Suddenly Single - Losing a Friend

 I had to take my Honda in for servicing and when I do that, I usually walk down the street to a nearby restaurant where I can hang out for a while, while my car is being fixed… on this particular day I had this feeling like when people say oh my God man, you look like you lost your best friend… well on that day or the day before I had actually lost my best friend. 

Word came to me over the phone while I was riding my bike uphill with a few other friends. I was wearing my shoulder speakers so I didn’t have to stop and get off my bike. I just kept riding. The wind’s whirled around my face, causing then drying many of my tears so when I got to the top of the hill, I just rejoined the group and kept going. There was really no sense in saying anything I had moved from the town where we lived where Dave and I were best friends and nobody in the group knew who he was so there was no reason to say hey guys, my friend died. So that was it. Hey guys my friend died but I never verbalized it and nobody use that phrase. You look like you just lost your best friend. You just keep going…. In the next day or two I went down and joined with his wife Alice

and family members to talk about Dave and mourn his loss. Even in those moments, even with his closest people, I really couldn’t say much and obviously I couldn’t do much. I’m reminded of the words of the Beatles song. Hey you’ve got to hide your love away…. That’s essentially what it is when you lose somebody… you’re allowed to show only so much and then hey you’ve got to hide your love away…. when my wife Tess died, my family stayed very close to be supportive and I love and appreciate them for that but I had to ask my daughter to leave because I really couldn’t let go. I couldn’t howl at the moon I couldn’t break stride with being an adult. They were just things you have to do by yourself…. there are just things you have to do and you don’t even know what they are until you’re doing them.

Thank you, John and Paul for giving me words that more meaningful to me now then they were many years ago when me and my best friend Dave first heard the song in that movie so poignantly titled Help !