Handling a loss

The blog has been inactive the past two days, and the reason for that is it's been a crazy and rough week.

I don't mean for this entry to be about me; the only reason I'm writing it is because I think it's about most of us and maybe all of us.

Usually when we talk about handling a loss, we're talking about coaches or players dealing with being on the wrong end of a scoreboard. It's been a different story this week -- a long way from the fun and games that are followed with dramatic, life-and-death fervor.

I lost a great friend recently, and when I say great I mean he was basically family for most of high school and college. We went through great times, bad times and just about everything in between.

Problem is, over the last decade we'd spoken maybe three or four times. There was no dramatic falling out, but the mixture of diverging priorities and the staggeringly rapid passing of time made strangers of us.

The last time we spoke was, I think, the fall of 2008. I'd heard he'd successfully completed a rehab stint for the alcoholism that would later leave him dead on his kitchen floor. I found his number and called him to offer some words of encouragement and tell him about some other people I know who managed to shake free from the wicked shackles of alcohol and drug addiction.

Evidently the past three years were a roller-coaster for him. Off the wagon, then back on. He lost his job a year ago and began a descent to a really dark place. When he lost his best friend and confidant a month ago, he stopped eating and basically drank himself to death. His mother and father, who were in Australia visiting a new grandbaby when they learned of their son's death, said he died of a broken heart.

I spoke at his funeral Wednesday, and it was a tremendous honor to honor him. I told everyone about the guy I knew long ago and the crazy stories from when we were young adults still behaving like children, trying to sprinkle in some funny anecdotes to an overall narrative that described a sweet, good-hearted kid who was filled with wonder and curiosity.

If I were able to do it all over again, I'd add one thing:

There's nothing wrong with growing apart from great friends. It's unfortunate, but it happens because people change and grow in profoundly different ways in their 20s and 30s.

But there's no excuse, really, to not make a call or send an e-mail every now and then just to tell great old friends you're thinking about them and love them. It's never any fun saying goodbye to people who've passed on, but it's hard to have to reintroduce yourself to those people at their own funerals.

That's the positive revelation I'm taking from a horrible situation: Make some regular efforts to keep from becoming strangers with loved ones from whom you've grown apart.

If some of you can also find this lesson useful, the past 12 paragraphs will have been very much worthwhile.

LW