Another Gone Friend

A writing friend died in his sleep a few days ago.

Out of the blue, his son posted about his father’s death on Facebook, not mentioning the cause, and right away I was adrift in a sea of disbelief. Of course, his son wasn’t obligated in any way to tell the rest of us why his father had died. That wasn’t the point of his post. The point was to celebrate his great dad.

But we – his writing friends – well, we needed to know why. Why would this happen to a guy who wrote a beautiful book about taking his father’s ashes to Mount Everest? A guy that traveled and drove race cars and posted pictures taken from his duck blind and all the while enjoyed life in big and little ways we all envied.

His name was Ed.

I didn’t know Ed well. I don’t know very many people well. It’s probably a character flaw, a weird predisposition to solitariness. And now I’m wondering if there’s still time in my life to change my personality. Maybe I could be more like Ed – interested in other people, chatty, upbeat, supportive and friendly. Well, I am some of those things but not in any kind of even fashion, just sporadically, and even then, being even a bit like Ed tires me out so that I flee to my car as soon as I can.

At our last Writers Showcase in the fall, Ed read a piece. I don’t remember it well except that it was fun and entertaining. I remember reading my piece which was, not unexpectedly, a darker, melancholy story, and I remember Ed sitting in a folding chair, several rows back, halfway leaning against the wall. When I was done reading, I saw him, his arms folded across his chest, nodding, like, yeah, that was pretty good. And if I ran into him tomorrow, by some magic of time, he’d bring up my piece, talk about it, remember it.

Ed died of a heart attack while sleeping a few days ago. Gone, just like that. Why we don’t know.

_________________________________

Ed’s book: My Father’s Keep: A Journey of Forgiveness through the Himalaya