Frowny

I've recently heard that a good friend of mine has passed away unexpectedly.  This is so hard on so many levels.

We knew each other going back to our junior year of high school.  We were both part of a relatively large circle of friends and gravitated to each other for whatever reason, eventually spending a fair amount of time together.  We weren't best friends, but I'd say we were close.  For a short time we dated a pair of girls who were also close friends, so we had quite the happy foursome there for a while.  He also ran lights for my first band for several months.  After he stopped working for the band, we each had our own lives going and only occasionally spent time together in person, but we at least stayed in touch.  Eventually, he ran into some serious health issues due to a work accident and couldn't leave the house much, so a couple of times a year, I would make a point of visiting him and spending at least a couple of hours just hanging out and talking.

His name was Todd, but almost everyone called him Frowny, an abbreviated version of his last name.  It was ironic in that he was one of the most cheerful people I knew.  He was very well liked in our circle, primarily because he was one of the most fundamentally kind people we knew.  Even when he was angry with someone, revenge wouldn't have been his style; he'd just keep his distance from that person in the future.  Our circle of friends was large enough that we'd often divide into sub-groups, and he was welcome in all of them, as well as having friends outside that particular circle.

Another distinguishing characteristic is that he was one of the most creative people I know in his way.  He once told me that he envied those of us who were able to write stories or songs, or perform in some way, because that was something he couldn't do.  And yet he had his own remarkable form of creativity.  He was good at building things.  It was more than just manual labor; he would identify what was needed and often found surprising solutions to the problems presented to him.  He could make people laugh with the sheer ingenuity of his approach.  His home is set up with a computer network that would be the envy of a small company, and perfectly adjusted to the needs of every member of the family.

I think what brought us together is that we were both young men who simply spent a lot of time thinking about things.  We were able to talk about life in a depth that didn't interest most people.  We both enjoyed games (Risk was a mutual favorite), but the conversation and time spent together were more important.  One significant difference between us is that he was always the stable one and I was the more volatile personality during our high school days.  Even then, he had a more mature, sensible viewpoint than most people our age.  I was often struggling with depression or some other high school drama, and was always able to turn to him for the best advice.  Even in our adult lives, after I've worked my way to a greater balance, he was still one of my go-to advisers when I was really stuck about a problem.

Not surprisingly, he eventually married his female counterpart in our circle of friends, and they've had three great kids together.  Most people seem to think their own kids are great, but theirs really are.  Their kids are everything they are: intelligent, kind, and polite.  I think it helped that Frowny was able to spend so much of their early years with them because his health problems kept him at home.  It also made the kids mature beyond their years because they had to learn to be careful about certain things, lest they make Dad's health problems worse by accident.

Many of my best stories in life were shared with him: the time police falsely and hilariously accused us (and one other guy) of armed robbery, my first band's most decadent weekend ever, and my mom getting into the car with us and our girlfriends in front of my house one night.  Unfortunately, the nature of all of those stories is that I won't be able to share them with his kids for several years yet.

I will be eternally grateful that I spent an afternoon in his company only a week and a half before he passed away.  He seemed to be okay, maybe a little worn down, but I chalked it up to him just having a bad day.  I certainly didn't expect that to be the last time I'd ever see him.  I'm grateful to have had the privilege of his friendship.  I've had to learn kindness (often from him), where kindness was his first instinct.  He was very much the person I aspire to be in many ways, and I can't begin to say how much I'm going to miss him.