The First to Go

I found out today that a friend of mine had died. And at 68, I know I’m at the age where this kind of thing is going to happen.

But this was the first one. The first of a small circle of friends that men, at least men like me, typically have. A friend, and a business partner for a short time, we shared our experiences over the course of nearly 35 years. Our highs and lows in sports, cars, work, love, our dreams. Wing was one I could have my most personal conversations with. A confidant. There’s very few others.

He was stubborn all of the time, serious, too. I’m serious almost none of the time. We were a perfect fit. He had a ridiculous temper, could hold a grudge, would squeeze the life out of a golf club as if that made his swing better and the ball go straighter. Never did. He would slice a shot a fairway to the right. Turn his body to compensate for the slice, and without fail, drive the ball straight across two fairways to his left. Next swing wouldn’t hit the ball at all. Then he’d hurl his club forty feet.

“At least that was down the middle,” I’d joke. “Leave it and hit another one.”

But that was Wing. A good pal. That trusted friend. Like the others who make up my small circle, I wouldn’t hear from him for months yet get a call and pick up where we left off as if the time passed had been just yesterday. Now that circle is broken. When the links connect it’ll be smaller.

And it’s a loss.

Wing fell while up trimming tree branches and banged his head, wound up with a concussion, developed a brain aneurism and never came to. And it hadn’t been the first time. He and I shared a passion for gardening, being green, tending to living things like trees and dogs. He’d fallen a few times after he turned 70, concussed each time. He didn’t trust anyone to do the job with the caring attention a tree deserves. He was stubborn that way. It’s satisfying work for those in the trade. There’s even an aesthetic to it. So, he died doing what he liked doing. I’m the same way. My wife doesn’t allow me to trim our trees. I wait until she’s not around. I’ve had scary close calls with falls from ladders and close shaves with chainsaws, making up stories for my black-and-blue ribs or backside; discarding work clothes to hide evidence of any danger: the rips in a shirtsleeve, shredded fingers of a leather glove. Close shaves that were that close. You see, I’m stubborn, too. And just careful enough.

Wing and I met when he came across the driveway from where my neighbor was having a party he’d found tiresome. The partiers were men approaching 40 gathering there as they did a few times a year to get drunk and loud and relive high school exploits for the 100th time because their wives long ago couldn’t care less. Wing came over to share the sanctity of my porch. We swapped a few stories. He crashed at my house and we became everlasting friends.

A year or so later, anticipating the Phoenix housing boom in the ’90s, we bought that party house. Fixed the place up ourselves, the rafters and roof, the plumbing and electrical. Partners.

His temper. Oh that temper. I’d hired a young fellow named Carlos to help shingle a roof on a blistering warm March day. Way too soon to be this hot, even for Phoenix. I showed Carlos how I wanted the shingles patterned and how to hammer them in alignment. What Carlos hadn’t told me was he had lost his peripheral vision from welding without protecting his eyes. I’d left him to go do a few other things. As he’d pound the left side of a shingle, the other side would slide down a little. He never noticed. When I gazed up from the backyard to check his work, rows of shingles were running in a downward slant. The morning’s work wasted.

I took refuge from the heat to sit on the shady front porch, not too troubled as I decided it was too hot to do anything about it that day. Wing approached and asked how the roof was coming. “Well, not all that good.” Knowing full well how I understate such things, Wing took that to mean it was a catastrophe. He bounded up an old wooden ladder and as he dashed up, his head slammed into a massive beam running across an entryway from the drive. He wore a classic blue Dodgers baseball cap with the bright white LA on the front and the metal button on top and when that button and that beam connected…ooh man. Then he stormed over and grabbed the shingles, digging his fingers beneath, ripping the shingles off as he went across the roof and pitching them over his shoulder and down to the yard. By then the sun had made the shingles so hot they left heat blisters on his hand, but he was too angry to notice until the shingles were off and the damage to his hand was done.

After treating his hand, something else had pissed him off and up the ladder he went, forgetting about the beam and, well, yeah. He did it again. I got him out of there. Forget about it and come back tomorrow. We grabbed some lunch, had a few beers. It was really kind of funny, except you couldn’t laugh. Maybe you had to be there.

Wing’s father made tons of money as an executive at an investment firm. He drank and was abusive. Wing broke away from the family, married and lived in Madison. But his wife was abusive and the marriage fell apart. He landed in the LA area, joined a commune, all the while living, never extravagantly, off a family trust. He became a carpenter and a woodworker. He had great appreciation for education, an honest day’s work, and a liberal’s point of view. I never delved deep into his marriage, why he left the commune or how he wound up in Eugene. It didn’t matter. Our friendship was solid.

I was struggling in those years. Single, discontent and working a second-shift newspaper-editing gig in a place that lacked the social opportunities cities of similar size but with far greater diversity normally do. I knew that wasn’t going to change. I invested in real estate as part of my plan to retire by age 50. That plan had left me house rich and money poor. When the recession came in 2007, I was house and money poor. Bankruptcy was inevitable. He was still there, listening to my hard times and I could tell he was taking pity on me.

But by then I’d found a love in my life, my future wife, to sustain me. A love and family money couldn’t buy. As the years went by, Wing expressed admiration and a want for what I had, plus the bank roll from the trust he had relied on was growing thin.

Our situations soon reversed, where he had a house but not much money. Being self-employed and not reporting cash income, he had little Social Security. He was volunteering at soup kitchens and the like to give him purpose and to ward off boredom and loneliness. I had bounced back from bankruptcy and my life was on the upswing, married with grandkids, my financial and emotional stability was secure.

Wing had his dog. Juna. He’d first named her Juno, but soon found out that saying “No!” to Juno was too confusing. This little white ball of fluff became the love of his life. He’d often mention that he did not want to outlive her. He didn’t.

The last I heard from him was last spring after he had yet another fall. These latest calls it was me doing the listening, after all those times it was him taking in my heart procedures, knee replacement, shoulder surgeries and the various troubles with my business, wife and family. One of the calls I made he picked up his cell and I talked him down from a bout of depression that had him rocking back and forth cradling a shotgun against his chin. He put the gun away.

That occurred before Juna. Loneliness, another dreary Oregon winter and a growing concern over a lack of money had skewed his outlook into a future that he felt had reduced his reasons to be happy to slim and none. He emerged though and rediscovered his reasons to live and if not be happy at least to be happier. I’m so very glad for that.

But this news was hard and I already miss him. He was the serious one and I could make him laugh. As anyone would, I regret not doing it a little more often. I think I’ll keep my close friends a little closer from here on.