I got the call from Steve in Charleston that Goose's older brother, Junior, had passed away over the weekend. I was shocked. He was still a young guy and even had a little boy. An untimely death it was the result of congestive heart failure. Apparently he had ben taking medication, but things went wrong.
The last time I saw Goose was maybe four years ago when he cane to Orlando for a seminar from work. We got to see each other for a couple of days - a short trip. His mother had passed away very recently and unfortunately, we were on our annual vacation in Japan. I didn't even get his voicemail until we got back stateside in California. By then her funeral had passed. I felt bad we weren't there to lend our support so when I found out about Junior I made an extra effort to take time off from work to see him in SC.
The viewing was on Thursday and the funeral on Friday. I managed to take a day off and left early Thursday morning. To our dismay our six hour drive became almost ten. There had been fires rampant throughout Georgia and Florida (as customary during our rainless summer season. Florida is literally one giant matchstick waiting to flare up. Once we hit Jacksonville we were greeted by stopped traffic on I-95. Smoke was thick on the road and we were sure it was one of the many out of control fires burning up hundreds of acres of forest. Oddly enough it ended up being a BUS on fire and burnt to a crisp.
We just made the viewing by a half hour after a few stops to feed and change Isa and get refreshed ourselves at El's mom's house. It's been a long while since we saw a lot of people - 10 years about. I ran into some of my old crew I used to roll with when weekends started on Thursdays and ended on Sunday. Different things in the past caused our "barkada" to slowly get smaller and smaller. There were differences that put a strain on some of us and we hadn't spoken since.
In an odd way it became a reunion in a sense. Sad it was something like a funeral that finally caused us to run into each other again. Water under the bridge. Things started out polite and eventually in true form we were laughing about the old days, differences set aside. At the viewing Isa was unaccustomed to the large crowd of people and cried incessantly whenever someone wanted to say hello. Poor Ellen spent most of the time outside with her to soothe the baby. Afterwards we were all pretty hungry and joined Goose's family for a quick bite to eat.
Talk about out of touch. We were never able to meet Goose's little girl, Gayla, now 4 years old. We also finally met Goose's fiance - they planned on getting married in Hawaii in July. Other notables was seeing Chad and Alberto again. Friday afternoon was spent at the funeral. It was a nice, simple mass and they hosted a reception afterwards.
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