Last night I went to the wake of a childhood friend.
If you recall he was in a single engine plane crash back in July.
He was in a coma, had multiple surgeries to amputate more and more of his legs and he finally passed away on Monday.
He was 38 years old and his wife predeceased him; she did not survive the crash.

This was a truly bizarre experience for me.
I had not seen him in over 25 years and the person I remembered was nothing like the adult he had become.
He was the neighborhoods “Chunk” long before Goonies was ever a movie.
He was plump and jovial and good natured; always, always ready with a big toothy grin.
The kid everyone got along with because he could be such a chameleon.
The kid we all swore would be still “trying to find himself” when he was 38; we all thought he become a typical aging frat boy.
He grew into a very handsome man,
Still jovial, from what I understand.
He went on to own an Inn, skydive, scuba, become an avid motorcyclist things we never though he’d even dream about as a child.

Everywhere I turned I ran into my childhood.
People I hadn’t see since I was 14 or so, people I didn’t recognized but who recognized me; people who still live in this small town but yet I haven’t seen in years.
Of course we reminisced and laughed and felt guilty and promised not to let another 25 years go by before we’d see each other again but as we all know the chances of that happening are slim.
I think because once we were through reminiscing we would find that we would have very little in common.

I left the wake feeling sad for a family’s loss and feeling a wee bit lost myself.