Something completely different...

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Friends who have died:

Billy the first,
best friends for years (from Ten years old to Thirteen maybe),
then I was too young I guess; tossed me for Timmy.
Later when he got cancer I didn't know what to do. We hadn't talked for some time (months, years?). Maybe he still didn't want me. Maybe it would be ghoulish - "now that you're dying, let's hang out." We used to draw cartoons together - now he got to fulfill a dream by going to Disney World and animating cartoons.
Make a wish... I wish I wasn't dying.
My heart was breaking at a friendship disrupted and never to be again. So I never climbed that hill. Just wwaited for the final news.

Then Karen,
I loved her because she was so sweet. Three houses away, she was closer as the crow flies. She was Billy's neighborhood girl the way Cindy was mine. Not real.
She always smiled and like Billy was much older than me (3 or 4 years). Pretty and smart she ended up with Steve Honor (no, really) smart handsome jock nice guy. Her school boyfriend.
We also hadn't talked for years when I heard she died of anorexia. She was always walking, everywhere, walking herself to death.

Next was Penny,
Another next door neighbor, down the hill this time. A little younger than me, she ended up gpoing to Pratt too. Another case of something unsaid changing everything. Most of what I've done I've done by not doing or saying something. I guess I love the stuble of thwarted potential, like a harvested cornfield. She died in a car accident involving a drunk driver, Her husband made a U turn on a divided for lane highway and the drunk slammed head first into Penny's passenger side door.

Then came Timmy,
He was the archetypal farm boy - Tall and built from throwing hay and loading manure. His father owned the hay mows that we played in, finding tunnels through the hay bales. Big handsome guy - until diabetes devastated him. He didn't even try. Drinking regular coke until ha passed out in a coma, often while driving. His teeth went and his good looks as he seemed to shrink and shrival up every time I say him. 'Till one day he was just gone.

Chester was special,
We were friends form 1st grade until 11th - With Chester I learned how inportant race was in some peoples eyes. I was taken aside by a teacher when I laughingly called him nigger and he called me nigger right back. I knew there were body parts and functions; and the name of Gods son that could not be taken in vain. But this was the first time I found a word stricktly bad for racial connotations.
Chester was beautiful and full of grace. When we all split up in pairs to run sprints Chester and I always ran against each other which really torqued off the coach because he new Chester wasn't even trying hard as he sailed away from me. I was very slow, and still am.
I remember holding a grudge for a month when Chester won a reading contest I coveted because he was allowed to count the entire bible, all those pages gave him an insurmountable lead. I dropped my grudge the day that the same teacher got all flustered and yelled at him when he said, after she asked, that he hadn't studied for the spelling test ha had just aced.
I remember Mr. Freeman saying in social studies class one day, he was also the football coach or, more accurately the football coach who also taught social studies, "I know for a fact that Chester is not gay." At the time I didn't know Chester was gay but I raised my hand and said "What difference does it make if he is gay."
Chester and I grew apart; we took different classes in high school, he took home ec while I took shop. He took cheer leading and I, well I chickened out of trying out for baseball.
years later I saw Chester in the Dover Grand Union. He looked really bad, like people had been beating him up for months. He had just come back from San Fransisco - he said to call his mother's house and we could get together. I never did. The last time i saw Chester was when I was hiking near the confluence of the Ten Mile and Housatonic rivers. He looked much better, really grown up. This time I suggested that we get together but nothing came of it. Soon after that I heard that he had died - the obituary said of cancer. His family was very religious.

The latest was Sandy Clapper,
She was Penny's mom. She was a second mother to me and when I found out she had cancer I wanted to figure out something we could do. I wanted to have her go to Sloan-Kettering for treatment but she stuck with our local doctors. When I heard she had died I was listening to the Pixes "This monkey's gone to heaven."

--- Jerry