death. Of course, the government denied its ill effects, even while returning GI’s suffered from its symptoms. My friend had the symptoms. He had Hodgkin’s Disease and then heart disease, and finally he had trouble breathing without feeling worn down. It was a sequence of events that he endured with good humor for twenty odd years.
Nevertheless, he managed to become a notable figure in the music industry. He was but a little guy who never, ever looked the part of the rangy GI. He was too bookish, near nebbishy. But he had amazing inner strength and courage the more macho among us could only wish for. He could literally laugh at life’s consequences and make jokes while staring death in the face. It wasn’t that he didn’t care; he had a lot to live for. But he knew in the end it didn’t matter whether he cared or not. This was the game, these were the cards. Play what you are dealt with.
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As with other friends who have passed away, you think about the slights and spites, the things you wished you hadn’t said. You feel remorse, even guilty for some of the interchanges, even those you were never called on. But that soon passes. Then you remember the times you had. You remember the fun times, but more importantly you think of the funny times. You think of the events that were so ridiculous that you knew at the time, while you were laughing, you would be laughing in hindsight many years later. You think of the shared moments, the small intimacies. In this case it was all the music concerts we attended for business or otherwise. In this case it was the backstage parties and the energy of what was then a vibrant music business. It was fun just being there.
Now all that’s left are the memories and the experiences that have left you wiser, feeling a little dumb for the things you said and did, and imbibed when people still bought record albums. Remember your friend who has passed away brings inspires the memory of other people who also made the scene. Some of them are still around. Many, too, are gone.
You are left with the feeling of the passage of time and how little time any of use really have on the planet. We know we are at the back end of life but not close to the point where we are truly old and frail, losing our faculties. That is yet to come. Perhaps when we do reach that age, we can be better accepting of our mortality and the inevitable end of our lives. But now it still seems so distant, and yet here it is so close. It’s seems unfair, really, when we are still vibrant and capable, viral, even, and still curious about the world.
But there are no guarantees that life will ever be fair. We can watch all the movies we want that reinforce this notion, but from the moment we step out of the theater and back on the street, we know otherwise. Life is life. And then it is over. For some it just comes earlier than others. Too early.
Good night, Steve.
