September 6, 2011
Yesterday, I had just posted a snark about death to Twitter [@TheBosha I’ll bet what “flashes before your eyes” at the end of life is just the blooper reel] when the phone rang. It was an old friend telling me that another old friend was killed just hours before in a road accident somewhere in the French Alps. Fred was French, after all. An expat living in New York City when we met, and a very talented film editor. He made a great “hang-garr steak,” as he called it, and I still laugh when I recall his romantic advice to me, both of us newly married men at the time: “Jeem, you are married yes. But from other women blowjobs are OK.” (Unfortunately, this was advice that the then sitting president would soon take to heart). Now don’t go thinking Fred was a dick because of that. I said he was French. And besides I’m pretty sure he was kidding. But a large part of his charm was never being quite sure through that thick accent when he was being funny intentionally or by accident. I’ve been wracking my cobwebbed memory banks trying to revisit the last time we were together. It was at one of his favorite downtown cafes or a mutual friend’s apartment. As always there would have been much wine and laughter and emotional European hugging. Soon after that I left NYC for a big job in Minneapolis, and by the time I returned Fred had moved to Corsica to be closer to family. We sort of kept in touch for a while, too often through third parties. And in the days preceding that terrible phone call I had been thinking of him, wanting to contact him, just to say hello. Just to hear his voice. Just to hear him say “Jeem!!” when he picked up the phone. I never got around to it. One reaches an age where there is some degree of preparation for the heart attacks, the aneurysms and clots and godwhat other disguises Death stalks us in from middle-age onward. There is no age of resignation, no preparation possible for a sudden, fatal accident. That, as a friend put it earlier today, is “just mean as Hell.” I already missed you, Fred, and now you’re gone. And now I’ve learned that missing someone is a luxury. A luxury that like all luxuries we fail to appreciate until it’s gone. Gone.

Yesterday, I had just posted a snark about death to Twitter [@TheBosha I’ll bet what “flashes before your eyes” at the end of life is just the blooper reel] when the phone rang. It was an old friend telling me that another old friend was killed just hours before in a road accident somewhere in the French Alps.

Fred was French, after all. An expat living in New York City when we met, and a very talented film editor. He made a great “hang-garr steak,” as he called it, and I still laugh when I recall his romantic advice to me, both of us newly married men at the time: “Jeem, you are married yes. But from other women blowjobs are OK.” (Unfortunately, this was advice that the then sitting president would soon take to heart).

Now don’t go thinking Fred was a dick because of that. I said he was French. And besides I’m pretty sure he was kidding. But a large part of his charm was never being quite sure through that thick accent when he was being funny intentionally or by accident.

I’ve been wracking my cobwebbed memory banks trying to revisit the last time we were together. It was at one of his favorite downtown cafes or a mutual friend’s apartment. As always there would have been much wine and laughter and emotional European hugging. Soon after that I left NYC for a big job in Minneapolis, and by the time I returned Fred had moved to Corsica to be closer to family. We sort of kept in touch for a while, too often through third parties. And in the days preceding that terrible phone call I had been thinking of him, wanting to contact him, just to say hello. Just to hear his voice. Just to hear him say “Jeem!!” when he picked up the phone.

I never got around to it.

One reaches an age where there is some degree of preparation for the heart attacks, the aneurysms and clots and godwhat other disguises Death stalks us in from middle-age onward. There is no age of resignation, no preparation possible for a sudden, fatal accident. That, as a friend put it earlier today, is “just mean as Hell.”

I already missed you, Fred, and now you’re gone. And now I’ve learned that missing someone is a luxury. A luxury that like all luxuries we fail to appreciate until it’s gone.

Gone.

3:46pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z4-OKy9DFxzU
(Notes: 39)
  
  1. hiimles said: Sorry for your loss.
  2. thebosha posted this