In Memory of a Friend
Dec. 2009
His stagger confessed his secret. The obsessive chatter after a night of drinking more than a few bottles of whiskey exposed the glitch in his system to public scrutiny. In the process of coming out of a boozy stupor, his temper would slip between his clenched teeth and roll off his discolored tongue. He smelled of death. I’ve heard that said about many alcoholics.
Twice during his life he awoke in a hospital. The first time he died and was resuscitated he swore off the hooch, threatened to become the cleanest, most sober hombre west of the Rockies. He died three times during his next visit, but somehow responded enough to medical treatment that he managed to escape with what little heartbeat he could muster. His new threat to become the stellar member of Alcoholics Anonymous fell far short of believability. The slackness in his tongue gave it all away.
He and I worked together, fought with one another, and played bluegrass tunes when living around town got a bit slow. Eventually, he was forced from the store. He could no longer get up in the morning.
And then the heart attack, the liver dysfunction, and the broken hip. Three months my younger, he made my fifty-one years look like youthful vigor. Old friends grew afraid to hug him, afraid they would shatter all of his bones. His occasional phone calls to me lacked conversational cohesiveness. The rasp in his voice echoed softly, with hollow exhaustion.
A mutual friend found his body this morning. Another friend emailed me the news. No one in town knows how he managed to down as many bottles of Jack Daniels as he did. Evidently, he chased all the whiskey with a bottle of tequila.
All of us who knew him expected him to pass on so many years sooner. Knowing him was simply a matter of tolerance and patience for the inevitable.
During the wait, I always called him friend.
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