Grief

So some of you might now that I was stationed in Lost Angeles for a number of years. Recruiting. Oh the joy. I have PTSD from that tour.

While I was there, I found a church that held The Latin Mass. That was my introduction to it, and I was hooked.

About three-four months of attending the church there, and getting to know everyone and them to know me, the bishop comes up, grabs me, takes me over to a pair of siblings, a boy and a girl, and tells me that these two kids are now my responsibility. Sort of. Their father is a narcissistic manchild, and they need a good male influence in their life. Especially the boy. I shall call them B and G respectively, because I know that any progressive who would take offense at what I write would target them in order to hurt me, because progressives are demonic and hateful.

So I do what I can. I’m still in contact with both of them, as they’re in their mid twenties now.

But through them, I also got to meet their Uncle, who I will call K. He and I got along quite well, and we became friends. It helped that both of us were trying to protect the kids from their father’s behavior, and so we had a common goal. He and I would enjoy some scotch after dinners in his backyard. He was fond of 18 year old Glenlivet. He had never married, and instead lived a good Catholic life of chastity, while helping his mother maintain her house and yard. He was intelligent, calm, and just a good person to be around.

B went to college, then moved out of state and is now happily living his life. G discovered a profession in LA and stayed in the area, although she is planning on leaving sometime in the near future. G and K are pretty close, and they get together to have dinner every now and then, maybe go do fun things. Well, on Monday, they were gifted tickets to a show, and so G, K, and G’s aunt all went out, along with a friend of the family. They had a great time. G sent me a picture of them after the show, and they all had big smiles, dressed up to the nines.

After the show, they return to K’s house where everyone had parked. Unfortunately, G’s car battery had died, and so K went inside to get some jumper cables. As he came back out, he wobbled a bit. G asked if he was ok. He looked at her, said “No, I…” and dropped. DRT.

Dead Right There. Cardiac Arrest. The big one. The Widowmaker.

G and her aunt performed CPR on K for ten minutes until the paramedics got there and took over. As they were hooking the EKG lines up to him, G could see that everything was flatlined. K was dead before he hit the ground, and nothing G or her aunt could have done would have changed that. Hell, they could have had a cardiac surgeon walking by while it happened, and the result would have been the same.

I got the phone call at 0130, right after the paramedics had taken him away. And I did what I could to console a sobbing, hysterical woman who had just performed CPR on her uncle and knew that it was for naught.

So, I will be going to another funeral sometime in the future. K was my friend. He taught me how to reload ammunition. He used to shoot long distance pistol competitions. He was always the calm voice whenever things got stupid. You could trust him to be rational when everyone else was loosing their head. I was nagging him to come up here in the summertime and just relax, spend a few days on the back porch looking at the trees and wildlife, where you don’t hear constant traffic noise.

I’m pretty sure there’s no traffic noises where he is now. Just some rest, a couple of 1000 yard ranges, and some eighteen year old scotch.

I’m tired of going to funerals.