I Was Here...Saying a long goodbye to a dear friend

     This is a hard week. It’s been a hard few months, bookended within a hard year. Just hard. I turn fifty-five this week. It’s been hard for me. It’s not the number…it’s the regrets.

I hate my birthday. I think I always have. There are reasons why and I won’t go into them here. But by the time I was thirty, I stopped celebrating my birthday at all. I just chose to go to work or school and act like it was just another day, until it finally became just another day.

     But this week is hard. Harder than usual. In the midst of my usual self-assessment and subsequent sadness over all that should have been, might have been, and probably never will be, I’m also now forced to begin the grieving process for one of the dearest friends I have ever had.

     My friend Rick has terminal cancer. I can’t even look at the words as I type them. I can’t accept this and I can’t believe it. Rick has been my friend for almost thirty years now. He was a Christian musician and I began as just a fan, met him almost by accident, and we became friends. I am the oldest in my family, so I never had a big brother. But I had Rick.

     I am watching him fight bravely. Fight the disease and fight the prognosis, and fight the sadness and the unrelenting assault of the illness. Cancer doesn’t have a game plan. It has no time limits. It can move slowly or invade like a lightning strike. It doesn’t care. It’s just a bunch of unfeeling cells with only one thing programmed into its code.

     My friend is doing his best to refuse surrender. He will find ways to make me laugh when I call. He’ll joke about his plight. He’s good at this…good enough that I can’t tell if he’s just being brave for everyone else, or if he’s really this hopeful. Like maybe he knows something we don’t. Like they found a cure and it’s being rolled out thirteen days from now and he is number three on the list and everything is secretly going to be just fine. Like he’s just holding this card close to his chest until a day or so beforehand and then he’ll tell us all, and we’ll go have dinner together and celebrate.

     I know none of this is true but Rick’s humor and ease makes me wish, and believe just a little. I’m in denial. I know it. But I can’t bring myself to accepting this. I can’t grasp a world without Rick Elias and the music, and the conversations, and the Christmas Party, and the Superbowl commentary. (Rick’s father-in-law was an NFL coach and his wife can take over a football viewing party like no other woman)

     There is a certain self-satisfaction with being a fan of someone who exists slightly on the outside of a genre. It’s like a badge of honor that tells the world that your tastes are a little more discriminating. My musical tastes were always this way. My record collection was, for the most part, made up of names you know, but you don’t know any of their stuff. I reveled in converting my friends to the sounds of Southside Johnny, Little Steven, Willy Deville…and Rick Elias.

Usually the first response was “That’s Christian music? That’s way too good to be Christian music.”

And it was. It was because, for the last twenty years or so, especially since the plague of “praise and worship” took over everything on the airwaves, Christian music has been horrible. Horrible like “I’d rather hear the “Brady-Kids-singing” horrible. The last record I cared about was Rick’s “Job” album and before that, “The Jesus Record” which was Rich Mullins’ posthumous masterpiece. I stopped listening to the genre…then I stopped caring about it. That’s sad. And that’s why we needed Rick in the first place.

     This is weighing on me as I have dealt with this terrible illness that my friend has and with the inevitable goodbye, and with the gaping hole in my heart, and with the snapshots of all the moments we’ve shared. I can’t stop the movie that plays in my soul, and I don’t want to. But sometimes watching it hurts even more.

     Three weeks ago I wrote him a letter. I debated sending it because I was afraid it was sounding like I was eulogizing my friend before he was gone. Like I was giving up. But I wanted…I desperately needed, to know that he heard my words sooner, not later. I wanted to be certain that he knew I loved him. That I was honored by his friendship. That I bore witness to this life of his. That someone stood up and said “I see you.” That he knew that others knew he was here.

     That’s really the point of this piece today. Because Rick is facing something that ultimately we all face, and for me it has only served to emphasize the internal wrestling I’ve been experiencing for over a year now. I’m getting older. Certainly not old, but I’m older. And I wonder, as fifty-five approaches in a few days, did anyone know I was here?

My daughter knows, of course. A few of my friends I suppose. But otherwise I wonder about the value of the life I’ve led so far. If I was somehow undone from history, what would the world look like?

