Bill's Views on Most Everything

My old friend Tedd died a couple of years ago.  I wrote this after his death.

We went back a ways.  I used to visit him on my tricycle.  We would eat mulberries in the tree behind Jimmy’s house.  We would fight on the way home for lunch and make up on the way back to school.  His mother served both whole wheat and white bread at meals.  My family didn’t have bread on the table for meals.

In high school, Tedd wanted only to District Attorney for a day.  All the county elected jobs were available, and I didn’t care which job I got, I just wanted to go, so I ran for every job and lost.  The last office to be chosen was District Attorney.  I won, Tedd didn’t go.

I was best man at his wedding, traveling to McPherson, Kansas for the ceremony.  I painted Help Me on the soles of his shoes.  A woman gasped when they knelt at the altar.

Our class Valedictorian, Tedd, and I went to a Quaker youth camp in Palmer Lake between our junior and senior years.  That week changed our lives.  Liberals!  They didn’t exist in Fruita.  I went with Tedd and his family to my first classical music concert ever.  We went with our high school science teacher to Paradox Valley and the Hanging Flume.

Tedd’s last couple of years have been pretty rough.  He was having some health problems then was diagnosed with brain cancer.  The oncologists killed the cancer, but he began having mini-strokes.  The last few months, he hasn’t been around much.  Now, he’s gone.

Tedd was pretty much unresponsive for a time before he died.  After watching this more times than I like, I think the dying person is doing some work in our world before moving on.  I don’t know what the work is and they aren’t saying.  I am not entirely sure about this, but in watching, I can see that something is going on at some level.  It is more subtle than a dog’s twitches while dreaming, but it is there.

Life is a mystery, filled with joy, sorrow, and all those other times. I like to think about the mystery, but don’t ask me for any answers.  I do know I felt joy riding my tricycle over to Tedd’s house.