Funeral for a Friend

Life. What a confusing and ever changing thing. It seems almost as if it has it's own agenda and very rarely do we have a say in what happens. Sure we have some control over ourselves and the decisions we make, but it is the outside forces that create the unpredictable part of it all.
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We all understand the uncertainty. Any number of physical forces can coerce a change in circumstances. Whether it's over an extended period of time or in an instant, there is really nothing you can do about it. The minute you step outside that fortress of solitude you call home, it's open season for the things that lurk around the corner, waiting to change those very circumstances. If you make it home at the end of the day, without too much hassle, your doing pretty good. That means that either through dumb luck or calculated risk, you dodged every potential bullet from that big shiny gun the universe points in your direction everyday.

Now, as far as the old mental state is concerned? Well you have a bit more control over that than the physical aspect of life in terms of it's randomness. Sometimes our mental state is dictated by genetics. Most of the time it is dictated by our environment. The people we surround ourselves with and the places we choose to spend our time can directly effect how our mind feels. In either case there is generally a balance between the two that increases our chances of survival against that randomness that life dishes out. If your body is fit, your mind usually follows. If your mind is thinking clearly, your body has an amazing ability deal with anything that gets thrown at it. Without that balance, the lines between those states of being can collide with a devastating impact.

Yesterday I attended a memorial for a friend who chose to solve the mental anguish of his life, by taking the physical end of it into his own hands. Between the crumbling of his marriage and a sever battle with alcoholism and depression, it seemed to him it was the only option. I have to admit that I just don't understand the concept of suicide, but I do understand about giving up and slowly killing myself as a result.

I have already written a couple of blogs about my slow decent into death before my days of giving a shit. This blog is not about that. I really don't know what this blog is about. Right now I just feel like I am rambling, my mind swimming around in a fog of befuddlement. Not sure if this will make any sense at all really. It's hard to find the right words. Maybe this blog is about keeping my mind right through exercise and healthy eating. Maybe it's about not giving up on myself anymore, no matter what. Maybe it's a reminder to always keep both my mental and the physical states of being in balance. In all honesty I really just think its a way for me to deal with the loss of a fellow human being.

Had his death been of natural causes or freak circumstance, it would have been easier to understand. Those are things you just can't control. Shit happens right? No. It's the fact that he took his own life that really makes my heart ache and scares me at the same time. His past would show that he was a survivor. A veteran that served a tour in the jungles of Vietnam and lived to tell about it. A man who lived hard and rode as fast as his Harley would carry him. A man who took shit from no one but had a heart of solid gold. A life lived to it's fullest for sure. If a survivor like him could do something like this then what are the chance of me going the way of the gun to my head?

I could say that what he did was selfish and that I would never put my family through that in a million years. But as I said in the begging of this diatribe, life is unpredictable. I have no idea where I will be years from now. I certainly never thought, at the ripe old age of 18, that I would be 150 pounds over weight and on deaths door 20 years later. Or that I would be mourning the loss of someone who had become my friend just a few short years ago. His life had certainly reached a crossroads and unlike all the other adversity in his colorful past, he decided not to fight with the bullshit anymore.

Around 6 o'clock, under literal and emotional darkness, we arrived at a small VFW hall in the middle of nowhere. Cars lined all the adjacent streets and you could feel the sadness hanging like a weight in the air. We parked the car and slowly made our way to mingle with the other souls that he had touched throughout his life. I hoped that this process would bring some sort of comfort and help me to understand this person I had just started to get to know.

We got there just in time to get a drink from the bar and raise a glass to honor his memory. The toast was made, the flag given to his widow and then the crowd moved onto the business of remembering life with him and started trying to figure out how to live it without him. People who had lived the same kind of life as he did. Other fighters. You could tell by their faces. They wore the emotional wounds of life like metals of honor on the uniform of a hero. It seemed they found a way to be at peace with the cards they were dealt, unlike the man they had come to mourn.

As I drank and talked, I began to think about how to keep my own journey from ending the same way. I began to wonder what the future held for me. I wondered if I would have the instinct to fight or if I would once again give up on myself. It would be easy for me to say I will fight. But really, I just don't know.

What I do know is that I am fighting now with every word I write. I am fighting with every calorie I count. I am fighting with every mile I ride and with every challenge I face head on. Of course there are still those things lurking around the corner, designed to make my life as difficult as possible. But if I keep fighting the best that I can, as least I will know that I tried. I will have the satisfaction of knowing that at the end of it all, that I beat life. It didn't beat me.