     I’ve walked most of this walk of mine alone. That’s simply a fact. I didn’t grow up in a home where I was valued very much and I learned early on to just make my own way. That’s great for survival, but in the long term, it doesn’t lend itself to the feeling that somehow, someone in the crowd of six billion humans saw you. I’m questioning this now as I turn fifty-five, and as my friend faces eternity. Who saw me? Who saw Rick?

     I wrote him that long letter and sent it last week, after a few days of debating it in my heart. I hoped he would understand what I was saying, and what I was not. I wanted him to know that I saw him. That I see the footprints of his life and his work and some of those prints are on the sacred ground of my own heart. I saw the man he is and the dad he is and the husband he is and the Christian he is. I’ve seen the good and the bad and the in-between. And I stand as a witness to a life well lived. A job well done. A body of work that is superior to many who have achieved more fame, on far less talent.

     He’s been my friend. My friend when I was flying high and when I crashed on his couch. My friend when we disagreed, sometimes vehemently, and my friend when we were in complete unity. He read my writing and laughed at my jokes. He’d send me an email with a new song inside. “Don’t share this yet, but what do you think?” or he’d call me and ask me to come over and just hang out, because he knew I was a new divorcee, and I was his friend, and his friend was hurting.

     I am angry with myself that I have not learned this lesson already by now. This lesson of telling people you love them while there is plenty of time for them to accept it, and process it, and live in the truth of it, and let it inspire them. Rick and I –thankfully—kept short accounts. Twice I remember us disagreeing so passionately that we stopped speaking. In both cases the silence ended fairly soon and we were sorry it happened at all.

     My friend’s life and death battle has taught me, reminded me really, that nothing is forever and nothing should be taken for granted. If you love someone…tell them. Whether you love them as a friend or romantically or whatever, tell them. Tell them what they've meant to you, and why. Tell them how bland and boring life would be without them. Tell them what they've added to your life. Give examples. Remember moments. Thank them for making your life better. Hold on tightly. Laugh at yourselves. Tell them you love them. Make sure they know. Make sure they know how invaluable their life was to yours. How flavorless your banquet would have been without the dish they brought. Go ahead and cry. It's in those tears, and in that brokenness that the love you hold for them can escape the bonds of safety and propriety, and you can feel it in all its depth.

     Say it. Go ahead and SAY IT! I love you, my dear friend. You have meant more to me than all these words of mine can ever express. You have brought me laughter, tears, joy, depth, anger, connection, hope, despair, a glimpse of the Holy, the faint scent of the profane, and the soft flutter of the occasional angel wing. The steps we took together covered more ground than all my steps alone ever could.

     Hold nothing back. Because ultimately, in this crowded world of six billion people, it’s hard to be seen. Hard to be recognized. Hard to feel that someone, anyone, can pick your face out of the maddening crowd.

     Friends are that for each other. The witness to the life each other has led and the chronicler of the victories and defeats and the ground gained and lost. I am determined, more than ever now, to not let even one of my friends go through this life without them hearing me tell them I love them. And why. And what that love has done in this hard heart of mine.

     Maybe in that way, this long goodbye I am saying to my dear friend Rick, will have meaning and purpose that extends beyond his life, and into the concentric circles where his life and mine have overlapped.

     That, and the wonderful music he has bestowed on us all, will keep him fresh in my heart, painful as it will be, until I see him again.

Tell them you love them…

* If you would like to help my friend Rick and his family please consider giving here:
Go Fund Me for Rick Elias

The America I Knew...

This morning I was reading a random section of a book I wrote in 2013, “Remembering America.” In the final chapter, I wrote these words:

     “America has become a disjointed, sectarian, broken land where neighbors don’t last because nobody has neighbors anymore. Not really. Not like we did.

…The extent of our interaction with our neighbor is when we wave hello as we pull out for work in the morning. We don’t know them. We don’t know what brought them here to this community. We never find out where they’re from in this country, or where their family is from in the world. We never learn their son’s middle name and if it has some family history. We have never tasted their mother’s homemade bread, or borrowed a cup of sugar, or shared a glass of tea on the front porch on a summer evening. Great people with great stories live 30 feet from us and we never find out anything about them until we read their obituary one day unexpectedly. Then we pause for a moment, wince at how we should have reached out to them, and wish we had that chance now. Then our cell phone rings and we are dragged back into the tyranny of the urgent and returned by our digital wardens to the prison of upward mobility.

