And All My Yesterdays

It was dark and overcast -- rainy -- on the day that Brad died. I was in the basement starting to set up Christmas way too early and the notification on my watch screen only told me that someone somewhere was unresponsive. I ran upstairs for my phone to give me the rest of the story, fearful for it. Moments later after reading the text and sitting on my bed in utter disbelief, the sun began to shine through the bamboo blinds covering the south window, a warm and beautiful light like a painting of stillness. The sun hadn't shown itself all day save for that moment. 

He was being taken to the hospital and that was that until further notice, but I knew. It was that same kind of knowing I had the day that a tone came in for an unresponsive male on the floor of the Feve during training. Brad was one of the ones who responded to that call and after the training when no one would make eye contact with me I went to him and said, "it was RS, wasn't it?" and his incredulity that I could possibly intuitively just know that. Just some strange cosmic understanding, a truth that's ugly and awful and changes everything but that you just know somewhere deep inside you without having to be told.

He was hanging on by a thread when we saw him a year ago and the part that cuts is that he came specifically for us, to see us, but he was already drunk and on final rites and what can you even do with that? Rekindle a friendship that revolved around alcohol with your own journey so far removed from that existence? Three hundred lifetimes ago. And Brad went and found someone who cosigned on the worst parts of himself and it all just makes me sick and sad. A daily exercise in the opposite of self preservation. When did the break begin, and why? I think you should get another chance and it's fucked up and not fair that today started with Brad present and accounted for here with us and it did not also end the same. The best times back in those days were always the ones with Brad in them and I'm sad and sorry that we never tried to recreate that while sober. I will choose to remember you as the wild and funny kid running around at our youth softball games and the medic whose knowledge and expertise no one could hold a candle to. And I am sorry that for whatever reason your path didn't lead you away from alcohol the way that mine did. Rest easy now, my friend.