Simply the Best

Cautionary note: some of the language that follows may not be suitable to  everyone...but it's real and written to express my emotions.  I apologize in advance if anyone is offended.

    Jerry Seinfield was classified as an "observational" comedian, one who notices the commonalities in society and makes us laugh at our foibles; and while I never recall watching him over all the years that he was on television,* I do remember one of his stand-up acts about a wedding and asking why if he was the "best" man well then what the heck was the bride doing marrying another guy?  Best is one of those words often frowned upon by sticklers of grammar, notably when movies broadcast some film as "one of the year's best."  Such grammar, they say, begs the question of how multiple movies can be "the best," especially as others soon follow?  Of course, it doesn't sound as impactful if the title reads "one of the year's better movies," just as telling people that a close friend was one of your "better" friends.  Saying "he's one of my best friends" separates that person you know from the pack; he becomes one of only a handful, a friend you feel a special connection with and where years can pass and yet time will not have moved when you reconnect.  That person becomes not one of your better friends but one of your best friends...and one of mine died the other day.

    That's another harsh term, died.  It shocks and pulls you away from the gentler and calming wording of "passed away;" but died is what my friend did.  His death was unexpected, not in a car accident way but almost.  He was simply found in his home, in a chair.  He was dead, gone, adios, and so was our 45 years of memories and bonding, at least as far as the phone calls we'd occasionally share every two or three weeks.  I would call him on his typical b.s. and he'd chuckle as if it was something we shared; getting away with fooling others and putting on a good mask was a form of his venting in a way, a spewing out of all that may have been hurting him in his head or his body.  Suck it up, dude (he was a southern California guy all the way)...get off of that couch!

    And then there was the body.  It's another harsh term, one perhaps saved for police and coroners when they almost coldly ask, any marks on "the body" as if the person in front of them was little more than a mannequin sitting there.  But when the call came --his body was found this morning-- it's penetrating as if you're looking down at blood on your shirt and not believing that you've been shot.  For me I had to hear it three times, my words jittering out like a bad actor: wait, what?  say again?  wait, dead?  And then the numbness, that Novocain of emotion that begin to fill your veins with the reality of this one-way journey, even as you continue to talk, your body now switching to an automatic mode.  We'll handle it from here, your body tells you, just go ahead and do what you need to do.  I could tell that that other part of me was processing something, but what?  That there would be no last-minute calls or texts or visits?  That part of my life with him was done and that I (and everyone else) was too late?  That the doors had closed and there would be no next act for us, no appearance on stage together, ever?

    I'll admit that I am a shit "best" man, something I've been several times, each of them a miserable showing and nothing at all like those George Clooney or Tom Cruise portrayals that spew out heartfelt and impromptu speeches, even if we know that they're only acting out the part, one that likely took a team of writers days to make sound real, those "you complete me" moments.  I wish I could be that speaker, but I'm not. And since I'm not, I'll admit that I'm obviously also a shit speaker at funerals,  And despite that I will probably be one of the speakers at a limited service where I will again prove to everyone that I am indeed a shit speaker.  You're supposed to speak from the heart at these things, say something meaningful and whatever comes into your head emotionally, but at the same time get it right.  The crowd listening wants to hear sincerity.  And yet once at those podiums my thoughts and memories and words of praise are like a jar of gnats I've suddenly let loose from a bottle, all flitting and flirting around me but nowhere near the cohesive ball of sincerity I wanted to convey; at least that has been my pattern, all of which pisses me off in a way because my friend was the total opposite and one of the biggest bullshitters ever.  He could complete the picture with facial features and arm movements, making you believe that he was angry or that the jar you just broke was the last of the things he had from his great grandmother who immigrated from Bulgaria and barely escaped the war.  If the situation were reversed and he was the one speaking at my funeral service, he would have the crowd enthralled...they'd be laughing then crying, then nodding their heads in agreement as he tugged at their hearts with yet another great story.  But me?  Quite likely the covid-limited crowd will walk away muttering, "that was it?  I thought that they were best friends?," puzzled that I had so little to say, my words having emerged as merely a drunken jumble of thoughts.

    We shared a lot he and I, doing travels together, both by ourselves and as a foursome with our wives.  We knew each other as roommates in the early days, watched each other grow and get married and even occasionally worked together.  There were parties and dinners and jokes of how much weight we had put on or lost, or how our heads of hair were turning gray or disappearing altogether.  He was one of only a few that you would feel comfortable calling if you needed something, a place to stay in the middle of the night or help getting out of an embarrassing situation.  No questions asked; he'd be there if he could.  I knew that.  

    What made his death so unexpected was that it was sort of, well, expected.  His health was declining, even as his physicals showed the opposite.  Liver, kidney, blood counts all damn near perfect, which surprised all of us but him the most.  It was one of those stories of Janis Joplin or John Belushi where you hear the news and are surprised, but not really.  The body can only take so much.  People are facing that daily in ICU units and nursing homes and on the news, but it seems to distant.  It's terrible news, all of it, but distant.  Your "circle" is still around; somehow you feel that time is not catching up with you.  You wake up and it's another day.

    Perhaps it was fate that I had begun sending a series of early goodbye letters to a few people, letters thanking them for being part of my life and recalling all the times we had shared and how those time had helped to shape my life.  It was basically a letter of gratitude, as if I didn't want to pass away and wish I had told a few friends just how much they had meant to me...and as fate would have it, he received one of those letters just over a week ago.  He was comfortably wealthy, still rather good looking, his early days as an athlete perhaps holding him up physically; but none of that mattered.  I think that whenever he did that transition and left life behind, he was muttering something along the lines of, oh f**k!, as if he had realized too late that jumping off of that pier or touching that wire was a stupid thing to do.  But that didn't matter either...he was gone, maybe from this physical world but not from my world.  He was still somewhere inside me...but I knew that I had lost one of my best friends...

*Seinfield aired for nine years and was: widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential sitcoms of all time, said Wikipedia.  It has been ranked among the best television shows of all time in publications such as Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, and TV Guide.  Co-created by Jerry Seinfield, it catapulted him and his co-stars --Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Michael Richards-- to fame.  By the end of the series, each actor was reportedly making over a million dollars per episode.