Heavy

Warning, this one is on the heavy side. I need to write it out, but it's more for me than anything else.


I was very fortunate to grow up in one house. When I was two years old, my parents moved from LR to NLR, and we stayed in the NLR house until after I got married and moved to Houston.

Sometime after we moved to Houston, my parents decided to sell the NLR house and move to Maumelle. I never saw the NLR house while it was on the market or after it sold; J and I simply got directions to the new house during one trip home from H-town. It was more than a little odd to need directions to my parents' house, lemme tell you.

Right after they moved, I started hearing about some friends that were helping my parents move in, Patty and Gib. My parents had known them for a while from their social circle, but had never been particularly close; however, P&G's house was less than a mile from their new one. P had apparently come over and helped my mom get her kitchen organized, which meant only one thing: she had to be amazing. My mom's kitchen is her domain, and she can cook like nobody's business. If she let someone else help her set it up? That person had to be pretty awesome.

Over the last ten years or so, P&G have become a fixture in my parent's lives, and vice versa. They have a routine dinner date Friday nights, usually followed by a raucous, low buy-in poker game. J and I have played several times, and we usually end up just shaking our heads at the "strategy" employed in the game. There are always jokes about who's paying for breakfast the next morning (sometimes that actually happens, too), and the smack talking is prolific.

G is one of those incredibly loud mouthed individuals that sometimes makes you wonder how on earth he survived to this point in his life without someone opening fire on him. On the flip side, any time you ever need anything - be it caramel popcorn, questionable baked desserts, a pond pump (go figure), or a helping hand, he's there. A loud-mouthed, extremely kind-hearted individual. It was very common for me to be over at my parents house for about half an hour and have him stop by with a batch of cinnamon rolls that he'd bought for a fundraiser - not because he wanted them, but because he was supporting someone he cared about. He was a regular, and a very generous soul.

On Saturday, while our crew was all in Vegas, G had a heart attack while working in his yard. He spent hours each day doing this, so it wasn't out of the ordinary, but he'd been  having some indications that maybe he should get his heart checked out. He didn't.

His memorial service is this afternoon. It's been an odd and hard thing to think about this week. He wasn't a daily part of my life, but definitely of my parents' life. These are some of their best friends, and one is suddenly gone. A very gregarious, loud, integral part of their lives.

I came back from Vegas already thinking of how incredibly grateful and fortunate I am for my friends and family. I have some of the best people in my life that I could ever hope for, and I can't imagine losing any of them. I can't imagine such a big part of life suddenly disappearing, even though the possibility is always there.

We're going to be spending a lot of time with friends and family this summer on various trips, and I'm reminded to not take this time flippantly or for granted. Life is not always going to be as kind and generous as it is right now.