Drinks With Doug

Writing My Friend's Obit

Monday's weather: moderating after Friday's arctic blast; winds are down but there's moisture in the air. Probably rain tonight, and mid-temp blahs to follow for a week. Basil dead, sage hanging on, thyme OK, rosemary healthy. Who knows what's up with the oregano.
Monday's drink: I'm not drinking save for today, and stress, and my choice. Vodka and orange juice. Healthy and deadly. I don't really care.
Monday's link: The topic of tonight's post.

Look, none of us are immune to loss. Sitting on a bar stool this Saturday, wedged in between drunken Georgetown students cheering on Lord knows what, I learned that my friends JM, JB and B aren't friends by choice. We're family - whether we knew it or not - of the Gigantic Fantastic Green Plastic Travelling Family Love Buggy. One of us has had several divorces, one of us is adopted, one of us is plowing through a disintigrating relationship, and one of us lived mostly as a vagabond in our youth - staking our tent in this yard and that. There's a reason we're all so smart. And attached.

So there I was, watching my Spartans go down in brave and decisive defeat, picking up free Georgetown clothing that was scattered on the floor, jostling with collegiate-sized chunks of drunken testosterone, watching the younger Hoyas fade...fade...fade into alcohol stupor. And having a great time. Trading notes on who's seeing who, what's provoking what, where what the who came from. And sharing things I shouldn't.

Things about the turmoil in my life. Not that any of this is bad. But turmoil, whatever the result, is what it is. I promised myself I wouldn't say a thing. I promised myself again at the bar. This, clearly, was not a promise, as I spilled the beans. About the great forest I find myself happily lost in, again, after many years.

There was an elevation from said bean-spilling, although short lived. Before DrinksWithHoyas, I met with DG...perhaps one of my closest of chosen family. He's as smart as I am...and I'm confessing a lot with that. The message of our lunch: we age, we understand more. A loving man with HIV, DG said it most clearly when he heard my story and said: "You know, most gay men are afraid of aging, it's the terror that ends life. For those of us who have sat on our death's bed...well, we look forward to aging."

End of life means something else entirely. So it was when I went into work today that I knew I would have to deal with a friend's life ended. Brent Hurd, sometime *** employee, sometime journalism teacher, always optimistic bulldozer in my life. He died on a bike, hit by a bus. Apparently just coming home from the swim club he frequented in Bangalore. The news reports say his death was instantaneous.

I don't know if that gives me comfort or nightmares.

Brent muscled out into the world in a way I haven't. But weirdly, he never gave up hope that I might join him along the path someday; that I, too, was worthy of adventure and courage and striking out on life's razor's edge.

And today, I had to write his obituary. Write it, gather the video, edit it, time it all out, then deliver it on camera.

Fraud. That's what I'm saying to myself while I deliver this item on camera, if you watch the video. And you should. Oh, not him. Me. Fraud.

"You had no intention of going out on an adventure, fraud," it says. "You never believed in the rightness of journalism, did you?," it pokes. "You're all about comfort and complicity and stuffing dollars into your stockings," it mocks. 'It', my therapist would remind me, would be 'me.'

So I did my level best. I tried not to inflate him beyond his measure, nor tap him as a salestool for our company. To listen to him - through the years, and through his videos - and try to relate why his loss is important to my audience. If they care.

Who knows. But today, I wrote, edited and delivered my friend's obituary. He was alive and how, and now he's not. But I am.

And we are. And if anything is to come of this it's what I make it. So here's to being alive:
*to all the random meetings that grow like tropical fruit in the sun,
*to lifting a tankard, or a hand, with those you were meant to be with,
*to cherishing those who are your true family,
*to rebirth and renewal and everything that Shiva tears down.

Goodbye, and peace to you, Brent. And for the rest of us: goodness and no rest until the end.