Friendship

I met Dennis the summer after I turned 19. Just a work friendship at first. We were the same age, only 8 days apart. Both the oldest sibling in our family. We survived those last dangerous years of youth together. He was the one friend I didn’t lose track of after I joined the Marines. He moved to South Carolina for a while, then got married and disappeared from my life for a decade. When the marriage ended, he came back and we resumed our friendship. He moved here, met someone else and remarried. We got older. He got heavy fat. Still about once a week we would talk on the phone. We did projects together, replacing a water heater, fixing a car, splitting a truckload of firewood, whatever. We went to all the hit action movies. We had a similar sense of humor.

The last time we talked was Tuesday evening. Same sarcastic jokes, same comfortable friendship.

I should have told him I loved him. Because I won’t get another chance.

Wednesday morning, he hugged his wife, left the house, walked to a motel, checked in, and sometime that morning, he killed himself.

That is so fucked. I haven’t really wrapped my mind around it yet. But it’s fucked just the same.

Here we were last spring, working on the biggest tree I ever put a saw to. Dennis is the guy with the end of my tow strap in his mouth. The property belongs to the other guy in the picture and he was just trying to get as much of the tree gone as possible. As always, click to biggify.

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