INMORTALITY

Immortality, death, ending, fini. A friend of mine is dying, it's a certainty, an inevitable result of life. It comes at all times, minutes after birth and before 120 years, depending on who you are and more or less how many Bourbon and Gingers you drank during the life you are living.

I lost my best friend forever. Before texting became all the rage she was my BFF or as they say in my culture, my ace, boon, coon. We raised our kids, went shopping, had breakfast at Browns, and cried over guys together. However it came to pass she would end up with Cancer eating her body from bottom to top, I don't know. We had never even discussed that with all the philosophies of love and life we went through, we never talked about death. All I know is when she finally got sick enough too quit running around with me, there was a big old hole I found there wasn't anything to fill it up with. I didn't understand her sickness and what happened to her and I tried I guess, to make believe it wasn't happening. Then she was gone.

Now I find myself in the same fix with another friend a thousand miles away that calls me a couple times a week and we laugh at all the old stuff friends laugh at. The stuff we have in common like music, love, no love, dogs and people we used to know, gigs we used to play. He has a lady friend but I often wonder does she realize who he is? His love for music, his talent for it, his participation in it? That being a musician is the real love of his life and she is in the back somewhere, necessary but less loved. Well he is dying and so have other musicians, some are just gone, some died, some left. And it causes me to remember one night at McCarvers, when we all were there, and the crowd was into the band and the band was layin' in the groove. That night Duke played "Silk Stockings" and with what went on beside that, none of us will ever forget it. A mouth organ and a B3............. brought the house down.

I will look at the phone now in the morning before I leave for breakfast and experience that "hole" again in my life knowing there is nothing now to fill it up again with and think, a safe journey Duke, and God bless.