Because I need to blog about this....

I'd been debating whether to put this on The Jannaverse, or on one of my lesser-trafficked blogs. It's not particularly funny, and is actually kind of sad.
Plus I first started talking about it on another blog anyway.

But in the end I decided it belonged here, because this blog is the one I cherish the most, and this story is really an inseparable part of me.

I don't know if that makes any sense.

But please, listen anyway.

I learned Monday that one of my friends died.

His name was Ed. We went to college together, and we were the same type of nerdy introverted outcast. We both loved sci-fi, we both wanted to write a novel someday, we both loved life in the country, we both loved reading, we both had a bizarre sense of humor that not everyone could appreciate. All day I've been remembering the "good" memories of my friendship with him, going back and forth between smiling and crying.

After college, we both kept in touch, through letters and e-mail and phone calls and visits. He was fun to spend time with. We had good times, going off on all sorts of tangents in our conversation. We could be wacky, and we could be horribly morbid. Either way, we understood one another.

Then, one day back in 2003, abruptly I stopped hearing from him. As time progressed, I became increasingly worried. I put a post on Jantrails (HERE), hoping that maybe someone would be able to let me know what happened.

Monday, I finally found out.
One of his old high school classmates e-mailed me to say that Ed had died.
He passed away just a few weeks ago, on May 14, 2008.
He was 38.... the same age as me.
Here is the obituary.

The classmate had found Ed's obituary, and had done a Google search of his name, trying to find more information. The search led him to my Jantrails post, which is how he found me. If I hadn't done that post, I'd still have no idea what happened.

I'd abruptly stopped hearing from Ed in 2003, so it was strange to hear that he passed away so recently, in 2008. I wonder, had he been sick for an extended period of time? Was he in the hospital? I knew he'd had heart trouble, and the obituary says that people were encouraged to donate to the American Heart Association, so does that mean he had a heart attack? I may never know what happened.

Since I didn't find out about this until June 2nd, I wasn't able to attend the funeral (which was on May 21st).
As it is, I'm going to try to find out what cemetery he's in, and see if I can visit him there to pay my respects. Not sure how to go about locating that, but I suppose e-mailing the funeral home is a good start.

To celebrate his life and the time I spent with him, I'm going to post a list of the good memories I have. The good and the strange and the bittersweet. A list that, in some small way, helps communicate to all of you what a unique person he was.
But not today.
Today I just need time to curl up and think about this.
.