The last few weeks have been rough, and this last week especially. A lot has been going on, and there is so much weighing on me, so much worry, sadness, and frustration. It made it nearly impossible to want to work on the book, or to even write here, but tonight I am making myself at least write a blog post. It’s time I wrote something.

A lot of the worries are the usual ones, mostly a matter of money, but those aren’t the only things as of late. I’m dealing with not being able to find a ride to my daughter’s high school graduation, as badly as I want to be there. No amount of asking nicely, or offers of gas money has been adequate to persuade anyone. People make me feel like a loser for even asking. I can use greyhound to get half an hour away from there, but there’s no public transportation that can get me any closer. You’d be amazed how many people think you are worthless just because you can’t afford a car of your own.

As badly as that is weighing on me, it hasn’t helped that I found out one of my best friends for almost the last 20 years has passed away. It apparently happened months ago, and no one bothered to call and let me know he had passed, or that he was even getting in that bad of shape. I was in town a couple of weeks before he passed on, if I’d known I would have liked to have gone and seen him one last time, but sadly I didn’t get to.

I could have called and asked, long before I did, but honestly I had been dreading it. It may seem odd, but I kept telling myself that has long as I didn’t hear otherwise, Jimbo was still there. It’s hard to imagine that I will go back to town to visit, and I won’t be able to call him, and see him a short time later riding up on his bike wearing one of his old flannel shirts, playing with one random gadget or another. He’d pull more anime dvds out of his backpack and ask me if I wanted to split a pizza, and sit and talk until I’d be half falling asleep on him and have to ask him to finish the movies off at home.

That’s just who he was, strange, harmless, in a world of his own, but at the same time as caring and wonderful as he was introverted and shy. He was a hermit, but adopted my daughter and I as a surrogate family. She adored him from the time she was a small baby clear up until the end. He’d do anything for her, much more than her own father had ever done, even if it was just sitting on the floor with her watching cartoons, or remembering her birthday by bringing her some of the oddest presents under the sun.

Nothing I say right now could be enough. It’s all just words trying to relate, what really can’t be put into words. Someday soon it will hit me for real. I’ll sit and fall apart, but the world will keep turning, just a lot lonelier without him there.