To a man with a heart like a lion.

If the road hadn't been rainslick. If the young driver hadn't been fooling around. If he'd been buckled in. If this, that, and the other goddam thing, I'd be helping my friend Derek Biggs celebrate his 25th birthday today.

6 years gone, I can barely believe it.

"And for some of us, there's never gonna be any happy ever after."

the end

I found out yesterday that a guy I've known for maybe 13, 14 years killed himself this week. He and I were never that close, but he and one of my best friends were all but brothers.

Isn't it funny how that works? You've got these people who are so tightly tied to you, so much a part of your daily life. You feel like you know everything about them and they know everything about you. But, the whole time, you both have story lines going that have nothing to do with each other. We all carry little chapters of our friends, memories only shared by the two of you or more important to you both than to others. How you met. Trips you took. When you helped each other through or over some pain and trouble.

That's what we did last night, of course. As soon as we, a handful of us, found out what happened, we rallied around the deepest wounded. We huddled close to him and listened, put on hands on his shoulders when he cried. "Okay," he said, later in the evening, as the shock wore off, "I'm ready to wake up now." But he didn't, because you don't, because death fucking sucks like that.

So he's riding up today with another might-as-well-be-brother to the wake in North Carolina. Those of us left in town will worry about them, because grief makes people drive badly, but I guess they'll make it fine. They'll come back with an ending to the story of their lives with Demetri. He was 29, an artist, and a traveler, and he shot himself in the head Sunday.

R.I.P.

Poor ol' Ding Dang kicked the bucket this weekend. I kept him fed, watered, and clean, so I hope it was simply old age. He had a strangely nomadic life for a dwarf hamster and truly loved bananas.

3/18/85 - 6/27/04

On this day in 2004, I woke up with a hangover at my dad's house to the phone ringing. I was watching his pad, and I'd had a few beers the night before while watching tv. I planned to chill out, make some breakfast, and maybe go to a show that night with my friends.

Instead, my girlfriend at the time, the voice on the phone, told me Derek was dead. There'd been a car wreck, he and some friends were coming back from Gainesville in the rain and the SUV flipped. He never had a chance. Everyone else made it through.

I had to pass the word to our crew. Is there anything worse than telling friends that someone's not coming home? The rest of that week is a blur of wakes and drunken sorrow and memorial shows. And there's still a big hole in the scene that will never be filled.

Derek, bro, I miss you.

still don't believe it

Jarryd was a local co-op kid. He never had a mean word for anyone, and that includes people he should have. What is there to say when a friend dies? He was loyal, he was funny. He could charm anyone, from arresting officers to attractive women, with a smile and a laugh. I tended to run into him just out and about; he was the kind of guy you actually stopped to chat with for a while instead of just saying hi and rolling on.

What is there to say? He died at 22, too damn young by far. I hear he was just making a smoke run from Cabos. All the times I saw him get stumbling drunk, all the drugs he took over the years for fun, all the time he should have been in mortal danger - and a quick trip for cigarettes caught him. Don't ever fool yourself, death is completely random.