When life comes crashing

By Robert Dean
Guest Columnist

I just got word that one of my friends has died. I knew Greg for almost twenty years.

I usually have a lot to say about life and about death — that we should hug our kids, our mom, our dad, our people; that we should tell our friends we love them, all the time.

Right now, I’m sitting in a coffee shop, looking at my laptop, considering the fragility of life. Death tends to bring out the philosopher in all of us.

Earlier, I was struggling to write. Everything lately feels pointless. The world is literally on fire, and I’m trying to endure in my creative pursuits — and reality comes clawing back.

This was originally going to be about how gas prices are insane, how we bombed a school of little girls, how no one from the Epstein files has been sent to the chair. About how buying a bag of groceries costs as much as your car note. Or how when I tried to get new medicine, they wanted me to try something else because insurance won’t cover what I need — because it’s nothing more than a predatory scam.

But then life comes crashing.

Death has a way of making everything feel small.

We’re all trying to survive, to make it another day in a very complex world. I never agreed with my friend politically. He was right-wing, but recognized many of the same problems I see, and we talked about them. We managed to talk — something that’s become rarer the more we endure the meat grinder of this landscape.

I used to live in New Orleans. I wrote there. I worked on Bourbon Street. That’s where I met Greg. We slugged it out, entertaining tourists, getting people drunk. At the same time, I typed away, trying to make my way as a working-class writer. Greg always supported me. He was a champion of the dream.

Now it’s a weird feeling to lose another friend as I get older — that I’m still here and he’s not. It’s not survivor’s guilt. It’s a look into the void.

We used to hang bras from the ceiling in the bar to make people laugh. We made every horrible joke known to man. We ran through a rainstorm to catch a plane, watching the New Orleans sky erupt in vivid colors.

I know it’s part of the human condition — that we commit to loving our people, and when they leave us, we carry them forward in our stories. But it’s a lot when you’re just trying to live. And maybe that’s the point. That is life. People leave. Everyone does.

So here, in these words, all I can do is endure and do my best.

But if there’s anything I always want to say, it’s this:

Tell your friends you care about them.

Send that text.

Make those amends.

Check in on people.

Don’t flake on lunch.

Send the sketchy meme back.

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