Saying goodbye

I don't even know what to say here.  One of my very best friends has died.  No, that isn't even a good description of what our relationship was.

We were friends first, then he was my first love.

Then he broke my heart and I thought I would never recover.  And of course,  I did.  I was 15 and he was 18 at the time.  And I know it's easy to look back at that say "you were just 15, what did you know of love?" But I can tell you now looking through the lens of 42 years that yes, this was my first love.

We didn't see each other for a really long time and our lives continued on their independent paths until one day about 6 or 7 years ago we reconnected via social media.  And we have spoken to each other at least once a week since then.  He lived in the same town as my Grandma and when I went to be with her and care for her he became my support and cared for me while I was there.

In 3 days time he would have had 40 years of sobriety to celebrate.  40 years.  Let that sink in for a minute.  And in the past 40 years you would not be able to count the number of people he helped, he saved and the ones he impacted through the ripple effect.  And one of them was me.

There was nothing he enjoyed more than helping someone else.  I could never have gone through the therapy that was our phone conversations with anyone else.  He led me gently (or forcefully) to the place I needed to be whether I liked it or not.  And I was always grateful.

When he saw that I needed help he got me in touch with a therapist that he knew and trusted and I spent years with her working through issues.  When my Grandma needed me he made sure that I was cared for so that I could care for her.  And when my brother was in need of help and intervening, my friend dropped everything in his life to come facilitate that for our family.

He came to visit a couple years ago and we had such a good time just being together.  I think my favorite memory of that trip was us sitting on the couch watching Jeopardy and yelling the answers together.  We were more than friends, more like kindred spirits.

And we had plans to see each other again.  We were going to go to a concert this summer that would have been a revisit 42 years later of our very first date.  Now, how fucking awesome is that?  My heart is shattered over his death.  Not for him, but for me.  And for his children and his precious granddaughter who will no longer have the sweetest, kindest, funniest and most interesting person in their lives.

When I said my heart is shattered over his death and not for him what I mean is that we had many conversations about what death would look like and how prepared he was to meet his Lord.  I know that he was not ready to leave his family but was very much looking forward to knowing an afterlife. He had become much more spiritual in recent years and always thought in terms of what God would want him to do. How his Higher Power would expect him to respond was always uppermost in his mind.

The last couple of years have been terrible years, health wise for him.  He has been through so much. And he endured it with very little self-pity.  The hardest part of being sick for him was that then all the focus was on him and not on others.  He always wanted to turn the focus back to helping someone else and not about him having to accept help.  I told him several times that this was going to be his most difficult lesson.

I would like to think that our relationship was reciprocal with me giving joy, love and friendship to him and not just him always pouring out to me.  He frequently said it was, but it was so natural for him to keep shifting things around so that he was giving.  It's hard to know.

I love you Jon.  Now and forever.  You are my friend.  My kindred spirit.  My guide, my mentor and my sponsor.  You have done for me what I didn't know needed to be done.  And I am a much happier, saner and healthier person now and my family is directly impacted by this.

I don't know when I will be able to stop the tears flowing.  I can't imagine how I am going to get through without you and our talks.  Even if it was 20 years from now I would still say it is too soon.