Goodbye To An Old Friend

 

A week or so ago I went to a local bar and ordered a shot of whiskey. Once the bartender sat it in front of me, I thoughtfully stared into the glass, swirled the brown liquid, raised my glass to the sky, and toasted a lost friend.  

Predictably, my thoughts drifted back to a few weeks ago when I finally got the phone call that I knew was coming. I had been expecting it - but it still came like a thunderbolt. Frazier, a good friend of 45 years, finally succumbed to Parkinson’s disease after a long year fight.  

In the course of my life, I have had very few people who were business associates that became personal friends. Frazier was one of them. I first met him in a grocery store. Both of us were kids not long out of college. He was in charge of stocking the non-food items in a number of grocery stores in the Birmingham area. My job back then was insure that my company’s products were in every grocery store in Alabama, so naturally someone like Frazier could be of help to me. Almost immediately, I cultivated that relationship. We soon found we had a lot in common, including our hair color - a pair of redheads. In fact, many people thought we were brothers. A friendship blossomed. 

In time, we both moved up the corporate ladder. Frazier became a buyer for a grocery distributor and I became a broker who sold his company all kinds of products.  We did a lot of “bidness” together - purchases and promotions that were good for both of our operations.  

Later in life, Frazier took up golf, which instantly became another connection between us. I even gave him an old set of my clubs. Soon we began the first of a number of golf trips we took together - three day weekends on expense accounts that were naturally accompanied with the consumption of adult beverages. We spent many a morning on the first tee with pounding headaches, only to repeat the same night-time activities a few hours later. 

Those trips were also full of laughter. I can honestly say no one could make me laugh like Frazier.  Anyone that named a dog Ernest T. Bass had a great sense of humor.  He was observant, sarcastic, and had a way with words that always made me cackle. It wasn’t unusual for me to get a phone call at my office that started, “Hobby, you’re not going to believe what I just saw.” That meant he was about to spend 10 minutes describing his latest encounter with a moron. What a great storyteller. I believed he could’ve been a stand-up comedian.  

It wasn’t always about fun. He had some some serious behavioral problems with his teenage son. So did I. As a result, we spent many hours commensurating together. 

In about 2006 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and thankfully managed to get on disability. No more business now-  we were just friends.  At first it was impossible to believe he had the disease because there were no visible changes in him.  However, it wasn’t long until he had some electrodes implanted in his brain so I knew it was serious. He told me about the procedure in typical Frazier fashion. “Hobby, if this doesn’t work, I’m gonna be as screwed up as a soup sandwich.” 

Later, he moved to a large retirement community near Orlando and our contact became infrequent phone conversations. I did made a detour on a family trip to Disney a couple of years ago to visit he and his wife. Now the ravages of the disease were quite apparent, but I was glad I saw him, because I had the feeling that it might be the last time. It was.  Our subsequent calls became shorter, although the Frazier wit would still occasionally show itself. We continued texting until his declining motor skills took that away. In the end, we would only talk for a few minutes because he tired easily. I would be lying if I said these calls were comfortable. Looking back, I should’ve made more of them. 

Frazier died peacefully surrounded by his family. Instead of a memorial service, one of his final wishes was  to have his friends go to a bar and have a drink in his honor. Done. 

It’s still hard to believe that Frazier’s gone.  So much fun, so full of life. A great friend who think about frequently. The lesson I’ve gleaned from this loss is pretty clear: all of the people important to us, all of our relationships that we think will always be there - won’t.  

And we should act like they won’t be.