On Sunday, I got a text from a number that wasn’t in my phone. The sister of a friend. Oh no, I thought and plopped onto the couch while my heart dropped into my feet, my stomach followed. I’d texted him the week before an had a fleeting, uh-oh, when I registered not having heard from him in maybe a month. A couple of taps, an excruciating eight minute phone call with his sister (how many of those did she have to do?!). Confirmed, he was gone. He died on my ex-husband’s birthday, not that that matters, but I noticed the date when I looked online for an obituary. He died on the heels of another friend of mine who went out in a spectacularly gruesome episode, just look at the headline, I can’t write about it.
I can’t make sense of any of this – or much else on this day in July of 2024 – for that matter. A bunch of old dudes and their sidekicks survive and treat the rest of us like shit while good people are dead. Scott, who passed away on 6/30/24, was one of the best people I’ve ever had the good fortune to call friend. He didn’t deserve to suffer and die so soon.
I am glad he doesn’t have to see our country get any crazier. Maybe I’ll hang an American flag in his honor. He used to have one hanging outside his house, at the mailbox on the curb, it was visible to anyone passing by. Folks started thinking he was a Donald supporter which he most certainly was not. Scott was kind, decent, nonjudgemental, among other things, and I defended him and his flag more than once. It’s ours and that was what Scott was about. A Deadhead to the core. I do wish I’d had the chance to let him know how much he meant to me.
I know it sounds terrible but one of the things Scott and I had in common was that we didn’t really like people. We laughed about it many times because we got along so well as soon as we met almost exactly five years ago. I don’t know the exact date but it was July of 2019. Thank you for being my friend, Scott. I hope you know how much you’ll be missed.