brushes with death

while driving down the road to the coffee shop this morning I was compelled to write about losses. In particularly losses of individuals I have encountered, spent time with, or was influenced by. I will try to go chronologically but..... it may also be as they come to me.

My first brush with death came when I was 13 my great grandfather passed away. I was living with my father at the time so he and I traveled out for the funeral. I believe I had been out to their house once before to visit before they moved out to a retirement home closer to their daughter. It was the first time I had seen a dead body, or a group of people in mourning, I remember wanting to touch him in the casket but refrained. My father and I then escaped to a firework vender which also happened to be a costume shop where I had procured an awesome gorilla head mask and plenty of fireworks. those memories at the funeral are not the grandeur of our relationship. he was a wwII vet, a calm and sturdy old man. He rarely spoke of the war and being young and naive to how he may have been impacted by his experiences there I constantly would ask him of it. he did share with me a few times and the specifics of his stories have since slipped my mind. he was a wonderful man, father and husband. my great grandmother lived for quite a few years after.

I believe I would evade anymore encounters for a few years sans one close call of my own. shortly after the previous story I fell from a balcony on to my face in a recessed tile patio. This was thanksgiving evening of 98 I think. I remember standing up and saying I was ok and not to call 911, I remember looking at my entire family through the sliding glass doors. I woke back up in the ambulance to emt's trying to stick IV's in my arm and protesting to it greatly lol. I blew my upper jaw out of the gum taking out most of my teeth on that side as well. some still dangling from the braces eek. I had also collapsed my cheek and part of the eye socket on impact resulting in a couple weeks in the hospital, my jaw wired shut for 6+ months and a bunch of surgeries. this was one of my first brushes with death and I have had numerous more since, but they have tended to be really close calls and not quite so bloody.

I moved back with my mother for high school where we lived in a pretty small town 400 kids in my graduating class. I had two friends pass away almost back to back both of drunk driving accidents. The first I will detail happened to a friend I knew for the past 3 years or since the 8th grade. we had attended a very small christian middle school together before attending a public high school. he was the schools first male cheerleader. he was not gay and he got quite a lot of tail regardless of being ridiculed by some of his peers. while we were not best of friends we always remained friendly and pretty close. he was thrown from a rolling vehicle along with the drivers boyfriend who also had forgotten to put his seatbelt on leaving only the girlfriend in the totaled suv to live with the after math. She was charged with two counts of man slaughter and her life was basically ruined before it even had a chance, but pity not for my friend and her boyfriend also had their chances taken from them.

the second in regards to that I had known a little less. we become smoking buddies rolling around in his bronco during lunch hours, we had off campus lunches. we had a history class together and had grouped up on a project to build a medieval weapon and we had chosen the trebuchet. we proceeded to run down to his house, down the block from the school, during our class project time and get super high. with no progress and two days left I bailed on the group and made my own treb. they also pulled it together but I had lost faith already haha. he had decided to move back with his mom sometime after that in another town. he was driving intoxicated and flipped his car, was thrown from it, and it rolled back ontop of him. he died later in the evening on the operating table. I remember being at his viewing before the funeral with his mother. it was the first time she had seen him since the hospital were he was still alive. I will never forget the screams of a mother who has lost her child.

this is completely out of order chronologically but it just came to me. Cryin Ryan. I had met this individual while I was living in phoenix arizona on the run from charged in my home town that I disagreed with and did not want to deal with. another story for another time. anyway he was a mutual drug friend, as well as a great artist. graffiti was his style, but it was far from ghetto. we tripped, rolled, raved, and hung out together for the better part of a year. I was at the time living with his friend and stripper sister.

cryin ryan continued.
he was always full of life and had crazy ambition but was to attracted and trapped to a drug based life style. and yes my room mate was a stripper and her brother also lived with us. laundry day was hilarious. I will always remember ryan, he over dosed a few months after I left arizona from smoking PCP.....

another artist friend that passed just came to mind. this person I was never very close with but was close with at the same time. a local legend, one year a head in high school. suspended for playing sublime and starting a punk rock riot in the high school cafeteria that no amount of administration could stop! a founding member in our local blackout league chapter. knower of all punk rock history. would turn any party into a punk rock jam. had a real good bout with heroin, got clean, relapsed over dosed and his brain swelled and he went into a coma in his mothers basement. he remained on life support for 3 weeks after, his mother made the decision to pull the plug against the will of others. making for some extra drama.

my step brother scott. he was big, like 6'6'' and 200++ something pounds. could drink like a fish and was game to do any drug. he introduced me to stealing, we stole a cassette player from the college and a couple other little things I think I was 11 or so. my mom found out and took us straight to the campus officer for a scare session. he showed me a drawer full of drugs, bongs, some weapons, and other confiscated goods. he was never that aggressive except for one time. we were much older I was maybe 21 and he 27. he was staying at mine and my girlfriend of the times house. we had gone to bed only to be woken up at 2-3 am to him yelling for me. he wanted me to drive to the house of these people who had screwed over kevin our other step brother. he had helped himself to all the alcohol in the house..... which was alot. I tried to get him to sleep it off but instead he burst out of the house saying he would walk there. in december in colorado......another story I remember of him, he told it to me. he had won a scratchy lotto of some kind and procured 30k. he got it all in cash, 20$'s and 50$'s so he could have mountains of cash infront of him on a table. he smoked drank and snorted every penny of it till it was gone. my step brother kevin ran from parole while scott was living in pheonix and screwed over a bunch of his drug dealer friends who put a hit out on scott. he was found on his couch with a baseball bat next to him, needle in his arm. my stepbrother kevin got one tear tattooed on him for this I believe, he has more than one tear.

my nana passed recently. this was following a long bout with parkinsons, her husband of 20+ years had just passed the year before. they would come and make pancakes for us every year with out fail for the first day of school. she was a wonderful lady. my mom always made her out to have been a bad mother, a smoker, a generally detached mother. she worked full time and raised her 4 kids on her own. I never saw the bad in her, but we all have it in us do we not? I went to his funeral, his family who I had never met was there. they were pretentious assholes who had presumptions of my mother and her brothers. winky (thats what we called him) had left all his properties and vehicles, material stuff to his brother and not my nana. regardless of why he made this choice my mother and her brothers were quite upset and started to say some really terrible things which made the whole funeral and experience very sour. I believe this was the first time I showed my family my family tattoo. I did not make it to my nana's funeral. I did however see he just days before, she was basically in a coma..... but I could get her to wiggle her hand and foot occasionally if I said the right thing. I got to say my goodbyes while she was still here... so I try not to beat myself up over it to bad.

the next two I want to share happened very recently. they were both taken by the river just months apart. both in very intense class V sections of whitewater. I had boated with one of the men just a day before his passing and had my own very close call in the exact place he had died with his body still there. mid way down a rapid stuck inbetween some rocks. its called a sieve. only to have myself get helicoptered out the following day. the other passed in a canyon I have never ventured into, yet. he was trapped outside of his kayak in a pot hole made of granite and the water is to aerated to swim to the surface in and not enough current pulling around the wall to the exit, and steep granite walls making access nearly impossible. thus the definition of class V whitewater. luckily I have yet to have a death on a trip I was personally on.