A Good Friend Once Said...

Yesterday was a normal day like any other consisting of housework, laundry, making bread, getting groceries, the cat scratching Rylee above the eye and making her bleed, the kids getting on my nerves, etc. At 8:45 p.m. my phone rang. I casually picked it up and looked at the caller ID noticing it was my dad. When I said hello and heard him say my name in his broken voice and he started crying I immediately wanted to hang up. Nothing good can come from that scenario no matter who you are.

And I was right. Bobby Keedy died yesterday at a mere 32 years old very suddenly with no warning. Bobby is my step mother's brother, I guess you could call him my step uncle, but I called him my friend. He happened to be a close friend for many years. I met him during a time in my life where things had gotten crazy and it seemed my world had been turned upside down. Somehow him and I connected. I was 17, he was 16, hanging out at the mall where I worked, working for his mom at the time and even though he was quite a punk, and a cute one at that, there was something about him I liked.

I'm glad I saw that in him because we became great friends. Over the years both of us have made some pretty stupid decisions, unfortunately his landed him in prison for a number of years. Even when we had lost touch for a short period of time, it was never too hard to reconnect the minute I saw him. During his last few years in prison we corresponded constantly discussing life, personal issues, family, what I was up to, what his plans were when he was released, religion, how the prison system sucked, you name it, we talked about it.

He wanted nothing more than to be able to live a normal life, working a normal job, be married and be a dad, those were the things he told me that his heart desired. Nothing made me happier than to know he was released and knowing he was on the right track. Even though he was slightly younger than me, he still stood about a foot and a half taller than me and he always felt like a big brother, so full of love, always giving me a hug and wanting to know how the kids were, where Ty was, etc.

Yesterday evening he stood up to walk across his living room and fell over and now he is gone. No warning. It just happened. What does one say when something like that happens? What do you do? How can you make it better? Those questions will remain unanswered for the rest of my life. There will be more questions that I won't have answers for either but instead I'm forced to put one foot in front of the other and somehow find my way through this life like I'm supposed to.

The hurt that I feel is indescribable, and yet I cannot imagine the hurt, the pain and the loss that his mom and dad feel, or his two sisters and their husbands, his niece or nephews and Tia, his fiance, who is carrying his child in her womb, a baby boy who will be born in just a few weeks who will never know what it's like to have Daddy hold him when he enters into this world.

And I just don't get it. I don't do well with things like this, but I don't really know anyone who does. And as much as I want to have the answers to fix it all and make everyone better again, I can't. So as I sit here on my 34th birthday at 5 a.m. without any sleep, I ask that you please keep the birthday wishes to yourself this year, it's not a happy one for me by any means, but instead please pray for the Keedy family because today is more about them.

A dear friend of mine, Erin, once said that even when life isn't good, God still is, and there's a lot of meaning to that short little sentence. A whole lot of meaning for a little me and I'm gonna hold onto it for as long as little me can.