…America was founded by neighbors. She was built by neighbors. She ascended to unbelievable heights because we were a nation of neighbors. We were a community. We were fiercely independent in the ways that mattered. We worked hard, got things for ourselves without the government helping us, took no handouts, but gave them when we saw a need.

…Nowadays, we live in the age of talk-radio, and social media. Nobody sees the face behind the voice and nobody really cares to. We can call Rush or Sean or watch MSNBC and become angry, bitter, and violent towards the other side –whichever side that might be- and we don’t feel even the slightest twinge about the slow death of our human spirit because we are detached from everyone else. Our sense of humanity is slipping because we aren’t interacting with humans anymore. We aren’t neighbors anymore. Twitter and Facebook have become poor replacements for summer cookouts and get-togethers, and having a beer with your neighbor while sitting in lawn chairs in your driveway on a summer evening.

…We don’t drive down the street at the end of the workday, and see the neighborhood, and attach a funny story to each address on each mailbox. Nobody waves to us as we pull up. If they do wave, it’s reflexive like swatting a fly. They don’t call out our name as we get out of the car. They don’t amble over casually with a lawn rake still in their hands and ask us how we are and remind us that the big game is this weekend and oh yeah…Me and Jim and Pat are getting a truckload of manure for the gardens if you want to join in. They don’t come over with a tray of cookies or a pot roast, or some free tickets to the circus that someone at work gave them, but they can’t go and they knew your kids would just love the circus. And they knew those kids by name.

…I wish we were still like this…like neighbors. Because we’d have a much better America. We truly loved each other, and you simply can’t be mean to those you really love.

…They were really our neighbors. We were a real community. We cared deeply about each other because we’d had so many years together. Time was our bond. It fostered love and endeared us to each other in ways that we have never found since. Ways that Social Media erodes.

…..If only we could somehow capture this again. If only we could somehow become friends like we were then. If it was safe enough to drop our guard and lower our defenses and let ourselves care deeply about the people whose houses we drive past each night as we pull up in our driveway…maybe we could see that America again. If we slowed down and learned the amazing stories that make up the people on our street, if we became their friend, maybe we could have a better America again. How could we not? How could we not make this place better for everyone if we returned to a place and a time when we knew each other…when we loved each other?

I wrote these excerpts and that book four years ago, in a Panera in Franklin, TN. I was homeless, lonely, lost, and desperate. I have a home now and a job. But in so many ways I still feel like the person I just described Homeless, lonely, lost, and desperate. I crash-landed on this new planet and found an America so different from the one I grew up in as to be foreign to me. I have allowed myself to crawl into my digital hovel, and sequester myself from the world. If the isolation and alone-ness are doing this to my heart, then surely it is doing it to us all. We’re all isolated now. All digitized. We text message our kid because it’s easier than going upstairs and knocking on her bedroom door. We have verbal fistfights and spew anger and venom because those “people” aren’t really people to us. They’re profiles. Avatars. Facebook accounts. People who would never hate anyone find it easy to hate someone online because to them…they aren’t really real. And then, sadly, that worms its way into the real, tactile world. A President becomes an object of hatred and wrath and the target of assassination threats because he’s no longer flesh and blood. He’s just that guy with the “POTUS” Twitter account. He’s not a dad…a grandad, an American. He’s a series of internet code. I can hate him, or adore him and it means nothing in the real world because he’s not real to me somehow. The same goes for everyone I disagree with. You think the first amendment allows Nazis to march? Then you MUST be a Nazi! Then I hate you!

That’s easy when I’m just a miniscule picture in the corner of a thread on Facebook. It would be harder for you if you sat in my living room and flipped through my photo album and saw the picture of my best friend Rich, when we were just 18 years old and hanging out together at Wildwood NJ. You’d see my handsome friend happens to be black. You’d hear in my voice, the admiration and love I have for him, and you’d never even have to ask me –or yourself- if I was a racist or a Nazi. Because you’d know me…and you’d have your answer.

I decided this week to end my Facebook presence. I may also end my Twitter account. I’m not sure yet. I’m going to spend the time I spent on FB, writing more things like this. Searching for the America I grew up in and chronicling the expedition. I’m going to rekindle the friendships I had as a child and as an adult and maybe add a few faces to that list. I challenge you, gentle reader, to do the same.