Saturday, April 15, 2006

Live...From My Best Friend’s Living Room…

To Those Of You Out There In The Rest Of The World


Yes, you read my title and sub title correctly…

What was intended to be this past evening’s blog is was coming to you “live and in color” from the living room of my best friend here on St. Simons Island.

My regular readers already know who I’m talking about, and the rest of you can wander around my archives if you actually need to know, but otherwise…I ask that you just relegate yourself to following along with me, right here, right now, without worrying about the gory details of how and why and what and where we got together.

Trust me, it’s the big picture that I’m addressing here this morning.

He (my best friend) has just gone back to sleep after I helped him get out of bed to attend to some personal business, and he was quite happy to find me hanging out here writing when he needed a little help negotiating his way through the process. Due to a paperwork snafu, the expected attending nurse didn’t make it here before midnight, so I’m filling in as best as I can.

That’s OK, because I’m even enjoying sitting here in my buddy’s favorite chair in his living room in these wee hours of the morning.

As I understand it, it was formerly was a pretty fancy chair—back in “the day”—but since then it has had several different fabric coverings placed over its frame before it came to wear the current slightly nicotine colored blue and cream striped colors it has adopted over the past ten years.

That said, I find the color to be quite OK with my friend, and for that reason it’s also OK with me, because I only have a few more weeks available to sit here in his old familiar piece of furniture, before it is hauled away—along with my best friend—back to New England near where he grew up.

I’m not declaring sainthood on myself or anything like that, yet I have to ask…

how many of you out there ever bother to sit in your friends old dingy chairs, or even walk along beside them in their old worn leather shoes when things are going well, not to mention when things aren’t going their way?

I’ve learned that here in this world there is an obvious need for people to do the kind of things that I’ve been doing for the past half year or so, but I’ve also realized that there is no amount of money that can be paid out to buy the level of appreciation I’ve been blessed with; and no amount of money that anyone can receive as a substitute in order to justify the patience and time it takes to do what needs to be done.

My friend has come to rely on me in his present declining health to accomplish a number of things that until the past few years most of us still take for granted being able to do at will. Yet, in spite of his increasing physical and mental limitations, he is still the same wonderful person that I first met back in March of 2004 and he will still be greatly missed as he moves away later this month to his new home nearer to his own wonderful family.

His most recent trauma occurred Thursday morning when his declining health caused him to take a tumble to the floor in his kitchen, after which he had to endure an ambulance ride, but following a few scary hours in the emergency room and a few stitches later we had him safely back home to his familiar old chair where I sit to write most of this dialogue.

(now here’s the Friday night part…)

It is amazing to me how life’s events put things into perspective, if only you will open your eyes and listen through your ears to what you are being told. It’s amazing what opportunities you can receive, years after you’ve given up on humanity in general, if you do something as simple as change your view or location and allow others to reach out to you, often in need, and just do the things that you are capable of doing.

Just five years ago I had given up on myself and my own prospects for the future after failed marriages, business relationships, businesses, and the total loss of my house and most of my possessions in an electrical fire left me bankrupt and angry at the entire world. I had attained great success, both personal and financial, only to watch it all slip away in an avalanche of bad luck, augmented by a rising tide of stupidity and self pity.

I basically gave up. If I couldn’t have things my way, then I’d just have nothing at all and give the same to everyone else I came in contact with.

Yet here I am today, sitting in St. Cloud, Florida, wishing that I was back on our little island, sitting in my old friend’s chair, standing by to help him get through the evening again.

Hope you have a good night…Bucky

No comments: