Lock Up Before You Leave

You can't change the results of the race once it's run, best to lock up and leave while you're still able. Cut your losses, as my friend Michael likes to tell me, Get out while the gettin's good.

Change is the the only constant - jobs, friends, partners, the places we live, taste in all things - are all subject to being altered by time, experience, and in many cases, fate. Anything that fails to grow, adapt, and discard the things that don't work in favor of trying something new, must surely stagnate and eventually die. One of the difficulties is that the process can be confusing - surrender can mistaken for failure, courage for resistance, walking away for abandonment. Learning to discern the differences takes practice, practice means facing the fears, and therein lies the pain that we would all prefer to do without.

It's taken me well over a week to come to terms with the recent death of an old friend and I'm not sure I'm all the way there yet. Perhaps because it could have been prevented, perhaps because he was so young, perhaps because at one time we had been very close, or perhaps because I had seen no choice but to break the attachment, it's been an unusually difficult reality to absorb. I can't quite make it make sense, can't seem to force it to be real. Watching someone you care for literally self destruct is one thing - comprehending the wreckage when they finally succeed is even more painful.

My friend Scotty was a tortured soul - by dreams that didn't materialize, by people who disappointed him, by the competition between the beautiful and the ugly in the world and finally by depression, alcoholism, and the abuse, faithlessness and false promises of a pretty, predatory, much younger woman. He was generous to a fault and far too tender hearted for his own good . He looked for and often found the good in people, even when it was hidden from sight, even when others wouldn't bother. Despite having no patience with self serving fools and frauds, he gave everyone the chance to prove him wrong, celebrating when he was right, trying harder when he was wrong. His heart rarely closed and he had no gift for saying no. He could be moved to tears by a memory or laugh himself helpless at a really bad joke ( Did you know Helen Keller had a playhouse in her backyard? No? Neither did she! ) and if it came with four feet and a tail, he was had - though I always thought he had never loved any animal as much as his first dog, Beauty - he would choke up just talking about her.

Listening to his family and friends at the memorial service this morning, I thought again of how fragile, short, and unpredictable life is. Searching to find some meaning in his death, I think it's this - if you care for someone, tell them now, while they're here. Tell them often and in as many ways as you can think of. Don't wait until they lock up and leave.

For Scotty

December 16, 1954 - July 10, 2011