I was sitting out in my yard Saturday afternoon when Amy came outside, crying, and told me about Andy, as she had just heard from Andy's cousin Cathy. I was dumbfounded. She had very little info, as very little was to be had. I called Cory. I told him we'd start the phone tree. I picked up my phone, choked back some tears, and started going down my list, making the calls. Amy went back in and did the same. Those were tough calls to make, let me tell you. Being the bearer of bad news is perhaps worse than receiving it. I can't imagine what Cory was/is going through. I think I went through another two or three American Spirit stuffies by the time I got to the bottom of the list.
It's a really shitty thing when you get a phone call that a friend has died. It's especially shitty when that person was young. And by young I mean 40. When we were kids, we thought 40 was "old." Now that we're in our 30's and 40's, although muscles stay stiffer longer and some of us are starting to feel creaks in our bones when we sit or stand (i personally make the same noise my grandfather did every time he sat down), we realize that those ages are way too young to die.
But such is the passage of time.
The thing about loss and grief though, is that it hits everyone differently, and everyone has their own way of coping and finding comfort. Some turn to religion. Some turn to seances, psychics, and ghost hunters. Some turn to psychology. Some look in the bottom of a bottle. Some turn to sad music. Some pick up a pen and vomit out every emotion, every thought, every feeling onto a sheet of paper. Some, like myself, turn to the universe and find comfort that, in about 5 billion years, when our sun expands and becomes a red giant, the earth will be swallowed up and every atom that makes up our planet, every atom that made up every thing that ever lived and died on this pale blue dot, will be returned to the stardust from whence we came; for, as Carl Sagan told us, we are the children of the stars. And The Andyman was one hell of a bright one.
No matter what method/s you use to cope, the one thing that binds all of them together is friends. We can all turn to each other in our times of grief. I'm truly happy that so many of our mutual friends and family members came through our house Saturday night to find some sort of solace, some comfort, in each other.
But the world moves on.
We threw our gathering together at the last minute. I went to the
grocery to get snacks and pick up some dinner. Amy and the kids
cleaned the house and made it a functional gathering space. You all came for company and
fellowship in all of our times of need. We all suspended our grief to make the effort to gather together with a few hours' notice to share in each other and grieve together. For that, I am, again, truly
happy. Andy would've been happy, too. He loved a party.
It is with this forward motion that I'm reminded of an episode of the TV show M*A*S*H (season 3, episode 24). When the character Henry Blake died, the rest of the unit was informed during the middle of a surgical session... and they continued, in silence, as the war and the world kept moving on. The Arrow of Time will continue to fly.
This is our part in all of this; to keep moving on; to grab onto that arrow and enjoy the ride. "Play through the pain" as a high school football coach might say. We must continue on with our lives, with our families, with each other; all of us being there for the others. Andy would want it that way-- he was always willing to be there for any of us.
So grieve, but do not linger. Cope, find comfort, and move forward. With Andy forever alive in our hearts and memories, we can be safe in the knowledge that we will rise up and continue on, finding our direction together, toward the bright future that Andy always saw.
Such is the way of the world.
