Nov 27, 2010

REST IN PEACE, RICKY. I will go on loving you.

True friends are a rare gift in life. Rick was a beautiful, and rare gift. I was shocked and deeply saddened to hear of his passing. My grief is compounded by the unbearable guilt that his life ended in the kayak that I lent him. When I heard of his drowning, I fell to my knees overcome with an enormous sense of disbelief and Loss. My dear friend of 25 years is gone, and I feel responsible. How does a person live with that? How do I face the daughter (the one that he knew) and loved more than life, and tell her that it is partly my fault she will never spend another Christmas with her dad? How do I tell her that if I had listened to my heart and my gut, he may have stayed in his campsite by the warmth of the fire instead of going out on that stormy lake to die. How?

This time of year will now always remind me of him. Rick loved Christmas. Every time he came over for a visit during the holidays he would look at all my decorations and say “This, is what I wish I could do for Meghan”. But I know he did so much more for her, than make things look nice and buy her expensive gifts. He gave the gift of himself. And I was lucky enough to receive the same. He was the true definition of a friend and I loved him dearly. Rick and I knew each other so well and we did so many things together over the years, that I know EXACTLY what he would say in almost any situation. Today when I was shopping for a frame to put his picture in, I told him he would have to come with me to help me pick it out. I could literally hear him talking to me and cracking jokes as I (we) walked through the stores. He was there with me, no doubt what so ever.

I have a million memories of him. Too many to share here. They surround me and I am immersed in them like he was submersed in that water. His voice, his laughter, his singing, his cheerful smile are all still with me. His words of comfort, of encouragement, of affirmation, of love. There are still a dozen text messages on my phone that all start the same way: “Hey Beautiful..…” God I will miss the way he could cheer me up, the way he could make me laugh, the way he gave me shit, and the way he would drive across town just to hold my hand for 3 hours when I was feeling really down. “Stop sitting in your shit!” he would say, or when I would lose a guy he would say “Aren’t you glad you didn’t have to drive that dump truck all the way to the dump!?!” I loved how he was in tune with so many things; emotions, love, nature, spirituality, God. It was his dream to move out to the west coast to start a whale watching business. After I visit his campsite this summer I would like to go out there to see if I can ‘spend a bit more time with him’. He was (is) such a beautiful soul. He is at peace now, his struggles over. He will live on in my soul and I will be forever grateful that he is my forever friend…..





Last night while i was crashing through my garage trying to rip my kayak rack off the wall, I suddenly had this urge to open up the Tao Te Ching. My guru told me that if you are struggling with a problem or a question, often, all you have to do is pick up a book and open it to a random page and the answer will jump out at you.

I 'randomly' opened it to page 87. According to the police officer that helped recover his body, Rick's campsite number was #87.......

People suffer at the thought of being
without parents, without food, or without worth
Yet this is the very way that
kings and lords once described themselves.
For one gains by losing,
and loses by gaining.


The next page I looked at read:

Why does high status greatly affect our person?
The reason we have a lot of trouble is that we have selves.
If we have no selves,
what trouble would we have?

Man's true self is eternal,
yet he thinks, I am this body and will soon die.
If we have no body, what calamities can we have?
One who sees himself as everything
is fit to be guardian of the world.
One who loves himself as everyone
is fit to be teacher of the world.


More WORDS OF COMFORT: (thank you all, and if anyone out there has any to add, please feel free to).

Wanna talk? (from the first person I wanted to tell, without hesitation - eery that a line in his blog included both the words death, and drowned). i will take him up on it if i ever stop crying.


And I leave you with this, my sympathies for your loss and what little comfort ancient wisdom may provide…...
“The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.” – Seneca (thx G)

Nothing has happened to him! He just isn't in his body anymore!

I think he would be happy that there was someone here who misses him so much and is so sad that he is gone.....(but he is not gone! He was shopping with me taday 'for fakes sakes'....)

When everyone else had given up on him, you stood by him. You were a good friend to him.

Now he can hang out on the beautiful, rugged (just like he was) west coast for all of eternity if he wants to.....maybe this was the only way he was going to get there. (too many things in life got in his way)

You gave him the opportunity to die doing something he loved, where he loved to be (instead of dying in a hospital bed or a lonely grungy hotel room)

You are no more responsible than if you had lent him your car and he was in a car accident.

We all must go when it is our time. It was his time, he had suffered enough.

Stop sitting in your shit, Iampen!


(He loved this song):