Funeral for a Friend

Funny how most of my life I’ve always related situations to song lyrics. Today is no exception. Today I learned that a friend from Texas suddenly passed away last Thursday from a heart attack. She had just turned 51.

Now this may sound funny, but while I’d known her on-line presence for years, I’d only been in her physical presence for a little over a week. See, I went on vacation last year with a group of people I’d never met IRL, and Julie was one of them. We hit it off immensely, and spent the majority of the week in each other’s company.

Now as I sit here pondering, I see in my mind many little scenes from that trip, and I can hear her voice in my head, laughing at our little private jokes. She tolerated my constant need to find a bathroom everywhere we went, and “où est la toilette?” became my catchphrase. I cried when I hugged her goodbye at the airport last fall.

At the end of February, when I hadn’t heard from her in a while, I e-mailed her on her birthday. About a week later, she e-mailed back. She was busy with work, problems with family, planting a garden, and had met a new guy who was taking up a lot of her time. She promised to get her butt in gear and get back into regular correspondence soon.

But that never happened. The banal moral of the story is, don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today, for tomorrow may not come for you.

Au revoir, Julie. If you see John Lennon, tell him I said "hi." P.S. If you come across any winning lottery numbers, pass them along, too. I promise to spread the wealth...
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